How Much Should You Tip Postmates? All You Need to Understand About Postmates Tips

Technology has made our lives so much more convenient and hassle-free. You can take advantage of food delivery services now and order all sorts of products and other stuff from the convenience and comfort of your home.

In addition, when an excellent food delivery service like Postmates is available, you can get local deliveries of everything from groceries and alcohol to restaurant-prepared meals and other goods delivered straight to your doorstep.

However, when you order from Postmates, it is essential to trip the drivers if and whenever you can, just like you do at cafes and restaurants. On average, you must leave at least a 15% tip for your Postmates driver, which is the standard amount for most service-based workers. The Postmates application automatically recommends and calculates the amount for a 20% tip, although you can change it. 

How Much Should You Tip Postmates

Regarding food delivery services, determining a tip amount or even understanding how to include a tip in the order can be pretty tricky. Postmates recommends a tip of 10-20% of the total price charged

Since tips account for a sizable portion of the income of several delivery drivers, it’s only justifiable to tip them for their excellent services and smooth operations. However, know that there’s no universal tip amount.

How much you should tip Postmates is something that entirely varies from customer to customer. The Postmates application allows you to set your own tip or choose from a default tip amount for the drivers.

If you opt for the default trip, the minimum amount you can give as a tip is 10%. Still, it is always recommended to provide at least a 15% tip to the delivery drivers when your food or other goods are delivered via Postmates. This is the standard amount that the majority of service-based workers use.

Having said that, the Postmates application proposes and estimates the amount itself for a 20% tip. You can change this manually, or else it will be applied by default if you don’t change it. This is the ideal tip amount for Postmates drivers whenever possible. 

Postmates Tipping Étiquettes

Tipping is primarily just a voluntary gesture of saying thanks to the service provider for their services. Giving tips is considered a form of smooth gesture, even though it is not compulsory. In the United States of America, the tradition of giving tips is deeply embedded and is now a social expectation for the majority. 

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However, as it is basic etiquette, you must always leave a tip for the delivery guy. This reflects a sense of respect for a particular profession. It goes on to say that anyone who provides some sort of service deserves a tip. This includes delivery persons, waiters, bartenders, drivers, etc.

A 20% tip is the automatic amount added in the application, as delivery drivers tend to be paid at low hourly rates. As a result, they mainly depend on these tips to make the most money from driving and delivering.

If there are no additional tips on each delivery, the amount of money they make in an hour is insufficient and is practically an unsustainable and unlivable hourly wage.

Thus, Postmates drives more significant tip amounts from customers and suggests increasing the tip to 20% or higher, mainly when their Postmates driver provides them outstanding service. Here are a few scenarios that require giving a 20% tip to the drivers:

  1. If the courier is quite friendly
  2. If you had a substantial order
  3. If the driver drove and delivered the order in poor road conditions or heavy rain.

Most people will be tempted to leave zero tips when they encounter a delivery person who does not offer good service. Still, Postmates recommends leaving a minimum of 10% tip in most scenarios and nothing less unless the courier behaves inappropriately or rudely towards you.  

How to Tip on Postmates

There are 3 different options for customers to give tips to Postmates drivers.

1.  Cash

The first and foremost step of using the Postmates service is establishing a payment method. If you are a user of the Postmates application, you must be aware that all the transactions are fully computerized. Hence, there’s no need to have the cash to place orders with Postmates.

Just like the other food delivery service companies like Lyft Rider, DoorDash, and Uber Eats, customers of Postmates can simply pay digitally via the app that provides you the convenience and flexibility to pay with Apple Pay or credit/debit cards for your orders.

The Postmates application is entirely cashless, but customers can tip the drivers in cash form. While you aren’t allowed to make cash payments for your Postmates order, feel free to leave behind a tip in cash for the delivery person. From the drivers’ point of view, cash is generally preferred over digital tips.

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2.  Give Tips via Postmates App When You Receive the Order.

Giving tips via the application upon receiving your orders is the easiest and most common option. Postmates customers generally prefer to leave a tip for the drivers at the delivery time. In this scenario, you can simply tip the Postmates drivers via the Postmates app at the delivery time. 

3.  Give Tips via Postmates App When You Place an Order Next Time.

The 3rd option is, in fact, a retroactive Postmates tip which encourages customers to give a tip if they haven’t already. The Postmates app will enable the customers to include a tip amount to their Postmates order retroactively.

Suppose you did not tip the driver when placing the order. In that case, you’ll receive a pop-up notification with all the available tipping options for your previous order upon opening the Postmates app.

This is a crucial point to know, as customers cannot place any more new orders unless they take some kind of action on tipping their Postmates driver or choose not to give a tip via the application.

How Does Postmates Tip Work In Practice?

It is quite easy to leave a tip on Postmates. For instance, you can include a tip if you wish to, and you won’t even require a calculator. The tip calculator helps you understand how much you must tip the delivery drivers by simply choosing a tip percentage.

After that, the Postmates app will automatically calculate your tip amount.

Customers can choose from four default tipping amounts, and they are: 

  • 10%
  • 15%
  • 20%
  • Set a custom tip

You just need to choose the predetermined amount for your tip or opt for a custom tip if you prefer to leave a different tip amount for the driver. The delivery tip will always be a specific percentage (the one you choose) for your order.

So, for instance, if your total order was for around $50 and you pick a 15% tip from the Postmates app, $7.5 will be the driver’s tip. Moreover, if there is any problem with your order, you can always report it instead of tipping it.  

What Happens if You Do not Tip on Postmates?

Postmates has thought through a specific process to encourage a more significant number of customers to leave behind tips for their drivers.

Rest assured, no one will ever be coerced to leave a tip behind for the drivers. Moreover, nothing on the service or app will change at the customers’ end if they don’t give tips to the Postmates drivers.

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As mentioned before, Postmates automatically includes a 20% tip on customer orders. If they wish to remove or change the amount, this must be taken off manually.

However, Postmates has a couple of other methods to encourage its customers to tip their drivers.

Firstly, if any customer’s order is completed without leaving a tip, Postmates will send them a notification asking if they would like to leave a tip for the driver.

This usually serves as an effective method. It acts as a second reminder for the customer that even though tipping is not mandatory, the Postmates service strongly encourages its customers to leave a tip for the drivers.

If you choose to ignore the notification and simply dismiss the alert or don’t add any tip, you’ll see that you won’t be able to place your next order. In reality, Postmates isn’t doing this to stop you from ordering again. Instead, it only requires you to react in some way to the notification.

After this, Postmates believes in giving customers every opportunity to provide tips to their workers before they move on to the following order.

This is an excellent initiative on the company’s behalf as it is actively working to bring in an additional means of income for its drivers and get more significant tip rates. 

Conclusion:

Even though it is not required, Postmates encourages customers to tip drivers to ensure they work as hard as possible and provide the best delivery service

To many people, the idea of leaving tips on delivery apps can be quite unsettling, especially when you are not sure if the money is going to the delivery person who dropped off your order or to the delivery service.

Fortunately, with Postmates, 100% of the tip amount goes directly to the delivery person. This way, drivers can leverage a decent hourly wage if they receive a 15-20% tip on every order.

Hence, you can rest assured that Postmates is not keeping a specific percentage of the tip for themselves, and the delivery drivers are getting the entire tip amount.

This is also an excellent way to encourage more customers to leave a tip while also promoting quick deliveries from drivers to get larger tips.