93 Ridiculous Tipping Stories That Left Customers Absolutely Fuming (New Pics)

It seems like back in the day, we used to tip people for exceptional service and a pleasing attitude. Nowadays, businesses expect us to tip self-service checkouts and iPads when no fellow humans are in sight. Experts notice that consumers are becoming especially frustrated with digital tipping solutions.

According to a 2025 Bankrate survey, 38% of American consumers report annoyance with pre-entered tip screens. Industry insiders worry that iPads are driving people away from tipping in general. Indeed, 27% of respondents in the Bankrate survey said they don't tip at all or tip less when the cashier presents them with the iPad.

The idea behind digital tip screens was to make tipping easier, and in this day and age, that means eliminating the need for cash. Some people don't carry around cash with them at all nowadays. Brits aged 18-24, for example, make 72% of their payments with their digital wallets. In the U.S., cash payments made about 16-18% of in-person consumer transactions in 2025.

Therefore, digital tip screens had to make the tipping experience more seamless for consumers and ensure service workers received their tips, even in the age of digital wallets. But it doesn't make the consumer always happy: in many cases, people feel ripped off because they can't always freely choose the tip amount or have to cover the tax portion of the tip.

When presented with the tipping iPad, many consumers may succumb to the cognitive bias of choosing the first tipping option that is available. In some cases, businesses present the 20% tip option or higher as the first one because the "anchoring effect" makes us go for the first option we're presented with. The option to skip the tip is most often presented last.

Research shows that sometimes people tip more on a digital tip screen precisely for this reason. According to a 2023 Forbes Advisor survey, 11% of American consumers leave a larger tip when they pay digitally rather than in cash. On average, people leave a 16% tip, so businesses offering 20% as the default tipping sum seems a bit like cheating. If there were a tip jar instead of an iPad, people would most likely leave less than 20%.

It's a clever psychological trick: we're inclined to choose the first option we see, and, over time, we might even become conditioned to think of 20% as the default tipping sum.

Dipayan Biswas, a professor of marketing at the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida, likened the phenomenon to extra airline charges when he talked to the BBC. "If you change something, it becomes the norm. A decade ago, airlines didn't charge for baggage. The public doesn't like it, but now they are used to it."

Some businesses may also cheat their customers out of a few dollars by using digital tip screens. The suggested tip amount they give may be based on the total bill amount, not the pre-tax amount, as is standard.

Recently, Dave & Buster's was accused of inflating their tips this way after a customer noticed that the amounts on the digital and paper receipts differed. Restaurants typically calculate their tips based on the bill before tax, but it seems that, with the advent of digital tip screens, this may now be changing.