home alarm tips

By admin, January 25, 2010 5:12 am

Asking for a Tip? Am I Too sensitive?

My home alarm system was on a separate line. I recently had it changed and placed on my cable line. The owner of my alarm company asked me that when the technician came out if I could give him a little tip. I responded to him, “that I found his approach different, considering when people tip, its based on their choice to do so, not by direct solicitation”. He then told me that he normally has to pay his technicians to come out and he only asked that I tip the technician to offset the owner’s cost. I feel a little pressured into giving a tip so I said that I would. I’d like to hear from some technicians too.

I haven’t given him the tip yet because I wasn’t home when the technician came. But he asked me if I would add the tip on the check for my alarm monitoring this week. Am I over reacting?

The only scenario in which I might not consider this highly offensive would be if the alarm company sent the technician over to do the switchover for you without charging you for a service call. It sounds like this was not a problem with your service, but something you decided to do for your own reasons. Normally a company sending a service technician would charge for such a call, and if they didn’t as a favour to you, yes, you might consider giving the technician a small tip.

That the owner of the company mentioning it would seem reasonable in this case, since it’s not a situation where you’d normally think about tipping. And he wasn’t asking for a tip for himself, which I think it extremely offensive in any situation, but for his employee — who perhaps had to drive out of his way to do your switchover, and who possibly is paid on a per-call basis, but would receive nothing doing your small job as a favour.

These are the only considerations in which I would gladly give the techie a tip. Anything else (such as if they company and technician were getting paid as usual for the job) and I’d tell them to go stuff it.

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