Jew Make the Call: Double Tipping Edition
This was not my situation, but it came from a longtime friend, who just came back from an expensive vacation. I removed the location where he traveled because I don't know if he wants me revealing that (as you can figure out the exact place easily if I don't remove that):
Quote:
Hey Todd,
Had a really infuriating situation on our vacation to ***** earlier this month, and I wanted to see what you think. I definitely thought of you when it was all going down!
Not sure if you are familiar with the *****, but it is a super luxury resort, and my wife had always wanted to go there. As an anniversary present, I booked 6 nights there, at about $1000 per night! The one good thing is the $1000 covers everything, including food and activities. The only thing it doesn't cover is tips. They asked for $150 extra per night for tips for the staff, which I thought was crazy, but there were a ton of people working there and they were very attentive. That wasn't my problem though. I knew that when I booked it. They forbade the staff from taking extra tips, saying that they wanted everyone to get equal service. I was cool with that too, especially at $150 per night of tips!
The problem happened when they sent everyone on an excursion to *****, and it was conducted by a separate company that they contract with. We left the property and stayed 2 nights at this other place, where again everything was included. So during the orientation at this other place, I am totally floored when they say, "Keep in mind the staff here mainly supports itself on tips, so please take care of them if they make your experience here memorable."
I thought maybe I wasn't charged the $150 back at the first place, but I checked into it and yes, I was still paying $150 there and this new place was asking for tips on top of that! Right at that moment I thought "What would Todd do?" and that's when I went to the manager & demanded they either get my $300 in tips from the other place and use that as my tips, or get my $300 back for me, and I would tip here myself! The manager was a real bitch and said something like "With all the money you are spending on this program, I am surprised these tips are your concern." At that point I blew up at her and threatened to go to all the other guests and get them pissed about this as well, and she suddenly got a lot nicer and asked what she could do for me. After continued arguing they finally relented and talked the first place into refunding my $300 in tips for those 2 nights, so I could tip what I wanted here.
Just to let you know, you can stay there without this outside program and the tip is still $150/day, so it's not like they are averaging out the cost of when you are there and not there, or anything.
Surprised this never came up before but most of the other people here looked totally loaded and prob didnt give a shit or even think about this. Was I right here or was I totally out of line?
My response:
Quote:
You were 100% right.
Do you tip restaurant servers on days you don't eat there?
Do you tip valets on days you take the subway downtown instead of driving?
Obviously not, so you shouldn't tip people when you're not around to receive service from them.
If you voluntarily left the property yourself, I could see them still expecting the tips, but since you were forced to leave for this program, which was supposed to be provided by them, any "tips" you paid should be forwarded to whichever third party company they send you to.
Do you guys agree?
