• For waiters at a restaurant (not fast food) a standard tip is 15%-20% of the final bill.
• Buying a drink at a bar? $1 a drink is pretty standard.
• Staying in a hotel? I leave between $3-$5 per night for the housekeeping crew.
• If you are checking your bags curbside at the airport, $1-$2 per bag is fair.
• Getting your car washed at one of those “top to bottom” car washes? $3-$5 is a good tip for the main guy working on your car.
• While I rarely see this anymore (although that could be because I don’t hang out anywhere “nice” anymore!), an attendant in a coatroom should be tipped $1 per coat.
• Seeing a massage therapist to work out the knots from the day job? Between 15%-20% of the massage cost is standard.
• I tipped my tattoo guy 20% of the cost for his work because, well, if I go back I want him to spell everything correctly!
• Get your hair cut at a salon? Tipping 15%-20% of the haircut cost is good, and maybe a little more around the holidays.
• If I ever have to valet my car, I usually tip $2 to the valet driver when he or she brings my car back around.
• When in need of wheelchair service at the airport, a tip of $5-$10 would be nice to give to the “driver”.
• Pizza delivery drivers, on average, get between $2-$5 depending on weather, your neighborhood, and distance driven to get there.
• When taking the shuttle from the rental car place to the airport, most people tip the drive $1 per bag (if they help you with it).
• For movers, I always tip $20 per guy. This comes in especially handy if you are like me and move often using the same company!
• If you use a hotel concierge, you should probably tip them at least $5 for getting you tickets or reservations to a show. Give more if they help more, as you never know when you may need them.
• For taxis, a pretty standard tip is 15% of the final bill.
• For limo drivers, 20% of the bill is fair.
• Ever travel overnight on Amtrak? I have, many times – and the sleeping car attendants can make or break your trip. A tip of $3-$5 per day/per passenger can make all the difference.
• While I am not a gambler, most blackjack players will tip a $5 chip upon leaving the table – more if at a high stakes table or you won a ton of money.
• The ladies at the nail salon would truly appreciate a 15% tip for cleaning up your fingernails.
• When getting your shoes shined, a good tip (on top of the bill) would be $2 per pair of shoes.
• Got a young kid in school? While you don’t need to tip, per se, a small token of appreciation is nice at the end of the school year. That being said, as someone who was married to a teacher, please avoid giving personal pictures of your child, home decorations, or body lotion. A gift card to a bookstore or Starbucks is a much better gift… trust me.

A few other things to keep in mind that I just thought of that may be useful:

If you purchase goods/services with a coupon of any sort, tip on the full amount of the bill – not the discounted price. Otherwise you just look like a cheap bastard and it’s not fair to the server, who has no control over the prices of the restaurant or the value of the coupon.

And lastly, if you are traveling abroad, pretty much throw this entire list out the window. When people from other countries come visit the US, they don’t understand why we tip everyone so much money. In France (the only country I have spent any amount of time in), tipping was generally frowned upon, especially in professional jobs like being a waiter or a taxi driver. We Americans still tipped a little, but locals tended not to tip because they know that these jobs are paid professional wages, and tipping can be seen as insulting by some.

Got any more tips about tipping? Do you tip often or rarely? How much do you tip? Please let us know in the comments!

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Borders Books – closing an estimated 200 stores during the three months ending January 31.

Blockbuster – could be closing another 600+ stores this year in addition to the 300 they closed in 2009.

Jones Apparel Group – will be closing 196 stores in 2010.

Starbucks – interested in closing 250 stores this year in addition to the 566 last year. (Then again, this isn’t a bad thing – we don’t need a Starbucks on every single corner in America)

The list also has information on previous closings and their outlook for the future, which was pretty interesting. Seems stores have to be in really good shape, both financially and by location, in order to survive this economy. What are you seeing in your area? Are stores doing just fine, or are they starting to be hit hard?

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Since they are just getting started with the site, not every zip or store is there yet, and that’s why they want to hear from you. If your favorite store isn’t included, just let them know so they can work on getting it in the system. Pretty clever idea, and one that I think many people could find use for.

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- Last time I did this poll, I was doing most of our shopping at Trader Joes and the Farmers Market. Now, living in Denver in the winter, I do 90% of my shopping at Whole Foods with the other 10% done at the “regular” grocery store.

- I am now single, so I buy a lot less “stuff” for the house.

- I still eat only organic vegetables and fruit, and meat about once a week. No milk, but lots of yogurt and cheese. And only a tiny amount of crap/processed food.

- Because of the lack of Trader Joes, groceries cost more than they did in California – but less than they did in New Mexico.

Still, all that being said, I did OK – I spent about $200-$225 on groceries during my first month here. That’s a little less than half the dollar amount I was spending per month for two of us in 2007. So, this leads me to you guys…how much are you spending on groceries per month? Where do you live? Where do you shop? Has the recession changed your shopping habits?

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First up, Comcast. Since I was canceling DirecTV (who didn’t bother responding on Twitter) and looking for new TV/internet service, I put out a call to my Twitter friends for their thoughts on the Comcast Triple Play (which I wrote about here). While I received many great responses and comments, I was also contacted by Comcast themselves via Twitter. They gave me a contact name to email directly, and a live person CALLED ME to set up service at my house. She went over everything with me on the phone, I got all the numbers up front, I received a discount, and everything went smoothly from then on out. Score one for Twitter!

Next up, UHaul. When I was having difficulty getting a guaranteed truck rental, I bitched about them online and they gave me a number to call and have it taken care of. Finally, some help! After dealing with the guy at my local rental place (who claimed to never remember me each week that I came in to see about my truck), I got UHaul to guarantee me a truck, give me a confirmation number, and tell me what time to pick it up. Needless to say, I gave the local guy a terrible review but I only have good things to say about the help I got online.

Sometimes it fails miserably, like in the cases of DirecTV and Samsung, but more often than not people are having great success using Twitter to contact customer service for their issues. Before you pick up the phone and dial a number, try to use Twitter and see what results you get. You can easily find most corporate Twitter accounts by googling “Twitter + Name Of Company”, but if you happen to need one of the two I just used, here they are:

http://twitter.com/comcastcares
https://twitter.com/UHaul_Cares

Happy customer service Twittering!

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This is, no doubt, a result of our consumer-driven culture to “get, get, get” as much as you can – which in my mind only leads to negative stuff like debt, depression, anxiety, and crime. Is it any wonder we are a nation of depressed, overweight, miserable people when our idea of a good time is heading to Wal-Mart or Target to go shopping for more stuff we don’t need? For stuff we want to use to try to impress others with? Not really – and seeing that 50% of people think a big-box store best exemplifies the U.S.A. is incredibly sad. We have become a nation of consuming sheep who go to jobs we don’t really like just to go shopping on weekends.

There is more to life than working and shopping – I just hope these people find it sooner rather than later. What do you think about this?

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Prescription Drugs

Pharmacies have existed online since the turn of the millennium but only just recently started growing as an industry. Online pharmacies, like Drugstore.com are becoming popular alternatives, in both price and convenience, to community pharmacies. And while a majority of online pharmacies still uphold the prescription requirement the Internet has enabled yet another market to grow strong. (Also, see my post on how to save money on prescriptions)

To bypass the pre-written prescription requirement enforced by most national pharmacies Americans have for years traveled to Canada and Mexico. But now there are several online pharmacies that sell medication without requiring any pre-written prescriptions.

These drugstores have internal physicians to determine consumer eligibility to buy prescription free drugs and have become a convenient, if somewhat dubious, alternative for millions of Americans than cannot afford to get a prescription from a doctor. The drugs sold by these pharmacies are produced outside the U.S, in Europe, Canada, Mexico or India, thus not approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).

Contact Lenses

Matters to do with vision impairments have long been restricted to the offline optometric market. And while parts like eye examinations will always belong to real-life local eye doctors, purchasing corrective eyewear online has become a money saver for many.

Local opticians normally sell contact lenses and glasses to their patients. With regard to contact lenses, opticians buy them directly from the manufacturer, then re-brand the products (putting their own stamp on it) and increase the price significantly to make a profit.

Online contact lens stores and price comparison guides offer the same contact lenses as local opticians, but in original packaging and at a much cheaper price. This is possible not because online contact lens shops and guides settle for less profit, but because they simply have less overhead expenses than the average “offline” business.

Still requiring a pre-written prescription from a licensed eye doctor, online contact lens guides will offer the cheapest prices on the market and direct product shipping to the consumer’s doorstep.

Beauty Products

Make-up products and fashion items are the third example where the online market exceeds traditional stores in affordable prices. Well-established amongst younger consumers, sites like Beauty.com not only offer a wide range of cheap beauty products from all the top brands, but have also become a warehouse brand for beauty products. Whatever is missing in any local make-up store, barbershop, fitness club or fragrance section can be found online, to cheaper prices and free shipping.

Where do you shop online that saves you money over traditional brick and mortar shopping?

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1. Create Your Own Layaway Plan.

A VERY small town. One of those places where everyone knows everyone else, so you cannot really give someone the finger for driving too slow or talk badly about someone for fear that the person you are talking to is related to said person. However, there is one thing that really gets a lot of attention in a town like this – you, the customer. When your entire populace is about the size of a large inner-city high school, every person that comes into your place of business is of the utmost importance…at least they should be. But some business owners don’t understand that yet, and they probably also don’t realize the danger of “word of mouth” in a town like this.

I was talking with a friend the other day who could not believe the way she was treated by a business here in town. The business will remain nameless, as I doubt anyone here reads this site anyway, but now I know not to do my shopping there because of my friends’ recommendation. There are a few other places that sell the same type of products as this business does, so I have a choice whether to shop with them. And if the name of the business comes up in another conversation I have with a different person, I will tell the story to them…and so on. The chain will continue going in circles in this town! Eventually businesses that act like this get a reputation for bad customer service and folks take their business elsewhere. Talk about not taking care of your bread and butter!

photo credit: hyku

Customer service is what keeps your business alive and thriving, above everything else. No matter what you sell, no matter what service you provide…if you do not have good customer service you are shooting yourself in the foot. Especially in a town as small as this one is! Another person I know had a local contractor at her house doing some work, where he proceeded to accidentally rip up her utility lines. Instead of apologizing profusely for the mistake and maybe even discounting her bill a bit, he demanded full payment and wanted her to pay for his mistake. This is a building contractor who depends on word of mouth to get work around here, and he did this to a real estate agent! That is just plain stupidity at it’s finest. Pissing off a real estate agent, who is always dealing with clients looking at houses that need remodeling, is pretty damn dumb.

Good customer service doesn’t have to just exist on a local level, however – it needs to be national as well. In today’s world of Facebook, Twitter, email, instant messenging, and blogs like this one, a bad experience can reach thousands of people in just mere minutes. A few examples of national companies not going the extra mile include my experience with DirecTV and their terrible customer service, Jim from Bargaineering.com’s experience with Zecco, and Being Frugal’s experience with web host LunarPages.

I am no business owner, other than my blogs, but if I were I would spend money on customer service training for my employees. And I would always do my best to make sure my customers were happy with whatever service or product I was selling. A little effort can go a long way to keeping customers coming back for more!

So what about you? Any horrible customer service stories we should know about? How about any great ones that more people should hear about? Let’s share in the comments and spread the word, both good and bad!

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• Save more than 30%** off supermarket prices on favorite brands
• Multiply your savings with manufacturers’ coupons “” BJ’s accepts them all
• Find more of the family-friendly sizes you use every day
• More payment options “” BJ’s offers convenient ways to pay: cash, checks, major credit cards, EBT and debit cards

If you try them out, let me know what you think! I still am not sure that I need to join any of these, and even if I did, the nearest one is about 70 miles away – which kind of defeats the purpose saving money!

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So, do you use your DVR to escape commericals? Or have you gone even further and gotten rid of your television? This is something I want to do, but I have to wait until my contract with horrible DirecTV ends before I can get rid of it. With all the places on the internet I can watch TV shows for free, plus our Netflix subscription and the fact that antenna TV works here, I am looking forward to that day of ditching satellite TV forever. But for now, I will continue to use my DVR to never watch another commercial again. I don’t need some high-paid marketing person to try to A. make me feel bad about myself and B. sell me some crap I am perfectly happy without.

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