[jasode]

>Tipping is an awful and awkward practice that shouldn't ever be encouraged.

It seems like there's an easy free-market solution to this.

Since Uber was on the losing side of eliminating tips from a policy standpoint, just let customers en masse accomplish the same goal: Simply add another field to the screen explicitly showing if the driver expects tips or not.

Some example screenshots from Uber showing a driver profile to modify:

http://therivardreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/uber_s...

http://cdn.moneycrashers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/uber...

  * Add a column stating "Tips: Yes/No"
  * Add a filter option of "Tips=No" for customers to eliminate drivers who want gratuity
  * Rank/bias the list of available drivers such that "Tips=No" are shown first

This concept would be similar to filtering ebay sellers that offer free shipping (aka built into the final selling price) or expect extra shipping charges. Another point of seller differentiation is allowing "returns/refunds" or "all sales final." Instead of ebay dictating a rigid policy, the ebay bidders can use filters to avoid sellers with undesirable attributes.

The Uber drivers would learn very quickly whether "expecting tips" is a smart business strategy to maximize income.

For curiosity's sake, I went to Lyft to see their policy on tipping: https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/213583978-How-to-Tip...

Since Lyft seems to encourage tipping, I'm guessing this is one of the reasons why many consider their platform more "driver friendly." It would be interesting to see what % of passengers tip Lyft drivers. That might be predictive of how Uber passengers would choose the "tipping=No" drivers.

[simonswords82]

This approach encourages tipping which is exactly what the OP isn't in favour of.

IMO all jobs, cab driving included, should be paid well enough that tipping simply isn't necessary. Companies shouldn't encourage tipping (which is often also tax dodging) just because they don't want to pay their employees enough that tipping isn't required to sustain them.

Having said that, while tipping shouldn't be encouraged if somebody does go above and beyond the call of duty for me I'm going to find a way to reward them. That might be a simple "Thank you so much, that was really nice of you" up to and including paying extra if I can afford to do so and feel it's warranted.

[jasode]

>This approach encourages tipping which is exactly what the OP isn't in favour of.

Yes, I understand that OP and you don't favor tipping but we're already past that point. (The lawsuit was already settled and Uber lost the battle about tipping.)

In other words, we can have 2 types of discussions about this:

#1) a hypothetical clean slate where Uber didn't exist and a lawsuit was not settled. Therefore, we can discuss social idealization of not tipping, etc.

or

#2) the settled lawsuit is a reality and tipping (in some form -- but still possibly optional) is a fait accompli. In light of that, we discuss business responses in terms of practicality, customer filters, UX/UI complexity, etc.

My post was talking about #2.

If the OP's scope of "shouldn't ever be encouraged" includes a total revamp of Uber to remove all text throughout the website and internal documents referring to "tipping", I suppose that may be possible but I don't know how realistic it is. To me, it's just relabeling money that was classified as "tips" as "service fee" or even not label it at all. Money is fungible so there are many ways to game it.

Lastly, I couldn't tell if your assertion of "this approach encourages tipping" meant that it would lead to isolated decisions of tipping or universal tipping. If you meant isolated tipping -- then yes, that would be obvious. However, if "encourage tipping" meant the entire economic ecosystem of Uber drivers converges towards tipping, that's not so obvious to me. Since Lyft has a tipping option, has social pressure caused 99% to 100% of Lyft passengers to always add a tip? (I'm not privy to Lyft's statistics so I don't know the answer to that.)

[IanCal]

This all sounds very complicated. A driver has to say they expect maybe some extra money, which then users can filter on with some vague cultural acceptance of the amount to add...

Isn't the simplest "free market" solution to allow drivers to set their own prices? Just give me a price, not a price + "and then maybe some more".