Skip the Tips: A game to select "No Tip" but dark patterns try to stop you
skipthe.tipsOoooh do the one where hitting ‘payment’ on the app buys $25 of store credit by default rather than just paying and deducts the 9.64 from that credit.
Then when you spend down the credit to $2 any attempt to buy something that costs more refills the credit.
Starbucks app btw. You have to specifically pay with card on the payment screen to avoid buying credit and paying as above.
This is how a lot of transit cards work, unfortunately.
Most of those (used to) work offline too, as long as there was money on the card. Not something an online payment system or app needs to deal with.
if i recall, in singapore, the transit card costs are refundable.
I think that's the only place i've seen it refundable.
London oyster cards also offer a refund of your pay as you go balance.
This is called a float business in finance. Starbucks has more than a billion dollars in unredeemed balances, and they make ~$200 million per year in interest with this cash. They're basically a bank with a coffee shop side hustle.
How are they getting 20% on a deposit that presumably could be called up at any time, and how can I get in on it when the stupid "High Yield" accounts I can find top out at around 4%?
large businesses have large cash borrowing needs. if they borrow for free from their customers, it reduces the other borrowing they would need to do, so the rate to use is not what interest rate is available to you, but rather how much interest that Starbucks would need to pay for loans that size. Furthermore, whereas dividends are taxed twice (once as profit for the company and again as regular income to the shareholder), interest is a tax deduction to the company (which decreases their taxable profits) and for a percentage of debtholders that interest income is also taxed advantageously.
probably doesn't come up to 20% (unless Starbucks is in junk bond territory) but it's higher than the investment rate of 4% that you're quoting.
They may buy bonds or something like that.
For a 20% return in a year?
The numbers given have to be incorrect.
probably 2%, not 20%.
Yielding a yearly 20%?
A quick Google suggests in 2016 it was $1.17B, and earned $21M, or 1.79%.
I mean I’d love to have a free $21M a year, but if you’re already Starbucks then somehow it feels like pocket change compared to your actual earnings and would question if it was worth the effort.
But they also have over a billion cash at hand. I imagine at that scale and customers being private, the amount is pretty stable and Starbucks can just do whatever with this since it's extremely unlikely that customers demand all their money back at once.
Sorry, can they (customers) demand it back?
I mean, once Starbucks have it, then the customers get it back via product (that has a margin included), or just leave it forever (free money!)
I have a firm "No vouchers" rule because of this, the vouchers in my part of the world inexplicably "expire" if not used within a certain amount of time, cannot be redeemed for cash, and will not be honoured if the business goes belly up
According the laws here they have to. Doesn't mean they won't make it difficult. And it needs to be in a separate account and business (to avoid it being drawn into a bankruptcy). Not that this has ever stopped businesses from abusing it anyway. I doubt this voucher option is available in the Dutch app because of this but I didn't bother to check.
That was actually a bad year, as that "free" $21 million represented a loss of about $30 million. $1.17 billion on Jan 1st 2016 is equivalent to $1.22 billion a year later due to inflation. So they would have had to generate $50 million just to break even in actual buying power terms.
If they're intentionally causing the customer to have an unspendable balance, knowing that it's making them $200m/yr, how is that not fraud (or some kind of crime)? I'd expect atleast CA would do something about it.
Customers agree to this when they accept the terms of the app. This is also how a debit or savings account at any bank works. Both businesses have sophisticated models to determine how and when customers are likely to make withdrawals, and based on these models they lend out the money based on acceptable risk criteria.
Even if it is in the T&Cs, this one feels like it wouldn’t actually hold up?
Expecting people to read those for most simple sign ups is already a high baseline, and Starbucks is not technically a banks and offers no consumer protections (FSCS or other), so that feels knowingly misleading, even if the total balances held are small per customer.
IANAL, of course.
That is wild
I've been trapped for 15 years!
Einstein's Bagels does this asinine shit, too, like I want to bank with a fucking mediocre bagel joint.
This reminds me of a gag voting simulation website from the early 2000s when BushJr was running for president against Al Gore. The (maybe flash?) game simulated voting, but when you tried to click, the buttons would “run away” from the cursor, or change size to avoid being clicked… dark patterns… always fun to “play against”.
More recently though, I must say, YouTube has really jumped the shark in terms of perfecting their dark patterns/algo stickiness. I can’t even go to the site without immediately forgetting my original intent.
I have a feeling that this HN submission is rather some test run which dark patterns work well on technically affine users. :-)
Having the knowledge which dark patterns even work well for technically affine users while still being "socially acceptable" can be worth a lot of money to specific companies.
Are you using "affine" to mean "for which one has an affinity"? I have never heard that nor can I see that as a wide-spread definition. Just curious!
Maybe non native speaker, here in germany we often say "technisch affin" which means proficient with technology
I think that poster is saying that here on HN posters typically preserve points, lines and parallelism. Rude, quite honestly.
I was wondering. Maybe "refined", as a derivative of the verb?
In fact, odds on someone who was complicit in developing many of the dark patterns that have run billions of dollars from consumers is reading this from their phone, thinking they should go to bed so they can wake up to the acai bowl, cold plunge, and early retirement to hobbies in seattle.
Exactly. We're doing this to ourselves. These horrible patterns are an HN reader's JIRA ticket next week, and they're going to happily implement them.
Are you actually complicit in this or do you really feel such a part of the "tech community" that you truly consider it as a "we"?
If the former, stop doing it right now and atone.
If the latter, I don't think that's healthy, you have nothing to do with it unless you're at a FAANG or something.
jfc new 'orthogonal' just dropped
I like how at the end the author tries to get you to give him a tip with the buy me a coffee link
I once went to go pick up takeout and they covered the no tip button with a sticker. I was so confused so I put in 10 cents because I could find the button at first. I stopped going to the place since.
Buy me a coffee? Jokes on you I just practiced avoiding this.
"But me a coffee" should instantly loose the game forever.
I chortled when I choked an input and accidentally clicked that
I help a blind friend order his groceries online from Walmart once a month. He's disabled and on food stamps (EBT/Link). The groceries are all taken care of, but the site always requests a $30 tip for the driver.
I drop it down a bit and pay it on my credit card for him, but what's the right way to deal with this situation?
A 30$ tip? Does this company not give their drivers a wage, or something?
Walmart InHome is $40/year and no tips.
Wow, that's not bad.
"Walmart InHome is a premium service that delivers groceries and essentials directly into a customer's home (fridge/kitchen) or garage, using trained, vetted Walmart associates. As an add-on to Walmart+, it costs an additional $40/year (or $7/month) to provide unlimited, tip-free, and free-delivery-fee service."
Can even do it when you aren't home.
Man $30 can still buy a lot of food at Aldi
is there a name for the phenomenon where a user immediately assumes the smallest and lowest contrast button on an interface is the option they want, before actually reading any of the words?
Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. [Matthew 7:13-14]I'm not aware of a specific term, another than just conditioning, but I am reminded of "banner blindness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
(I was definitely expecting a level to swap the contrast eventually as a trick.)
Being conditioned.
Got to round 8 - was too slow with the notifications popping up!
How many of these are real dark patterns? The "new entry suddenly prepended to the list" one I have seen before.
Nice! I’ve started only tipping on fridays for coffee, etc. I’m a great tipper at restaurants But being hit up for a $5 tip for a $4 drink is way wrong. I’d tip you, but today is Thursday!
I tip great at sit-down restaurants. I don't tip at fast food places, or carry-outs where they don't actually provide and service, or at the oil change place.
Summary: if I didn't tip in a situation 10 years ago, I'm not going to start now.
I tip my barista and budtender a dollar every visit, personally. I love those people though. Restaurants get 20% unless they fuck up, then it's 15%, unless it was absolutely egregious.
That's it. I cut my own hair.
IMO restaurant tips (and other service businesses) are 15% by default, 20% if they do well, 10% if they do poorly. If they do especially poorly (like, completely ignoring the table for an hour while chatting with coworkers off to the side), they get $.02. If they do especially well, more than 20% (I've gone as high as 50% once).
Have you taken into account that tips are no longer taxed and adjusted these arbitrary percentages?
I also cut my own hair, but sometimes I’m lazy and just hit up the Barber shop.
She charges me $15! I tip +$25 and it’s still a cheap haircut.
My haircut has to be one of the simplest around, but 9 out of 10 stylists will leave me fixing it myself later. Once I paid $50+tip for the same cut at a swanky joint and STILL went home and fixed it. She doesn’t know what she’s worth.
My barber earns his fat tip taming my unruly cowlicks. Barista and bartender? Definitely. Cashier at a convenience store? Oh hell no.
My barber earns his fat tip by being my therapist.
I get it. That's worth the compensation.
My current strategy for how much total I'll pay for a coffee is FlOOR(price+.50) + 1, which keeps the bill nice and clean and kicks some goodwill towards someone who makes less than 1/5th the average earnings of my coworkers.
I'm going to charge you $1.50, then.
I make my own coffee. It's not hard.
Sometimes I want coffee before I make my coffee
The "buy me a coffee" button at the end is :chefskiss:
I had food delivered the other day and the suggested tip included tax and the delivery fee in it's calculation.
Great game. I squirmed at typing "no tips" the first time but second time was fine. I'm going to practice this a lot more to tonne down some (frequently abused) empathy
Made by https://vladimirj.dev/
I was gonna tip the developer but it feels like losing now
Intentionally and knowingly tipping is winning, no?
Unless we start arguing that gratitude is a dark pattern.
I'm one of those cowards that always succumbs to the pressure and ends up tipping, but it bothers me enough that I just won't buy anything if I know I'm going to get asked. This is good training.
I've started using cash more again to avoid the question.
It is fun to look them in the eye as you decline the tip.
Actually doesn't make for a bad reaction time and processing game since you need to think fast and avoid distractions.
Mobile offers a speed boost for taps but heavy nerf to text entry tasks.
On a separate but vaguely related note: if somebody comps all or part of your bill at a restaurant or bar then you should split the difference on the tip.
As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls and some Yuzu duck fat-washed 50-year-old whiskey highballs. The final bill is $100 (I'll use round-ish numbers for this example). The bartender comps you 30% because you all are cool and discuss your shared experience bartending or jetskiing or whatever. Ordinarily your tip would have been 20% for a total of $120. In this case your bill is now $70 plus your newly selected gratuity. Take the difference between the original bill with tip and your current bill without tip and divide it in two. This is the floor for your new tip, in this case (120-70)/2 = $25. This is indeed something like a 35% gratuity but they hooked you up and made that custom drink for your charming new beau. As a matter of fact you should round up from this number because they have side work to do and you make pretty decent money as a software engineer/LLM tickler/product sorcerer. Just make it $30 for a nice round hundo.
If you're friends with the manager and they comp your dinner to do you a solid and impress your date then you should tip 50% of what the bill would have been minimum. This is why you should keep cash in your pocket - shake the waiter's hand on your way out and palm it to them. If that's not possible then go to use the restroom and talk to them on your way back so they can run your card through the POS on a blank check to give them said tip.
This is how you do things with class. This is what I wish somebody had explained to me when I was 20 and kinda broke (i.e. eager to save money that I would have spent anyway) before I embarrassed myself by failing to do such. If you are similarly unaware then now you know too :-)
As an addendum this also applies to coffee and pizza places but the numbers become coarser. Buying them the equivalent of a beer at your local dive ($3ish) is customary.
The way to do it with class would be the manager asks the price of the service, and pays the servers and tenders their due fair wage. The moment you bring money to a bunch of "ifs" surrounding a social interaction, you lost all class. Thinking of tips at all is actively detrimental to what you're trying to accomplish.
I guess I’m still similarly unaware, because nothing about palming people money on the way out like a magician or doing the restroom trick feels classy over everyone just being super upfront about the bill and tips.
I've only been given 1 free meal (by the manager). I just gave the entire difference as my tip. I was already going to spend the money, so why not make a random waiter happy.
I'm really not trying to hate, I think you method is great and I love that you have rationalized it, but as someone whose mostly find this kind of social interactions natural, there's something "funny" about finding the algorithm for it. I never did the math and always naturally landed more or less there.
I've never been comped at any restaurant or bar.
I always thought that was a casino thing (to keep you drinking so that you gamble more) but I've never been to a casino. I live in Canada though, so we might have laws against that sort of thing.
Have you tried being really, really, ridiculously good looking?
Ahhh, I see. So the GP's whole spiel was just a humblebrag.
you don't have to be good looking. you just have to go to the same place frequently, and be friendly.
You don’t have to be, but it helps not to be bad looking.
I guess you missed the part where I talked about being friendly (or friends) with the waitstaff. Nice to know that you think I'm good looking though!
I recently had an entire meal at Chili’s comped by the manager, because I waited an hour for food. I guess their system flagged it, or they just noticed, because I didn’t complain. I was hanging with my grandson.
I tipped on the full amount but we had to get the manager again to figure out how. I was going to Venmo her but the manager just sent the $0.00 bill to the table.
if you had to wait an hour for the food, what was the tip for exactly?
Perhaps codazoda asked to delay an hour as an excuse to stay longer, so they did well with their part of the plan?
Just pointing out that in your example, the waiter gives themselves a $30 bonus by giving you the option not to pay a tip.
Yeah, this is too much nonsense for me.
If a waiter is comping something in exchange for a higher tip, that's not generosity or goodwill at all, it's a dishonest scam.
I will tip what I want to tip (often 0) without remorse and move on with my life.
Unfortunately this cancerous American system leeched into Canada, but we can still stop it, one $0 tip at a time.
I think the procedure is being misinterpreted. This isn't a scam, it's just a common social convention. It's not a scam by the waiter because they have a limited amount they can do this for and they have just chosen to do it for you.
feels like this post was written by a robot trying to act like a cool dude
... So pay your server for ripping off their employer?
Is this how comping actually works? I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I assumed there was some system for it (if sometimes ill-defined) and not just employees stealing.
The receipt printer in the kitchen is tied to the POS. Anything rung in for prep is saved in the computer. The manager can run reports and see who comped what and if anything has been voided. This has been a thing since the 90s.
Creating a good guest experience is how you get repeat business. Comps are part of that. You are talking about theft and I mentioned nothing of the sort. If you choose to engage in such behavior then that's your business - don't accuse me of it.
Neat game! Is this called monetary abuse?
It should be illegal to solicit tips when asking for payment.
Are any of these illegal in the US or Canada?
The one where the options move when you hover over them feels like it should be but might not actually be.
Somebody had to invent it, and a lawmaker had to become aware of it, before a law could address it.
Made me want to sing that classic song from the animated movie "sausage party"
"Just the tip"
Now do one where you have to withdraw your card from the machine before it starts beeping obnoxiously at you but the screen keeps trying to trick you into withdrawing too early.
I tried to tip OP 0$, but that wasn't possible.
"Hold to skip tip" was devilish.
fun idea but a bit repetitive and boring.
I've considered going back to cash just to avoid these. The social convention used to be the seller writes a price and if the buyer can meet that price the deal is done. These abusive card machines have brought "tipping culture" to the UK and I hate it.
This was cool, but I got to one where it would load after every button you click. That's fine, but then I "lost" because it simply wouldn't load a winnable option in time it seems. Maybe I was moving too fast and missed the real button, but I still didn't tip in the end, so eh.
There is a small "skip tip" link below the button
The darkest patterns are fees that don’t exist . Like 300% tax fees and nightly parking when parking is free
I enjoyed the restaurant names
I hate every bit of this. Well done!
Superb!
"buy me a coffee"
> Every checkout screen has become a guilt machine.
Is bill-paying UI also a guilt machine? If you don't pay, you feel guilty! How about holding the door for elderly people? Going to your kid's event? Not running people over in the crosswalk? Saying please and thank you? Buying birthday presents? It's all so unfair - to me!
lol, it got me to do 5% more on the first try.. i lost.
souls-like
Why tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can serve food, I can drive a taxi, I can and do cut my own hair. I did, however, tip my urologist.
You definitely get the spit-coffee at the diner.
A guy with short hair should not have to pay more than $20 for a basic haircut, inclusive of tip. If you can't find someone that does it for less than that in your area, invest about $100 in professional grade clippers and cut your own hair. It's easier than it sounds and you will get better at it over time.
Learn to make your own coffee. You shouldn't have to pay more than a couple of bucks for coffee with perhaps some milk in it. An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves.
While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas or YT ad-free with uBlock.
The above "tips" will save your thousands of dollars each year, and most likely also save you time. There are also things like DIY car maintenance that can be fun to learn and save you a lot of money, but you need space (a house) and some tools to get started.
> An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves.
Or a pour over filter (like Kalita Wave or Hario V60) plus a grinder. That's a cheaper setup to start, and an easy way to get a big mug of great coffee.
> While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas
Setting up jellyfin+plex (some devices support one but not the other) and most of the arr suite (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, tunarr) has really been the best choice I've made this year. I have every TV show or movie I ever want to watch, all my favorites, all the classics. And all in one place. And I made sure to keep it local-first so I still have access at home if we lose internet. Started sharing with family and friends and I get a few requests a week to add content, so its being used.
Just removing the "what streaming service is this show on that im watching?" has been a nice improvement.