I ran into this dilemma today. Had my car ceramic coated for $1100, which seems cheap when I hear how much a lot of you are paying, but still more than I had planned on spending (already dropped over $1k on front end ppf). When I went to pay, the owner ran my credit card, and then turned the screen to me and it had one of those tipping pages, where you can click a preset percentage, enter another amount, or at the bottom, click a button for no tip. Talk about awkward. 15-30% seemed ridiculous to me, for something so expensive. I had budgeted $1,000 for this, and had negotiated a package for close to that amount, and hadn’t anticipated needing to pay another $100+ for a tip. So I entered $50, feeling like a complete cheapskate.
Got my car home, and under artificial lighting, still see a lot of the swirl marks and clear coat scratches it had before, so I don’t feel so bad about under tipping, but at the same time, am hesitant to take the car back and demand perfection, knowing I kind of stiffed him.
I hate this whole business of tipping. Japan has it right.
