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Where Does a Tip To an Amazon Driver Go? In Some Cases, Toward the Driver's Base Pay (latimes.com)
Amazon at times dips into the tips earned by contracted delivery drivers to cover their promised pay, a Los Angeles Times review of emails and receipts reveals. From the report: Amazon guarantees third-party drivers for its Flex program a minimum of $18 to $25 per hour, but the entirety of that payment doesn't always come from the company. If Amazon's contribution doesn't reach the guaranteed wage, the e-commerce giant makes up the difference with tips from customers, according to documentation shared by five drivers. In emails to drivers, Amazon acknowledges it can use "any supplemental earnings" to meet the promised minimum should the company's own contribution fall short. "We add any supplemental earnings required to meet our commitment that delivery partners earn $18-$25 per hour," the company wrote in multiple emails reviewed by The Times. Only drivers who deliver for Amazon's grocery service or its Prime Now offering -- which brings household goods to customers in two hours or less -- can receive tips through the company's app. Amazon insists that drivers receive the entirety of their tips but declined to answer questions from The Times about whether it uses those tips to help cover the drivers' base pay.
Like the old commercial "Stop 'Liking' _everything_!", it's time to stop attaching a tip to every single exchange of service in the U.S. It's a U.S. thing. It's confusing wages exactly like this article suggests. Let's just get away from tipping as a "norm" and if you feel someone did an exceptional service, then tip personally separately.
Look I think Amazon are scummy and Bezos is a dick.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, seems to have a poorly-managed life. He was having sex with a woman besides his wife. Now his wife gets half of his money, more than $65 billion.
They were together before they got rich so it's quite clear the assets should be split 50/50 regardless of the reason for a split.
After that point why on earth wouldn't they split if they no longer wanted be togther? It'd be perverse if being the richest person in the world meant you couldn's split because of money where a much poorer person could.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No, they're talking about the Amazon Prime Now drivers and the Amazon Fresh drivers. Like with Uber Eats, DoorDash, InstaCart and all the rest of these services, they take the tips that customers give intending it to be on top of their pay -- and use those tips to cover their *base pay*. It's nasty Basically, let's say I tell you that you'll get $20/hr for driving deliveries for my company. Now let's say I give you 4$ per delivery. But let's say you're only able to make two deliveries during the hour you're working. That means you've actually only made $8. But what if you've made $10 in tips? Well, now you've made $18! And then they'll throw in the extra $2.
So instead of $20 plus $10 in tips -- you got $20. Which you would have gotten even without the tips (just that the company would have paid you instead of them taking it out of your tips).
Also, customers don't know about this. Customers think they're giving you a nice fat juicy tip for your hard work, but have no idea that they're actually just subsidizing the money the company would have had to pay you in the first place.
This is why the tipping culture needs to end. Employers need to pay employees a fair wage without tips. Consumers shouldn't have to worry about mandatory tips for services they already paid for. It seems just about everything that involves a human these days involves a tip; it's becoming ridiculous. Everyone but the employer is being shafted.
Nobody tips me to show up at the office every day to do my job so why should I tip someone to deliver my groceries which is their job? The one exception being is if they went above and beyond in which case I would gladly tip them but do so with cash.
Cash is still a thing. If you want to tip, don't do it using the app. Amazon can't figure in tips it doesn't know about, right?
When I pay by card in a US restaurant, I try to avoid tipping using the "add X%" button and leave cash on the table instead because I don't trust the owners not to rip off the waitress in some fashion or another.
BTW, in Sweden, there's no such thing as a "tipped" sub-minimum wage for restaurant workers, and no such thing as tips, either.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
When is the USA going to wake up and just pay your workers properly and get rid of mandatory tipping??? Your backwards arsed pay system and pricing schedule is fucked and deceptive!!! How about having some conviction in your pricing and advertising the real cost to the customer??
Pay your staff properly and if they give shit service, fire their arse!! That's how it works in the rest of the civilised world..
Yeah I'm an Aussie.. you know that place down under where you are told exactly what the price is and what we think... this bullshit mandatory tipping is just a hidden tax. And a way to confuse your customers into thinking they are getting a deal... down here we know when we are getting ripped off... and we know the waiters and bar wenches are payed properly... so when you do give a tip for good service it's fucking clear the staff did a great job....
It's not really fair on the back of house staff.. who goes back there and throw a couple of bills at the dish washers when you get clean plates?? It's just a way for the company to shift some of its tax burdens.... just tell us the fucking price if it goes up cuz you need and get good staff so be it!!!
Income is wages+tips.
It presumably is in the USA, which is how Amazon get away with this. It isn't in places such as the UK, where that practice would be illegal. After all, the supposed reason for tipping is to get better service; how would that work if the person providing the service doesn't get the tip?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Why don't you Amazon drones just direct deposit your paychecks into Mama Amazon's bank account directly? It's more convenient than having to do all that swiping on your gadgets.
It's amazing to see how far the Slashdot community has come in the past 20 years or so. It used to be a group of nerds (of all kinds) who were mostly anti-mega-corporation and pro-privacy.And now, most Slashdotters just can't wait to give all of their money and all of their personal information to just a few giant mega companies in exchange for a little bit of (perceived) convenience.
I don't respond to AC's.
Yes... however in there's a difference. When you tip a waiter $10, you expect him to be $10 richer. You don't expect the restaurant owner to be $10 richer. Even if you think the minimum wage for waiters should be $15, it's not.
A tip is a contribution to the employee's standard of living, not the owner's. It's a fair bet that anyone who tips an Amazon driver thinks he's helping out a low wage employee, not Jeff Bezos.
Any business which steals employees tips, either directly or indirectly, deserves shaming.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, they're talking about the Amazon Prime Now drivers and the Amazon Fresh drivers.
So basically delivery drivers. We're expected to tip delivery drivers?
No. Simple flat basic no. They've been fucking paid for delivering my package, they've delivered it, now they can go and deliver someone else's.
No. It's very likely that they will be but I see no reasons why they should be.
People build their lives together and support each other, so you can't separate who did what, because both people are working towards a common goal. She supported him financially when he started Amazon.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
How is this different from paying waiters less than minimum wage because they will get tips? The real problem is tipping. Get rid of it.