Do You Tip Wayfair Assembly and Delivery? Full Guide

As one of the largest online furniture and home decor stores in the US, Wayfair is becoming more and more popular each year.

In fact, they turned over a massive $13.71 billion in 2021 as e-commerce continues to grow and replace shopping carried out at brick and mortar stores.

If you’ve ordered from Wayfair then you may be familiar with their delivery and “white-glove” furniture assembly services.

If you choose delivery and assembly when ordering from Wayfair then you might be wondering whether you need to tip the driver/assembler when your goods arrive.

With that in mind, we’ve researched the customary practice of tipping a Wayfair assembly and delivery driver by looking at what the norm is, how much to tip if tipping is required and other important data such as the average salaries of Wayfair assembly and delivery personnel.

We’ve also looked at the cost of assembly and delivery so you can throw that into the equation too.

Let’s take a look…

Do You Tip Wayfair Assembly and Delivery? The Short Answer

It’s not customary to tip a Wayfair assembler or delivery driver but you should be aware that they are paid a below-average wage and many people will feel it is right to offer a tip of around $5 – $20 if the service is performed well.

How Much Do Assemblers and Delivery Drivers Earn?

Assemblers

If you choose the Wayfair assembly option then the work will be done by the company, Handy, a third party that specializes in furniture assembly among other “home gigs” like cleaning, TV mounting, wall hanging, and appliance installation.

The work isn’t done by an employee of Wayfair.

We’ve taken a look at Handy’s employees’ average earnings and have discovered these figures:

They don’t list the hourly rate of an assembler but we suspect it will be similar to that of a house cleaner at $16.93 per hour.

This equates roughly to an assembler’s average hourly rate in the US which according to Indeed is $15.63 per hour.

If we take the $16.93 per hour figure and apply that to a 40-hour working week then that suggests a weekly wage of $677.20 or a yearly income of $35,214.40.

According to PolicyAdvice.net, the median yearly income in the US in 2021 was $51,480.

This means that an assembler’s yearly salary is over $15,000 less than the median income in the US.

With that in mind, you may feel it is in good conscience to offer a tip to your assembler even if it isn’t the norm to do so.

Indeed, this is the conclusion we reached when we looked at whether to tip Ikea assemblers.

Delivery Driver

A Wayfair delivery driver’s income is $18.04 per hour according to Indeed.

This equates to a weekly income of $721.60 or $37,523.20 per annum.

Again, this falls below the US average annual income by quite some margin so you may feel it is warranted to offer the driver a tip given these figures.

We found when looking at whether you should tip Bob’s furniture delivery guys that is customary to tip their delivery drivers and we don’t see any reason to depart from that custom here.

However, we did further look at this when considering whether to tip ABT delivery and found that it wasn’t generally necessary with those drivers as they earned above the average annual US income.

Accordingly, we think salary does definitely play a part in whether you should tip.

How Much is Wayfair Assembly and Delivery?

One of the other main considerations that most people have when deciding whether to tip is how much the cost of a product or service is.

We’ve looked into this and can confirm that Wayfair’s delivery is generally free if the order is over $35.

However, assembly is not free and must be added on as an extra.

You will see this option when you’re on the product listing. It looks like this:

As you can see, the cost to assemble this bed is $101.99.

We looked at another listing, for a living room cabinet this time, and the cost was $98.99:

You will therefore be looking at assembly costs of around $100 on the basis of these two listings. Expect to pay a bit more or a bit less depending on the size of the goods.

You should note that not all products at Wayfair come with an assembly option – it’s only provided on certain products at an additional cost (as above).

How Much Should You Tip?

It’s likely that most assemblers and delivery drivers won’t be expecting a tip but if you wish to offer one you’ll want a rough idea of what you should be handing over.

It’s custom in the US to offer around 10-20% of the sale price of the service/goods.

Given the assembly cost at Wayfair is going to cost you around $100 then we’d suggest $10-$20 is about right. We wouldn’t suggest tipping lower than 5$.

If you’re not having your furniture assembled and it’s just the delivery driver you want to tip, then we’d say $5-$20 is adequate.

When and When Not to Tip

There will be certain factors you’ll want to take into account when deciding whether and how much to tip.

We normally look for the following:

• Whether the workmanship is good;
• Whether the job was done on or in advance of time or for your delivery, whether it came at the allocated time;
• Whether the assembler or driver was professional and polite;
• Whether the assembler or driver has gone above and beyond.

We’d consider withholding a tip if:

• The workmanship is of poor quality or if the assembler has made a mess;
• The delivery has been made to the wrong address;
• If the assembler/driver was rude or unprofessional;
• If the goods delivered are incorrect or damaged.

Final Thoughts

Whilst it is not customary to tip assemblers, we consider that most people will feel that it is warranted and that’s the same conclusion we reach when looking at whether to tip Amazon assemblers.

Assembly is a labor-intensive job and we all know how frustrating those instruction manuals can be – that’s probably why you’ve paid for assembly in the first place.

It is more customary to tip delivery drivers even though their work might seem somewhat easier and more straightforward.

If you are going to tip, then we’d suggest $5 – $20 is a sensible amount or 10-20%. This is the standard across the USA.

We’ve looked at the salaries for both assemblers and delivery drivers and they do earn below average so this is yet another reason why a tip is likely justified for most people.

The cost of assembly at around $100 is about right when compared to other furniture stores and delivery is free with Wayfair, which is much better than other stores like Ikea which does charge a delivery fee.