I don’t think that @zenvelo is cheap… I tip my carrier a little bit more but my circumstances are a little bit different.
I pay the bill for my newspaper every two months and tip my carrier mostly $10, each time I pay the bill, sometimes more, but I have quite a bit of interaction with her because she often has to kind of hound me down to get me to pay my bill and she sometimes drops off a clip of bags for me to use for “poop” bags for my dog so we are on pretty friendly terms and I do have a fair amoutn of interaction with her, at least on the phone.
I think my tips to my carrier add up to about $60 dollars a year, but it seems fair to me because she does sometimes have to call me, more than a few times, when I am slow to pay, and she is very patient and good about it. And she keeps an eye on me, and all her customers. She worries when and if our papers build up, if she notices something different than usual, when she drops the paper off… she perhaps provides a more personal service than a lot of carriers do, so I tip her pretty well, I think. Maybe I’m cheap, who knows. :-)