OT: Tipping contractor for driveway refurbishment?

[cbelt3]

Usually the kids that do the work get beer or other beverage as appropriate. I once got a good 20+ feet of asphalt driveway paved for a bottle of slivovitz, a case of Bud, and $20 cash a head. The road crew had asphalt 'left over' from doing the street in front of the house.

[M A V I C]

[quote AlphaDog]Q: Who should I tip? And how much?
A: As a basic rule of thumb, you should tip anyone who provides you a service, unless the person is the owner of the business.
I somewhat disagree with that. First, "service" needs to be better defined. Something like this: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-906...e-industry

So in this case, construction, no tip would be applicable.

But I disagree on the "unless the person is the owner of the business." If I go to a small, family owned, restaurant and am waited on by a family member I really don't think that should have any impact on if I tip them or not.

[AlphaDog]

[quote M A V I C][quote AlphaDog]Q: Who should I tip? And how much?
A: As a basic rule of thumb, you should tip anyone who provides you a service, unless the person is the owner of the business.
I somewhat disagree with that. First, "service" needs to be better defined. Something like this: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-906...e-industry

So in this case, construction, no tip would be applicable.

But I disagree on the "unless the person is the owner of the business." If I go to a small, family owned, restaurant and am waited on by a family member I really don't think that should have any impact on if I tip them or not.
Correct, and I tip my hairdresser; however it also says "as a basic rule of thumb." Ergo, it still becomes a personal decision. Personally, I will choose to continue to tip my hairdresser, purely for personal reasons, but feel absolutely no obligation to tip a contractor who bids on a job and completes that job.

[Black Landlord]

Absolutely not.

[olnacl]

I had an A/C service guy here yesterday and tipped him an extra $10 on a $69 bill. (Now that I think of it, I should have given him more) He added a PVC trap on the condensate discharge line at no charge after we spent 15 minutes looking for the end, only to find it far from where we expected and almost burried in detritus from roof and foliage. I've use the same company for the past 8 years and the owner performs the service about half the time. I don't tip him.
I think I'd concur about not tipping the company owner in your case unless he went above and beyond the contracted work. If he had helpers, I'd tip them and a way around might be to hand the owner some cash and say it's for the crew. That way, it's on his conscience to relay it to them and off yours.

[Black Landlord]

To elaborate-- when I have someone on the line who does good work and consistently undercharges, if they tell me 60 they get 75, if they tell me 75 they get 100, they tell me 250 they get 350, etc.

When I do business with a "professional" contractor, and the price changes in any way through the course of the job, especially for reasons that someone charging those sort of rates should have the expertise to anticipate, they've made their bed. In this case he wants to pass his equipment failure on to you? He wants you to pay more because the job took longer? No frikkin' way. You're not doing him any favors by feeding into his inability to grasp the concept of being true to your word.