

The Three Unexplained Mysteries of Taxi Tipping Behavior - timdierks
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-07/tipping-taxi-drivers-data-analysis-cant-explain-these-puzzles

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devindotcom
As for the $30 point, that may be where a lot of flat fares go - airport for
$30, for instance, is probably a common data point.

As for the rest, if we're looking at cash fares, doesn't it seem necessary to
examine the most common makeups of bills that would get you to that amount? If
someone has all 20s, it's easy to tip $10 on a $50 fare. Boom, done. But if it
ticks over to $60, perhaps people don't want to break that fourth bill, or
maybe they don't carry more than 3 20s, so rather than pull out the card they
just leave no tip, like a jerk.

But I don't get why cash versus card was not broken out here. Surely tipping
habits differ greatly, or at least significantly, between the two methods. Why
a card user doesn't tip at $60 is likely to be different to why a cash user
doesn't.

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bane
You answered that a lot more succinctly than I would have. Credit vs. cash
really is different.

It doesn't hurt that most of the time I'm in NYC, the taxi drivers "have
broken credit card machines" or ask me if I can use cash to save them from the
processing fees. Usually the currency in play is $20s and it's easier to just
round up then calculate and fumble around for change and small bills.

For big fares, credit is just easier to deal with than a wad of money. The
cabs all have touch screens for selecting the tip, I suspect there's some kind
of psychology on that tip selection screen which explains the ending 5 and 0
fare tip dips.

And as for anything, as the price goes up, the tip goes down. If I go to Olive
Garden with my wife and spent $30, I give them a $6 tip, because the waiter
was nice, asked me how everything was and my water stayed topped off.

When I go to Per Se's or Le Bernardin's and drop $300 on a prix-fixe dinner,
do I really want to tip them $60 because I got near enough the same service
(but it involved 4 people) but they kept my wine glass topped off all night?
No, but I might give them $50 because that's a nice number, is more than 15%
(so I can make sure I can come back).

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devindotcom
Yeah it's funny how much I overthink these things myself. I would really
rather everyone was earning a good wage and tipping was an actual gratuity
rather than a requirement to let the barista make rent. Leaving 15p in change
at the bar in the UK, as I understand it, is a totally normal and friendly
thing to do, but no one will think ill of you if you take it, either.

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shalmanese
It'd be interesting looking at histograms rather than averages and separating
out cash from credit card tips.

Most taxi rides, I'm paying cash because I don't want to be bitched out by the
taxi driver about using a credit card. With cash, I'm more concerned about
minimizing the amount of change so I'll usually do something like hand them a
20 and say "can I get 3/4/5 dollars back".

That could partially explain some of the weird shapes in the data.

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Scoundreller
I'm forced to wonder which results are statistically significant.

Yet another hypothesis for tips going up in the $20 to $30 range is because
for fares over $20, riders may switch to credit card payment where the fare
has a clear paper-trail, while tips for fares under $20 are underreported
because riders want to get rid of their singles.

My conclusion for the results of the study is that rider sympathy for the poor
medallion owners of the world varies based on the fare.

