Frontier trying to extort 'gratuities'
 

Flying Denver to Reagan yesterday (after a great time at Telluride Bluegrass Festival) I bought a couple of beers. Gave my credit card to the stewardess, who inserted it in an iPad-like device and gave to me to authorise and sign.

All fine, all normal.

Until I saw that, as in bars, restaurants and taxis, it prompted me to leave a 'gratuity' and prompted various percentages! What? That wasn't the case on the outbound flight a week earlier.

Tipping is a scourge in the US, unlike anything anywhere else in the world. The notion that you have to help pay the waitress's wages because the employer won't is disgraceful. Nonetheless, I tip because it's part of the deal. And I genuinely do not want a waitress to be evicted. But part of the premise is that it applies to minimum (or sub-minimum) wage employees.

Stewardesses are not minimum wage employees. Serving drinks is part of their job, alongside ensuring a safe trip. The idea that I should tip them is anæthema to me. I've mentioned it to a few stewardesses I know (none in the USA). They all thought it extremely tacky, and would be severely embarrassed by it.

Needless to say, I did not tip on the flight.

Agreed that corporate is definitely trying to extort tips with the new payment software, but I actually have to say the flight attendants do a good job of not making it uncomfortable not to tip them and clearly the crews themselves aren't exploiting it.

Every time I've flown them with the new option to tip the flight attendant hands me the device to sign and simply says "select an option" while they walk back to the cart or turn away to help another customer, and like you, I don't click the tip. I think they do a pretty good job of not pressing you to tip whatsoever

I've always found the crews on F9 to be quite friendly, it's the customer service on the ground that's the problem.

The ground side is all outsourced.

Stewardesses? :confused:

Ensuring passenger safety is the primary duty of Cabin Crew... along with serving drinks.

I would not be surprised if Franke has cut employee pay to the point where they do need tips to make a living. Those low fares got to come from somewhere. Check to see if the pilots put a tip jar outside the flight deck. Just another symptom of the race to the bottom.

There hasn't been a "stewardess" for 40 years !

Discussing a former "stewardess" who wore her old Pan Am Uniform to a party complete with hat, bag and shoes. I was roundly attacked by one of my friends who is a "Flight Attendant" until I explained (several times) the proper term for that period was "Stewardess", she finally got it. Those uniforms were beautifully made.

Really? So the stewardesses on this flight were stewards in drag? Boy, was I fooled.

:confused: Airlines don't have "stewardesses" on their payroll and haven't for decades. You can call anybody any job title you'd like, but most people appreciate having their job title be told correctly. Especially when the wrong title can be seen as derogatory.

Also it sounds like they are just using off the shelf software, not trying to extort gratuities. It's possible that it just ignores whatever you put into the tip field anyway, and charges for only the base price.

Is there any assurance the tip will actually go to the flight attendant?

No more so than in a restaurant or bar on the ground.

For restaurants and bars there is a federal labor law that requires companies that take advantage of the reduced minimum wage to pay the servers the tips.

That law applies to all companies, including those in California and other states that do not have a reduced minimum wage for tipped employees.

Restaurants usually have a system set up to track tips and add them on to each employee's paycheck at the end of the pay period. I doubt Frontier has anything like that.

Where is the extortion? Just select "0%" as you should and on your merry way.

Many/most restaurants & bars deduct the CC fee processing from tips as well as other "processing fees". I worked weekends at a large bar as a bartender up until a few years ago and I got about $0.90 on the dollar for credit card tips. The tips were also subject to reversal in the event of a chargeback. My biggest tip ever was pulled back several months later when the ......... kid disputed the charge.

If you are tipping, do so in cash even if paying the bill by credit card.

My understanding is that employers may deduct the actual credit card processing fee from your tip, but that certainly shouldn't be 10%. This would certainly be illegal in many states, if not all.

I don't typically tip in cash, because it can facilitate both tip pool fraud and tax fraud.