Tip baiting on Spark: Drivers are still upset about removed & reduced tips

Have you heard of tip baiting on delivery apps? It’s when a customer removes or lowers their tip after a delivery is complete. Unfortunately, it’s a very common experience for Spark delivery drivers. 

Here’s what a typical tip bait looks like when you’re a driver: You accept a delivery that has a $30 payout. You finish the delivery thinking that you did a great job.

But later, you check your earnings and see that the final payout was only $11 because a customer removed a $19 tip. Ouch! That’s a tip bait.

Here’s why customers can tip bait: Walmart customers have 24 hours to adjust their tip after the order is complete. That means they can increase, decrease, or remove your tip.

Tip baiting is an epidemic on Spark. Customers can tip bait on Uber Eats and Instacart too, but Spark drivers seem to suffer from it the most.

“I’ve never seen an app with as much tip baiting as Spark”

Is there anything you can do about tip baiting? Currently, there’s no way to get compensated when a customer lowers your tip.

You can complain to Spark support, but they won’t take any action. For now, your only option is to remember customers who tip bait and reject their orders in the future.

How tipping works on Spark orders

Walmart customers can leave a tip for Spark delivery drivers during or after checkout, and drivers keep 100% of tips. Customers can tip a flat amount or a percentage of the order.

Customers have 24 hours to edit the tip if they choose to tip during checkout. During that 24 hour period, they can increase the tip, remove it, or keep it the same.

Before the 24 hour settlement period has gone by, tips will appear in your earnings as “Unconfirmed tips.” Tips will be labeled “Confirmed tips” after 24 hours pass.

When a customer does not tip before delivery, they have 14 days to add a tip after the delivery.

Spark customers: Your driver can see your tip before they accept a delivery

Before accepting an order, Spark drivers can get a general idea of how much a customer tipped at checkout because the pay estimate for each order includes any tips that customers leave at checkout.

The estimate doesn’t say exactly how much the tip is, but drivers can calculate the general tip amount because base pay from Spark is typically around $6.50–$8.50. Any amount more than the base pay comes from the customer’s tip.

Drivers can also see when a customer raises or lowers a tip after a delivery. The earnings statement for each order displays the expected tip and the actual tip.

Examples of tip baiting on Spark

Let’s start with the worst tip bait that we’ve ever seen on Spark. Below, the driver expected a $100 tip but only received $5. $95 was taken away! That hurts.

Below is another terrible tip bait. The driver expected a total payout of $79.73, but only got $15.81 after the customer lowered the tip from $63.92 to $10.

Below is a more everyday bait: The tip was reduced by about $10, from $17.23 to $8.18. Still hurts!

This one hurts: From $20 to $0.

The bait below—from $16.44 to $2—might have been a customer realizing that they tipped a percentage of the order instead of a flat amount.

Here’s another that might have been a customer realizing that they accidentally tipped a percentage of the order. But even if you didn’t mean to tip $44, lowering it to $0 is not OK. 

Why do customers tip bait?

There are many reasons why customers choose to lower their tip after a delivery:

• Upset about missing items, wrong items, or poor item quality
• Upset about the delivery: Placed in wrong location, came too late or too early
• Upset that other directions weren’t followed
• Tipped to get faster service, then removed it to save money
• The initial tip was a mistake

The frustrating thing about tip baiting is that many customer complaints are out of the delivery driver’s control.

Out-of-stock items, poor-quality items, or slow delivery times aren’t the driver’s fault, but many customers will take it out on their driver by reducing tips.

Is tip baiting ever justified?

Many customers feel justified in removing a tip if a serious mistake happens. Maybe your driver completely ignored your delivery instructions, left the order at the wrong address, or made a rude comment to you when they dropped off the order. Lowering or removing your tip may be justified in that case.

Lowering your tip could be also be justified if your original tip was a mistake. Sometimes customers accidentally tip a percentage of the order instead of a flat amount and only realize their mistake after receiving their final receipt.

What you can do about tip baiting

Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to prevent a customer from lowering or removing a tip, and there is no way to get compensated by Spark support.

Many drivers contact Spark support to complain about tip baiting, but Spark never pays drivers for reduced tips.

And you can report tip baiters to Spark, but currently they don’t take any action against them.

One thing you can do is keep a record of customers who lower or remove your tip and reject their order if you see their address on a future order.

“I keep track of tip baiters. And I won’t deliver to them again”

Confronting a customer about tip baiting isn’t a good idea. There’s a good chance Spark will deactivate you if a customer complains.

How other delivery apps fight tip baiting

Spark isn’t the only app that has a tip baiting problem. Instacart and Uber Eats have well-known tip baiting problems, but both have taken steps to help with the problem.

Instacart has a tip protection feature that pays drivers up to $10 if a customer significantly reduces a tip.

On Uber Eats, customers only have 1 hour to change their tip. In the past, customers had a full 24 hours, giving people more time to change their mind about a tip.

DoorDash is one of the only delivery apps that doesn’t allow tip baiting. After a DoorDash order is complete, customers can only increase a tip. It’s not possible to lower or remove the tip.

Spark drivers sound off about tip baiting

“Tip baiting should be illegal”

“This is getting ridiculous, tip baited 7x in the last week and a half!”

“Walmart is the only delivery service I’ve dealt with that gives the customer a full 24 hours to change their tip”

“This is why I stopped doing spark…I want actual concrete numbers not what ifs”

“You get everything they want and deliver with care and they STILL drop it to $0”

More help for Spark drivers

• Does your acceptance rate actually matter on Spark?
• How to cash in on Shopping & Delivery orders