Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The app gave me a price for the order and then had a line item called “Dasher Tip” and asked me how much I wanted to put down. I put in $20.
Later when the woman arrived with the food, we stopped to talk for a minute. She was a little younger than my mom, and said she had just started working for the service after her husband died.
She asked me if she could ask me an awkward question, but I said okay. She wanted to know how much I had tipped her. $20.
She showed me her phone with the app on our order. DoorDash told her we had tipped her $6, which she thought was suspiciously low (we ordered $90 in food).
TL;DR: DoorDash presented me with an optional field called “Dasher Tip”, which I wasn’t sure of but assumed this was the Tip for the woman bringing us the food. I paid $20 for this “tip” but only $6 made it to the woman (whose husband had died). Incidentally I offered her a cash tip but she refused - she said I had already paid it and it should come from DoorDash.
Last night my friends wanted to order food again. I called it in to the restaurant and we picked it up. I don’t want to use DoorDash anymore.
But in reality, if Uber or door dash or whoever take over their respective markets and then back up prices, people will stop using them just as quickly as they started and smaller, cheaper competitors will pop right back up.
You don't exactly need a multi-million dollar war chest to start delivering food.
I've used the service a few times in the past and probably will again, but I'm going to start asking the drivers how much they got as a tip and will definitely report any discrepancies.
The website specifically says 100% goes to the delivery person ("Dasher Tip (100% for your Dasher)") so I don't think they can weasel out of that by saying the tips are pooled or any of that other nonsense.
Just look at how it went with Uber. Uber didn't want tipping to be part of the experience, but they kept lowering driver wages until drivers needed tips to survive and started rating down passengers who didn't offer cash tips. When the problem started becoming severe, they could have solved it by just upping driver wages. Instead, they kept fares impossibly low but added tipping into the app.
Instacart wants me to tip 20%, so that's $40 on a $200 grocery order to carry my groceries 3 miles.
I have no idea what's appropriate, but that seems outrageous.
Would restaurants go out of business because they couldn't pay their servers enough because their patrons weren't willing to pay when the actual cost of dishes was made explicit on the menu?
Or would restaurants ditch table service?
Or would waiters settle for a new lower wage?
There are a couple restaurants that have had good success with this.
"What if"--but they won't, so perturb not those electrons and stick to the real, yeah?
Let me give you another example. If one or two car dealerships decide they don’t want to be open on Sundays then their competitors will get that business. So everyone is forced to be open both days to be competitive. But what if all dealers were closed on Sunday? Well, in that case consumers would be forced to do all their car shopping on a Saturday and nobody would lose any business. So this is exactly what happened in Texas. The dealers lobbied to make sure car dealerships can only be open one day per weekend (either Saturday or Sunday, but in practice they all chose Saturday to be open). So that’s the value of asking “what if”.
Other first world countries' servers are more expensive, and so less plentiful.
The answer is that the perceived utility varies on how you perceive the price. This is why an item tagged 10U$S looks less interesting than the item tagged -20U$S- 50% off. The latter looks more valuable to our brain on anchoring, but there really isn't an objective difference. Thus , even though as a user you know the discounts are bs, you still prefer to see the discount thing.
Gratuities have the added complexity that people will tip differently on personal preference. I am one of those that dislike tips. I come from a country where tips are relatively low,and I find the tipping amounts in the U.S. borderline offensive. Are waiters supposed to get 20% of the restaurants revenue in tips? But, its like price differentiation: it allows the same recipients to pay more.
I wish it didn't have to be this way, but if a business does get more money with these systems, they should do it, and if people are willing to pay more money with these setups they will tend to pay for it.
The delivery person will be able to see your intentions of tipping zero, as nothing else is communicated.
As I understand it in the US tips have replaced standard payment.
I'm sure the gig economy will drive my country into the gutter sooner or later though. Can't stop progress.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_tipsandgratuities.htm
if anyone does use the service.. definitely point the individual in the direction of the dlse
This is why I almost always tip in Cash. I hand it to the person, in person.
San Francisco's Indian Restaurants (Indian here, and I go to the Indian restaurants here all the time, that's how I know) are notorious for not passing on any of the tips left on the card to the waitstaff, and some even don't give them the cash that's left in a counter tip jar.
I'd previously mentioned this situation on HN and someone told me that I could complain to some Labor organization that will investigate the Restaurant. Anyone have any experience doing this?
I don't have experience doing it, but both of these cases are highly, highly frowned upon and likely to get quick resolution if a complaint is made to the Department of Labor.
http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/05/legal-for-your...
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/should-supervisor-sh...
In most Indian & Pakistani places, yes. There are some exceptions.
The owner of Raavi on Jackson St takes the cash tips placed in the Tip Jar at closing (so the waiters don't get it even if it's cash). The owners of Little Delhi on Eddy St near the Westfields Mall take all the cash tips for themselves and don't allow the waitstaff to take cash from the patron. I tried giving it to the girl and she said they are not allowed to accept it. So I don't leave anything on card or cash when I eat at Little Delhi.
I feel bad exposing these guys cos the owners are good friends, but this is just plain wrong.
This is the reason I give cash, in person, to the person. Only way to ensure 100% that waitress or waiter gets the $. When I tried that at Little Delhi, the girl said "We are not allowed to take cash" and that's when I found out that the owner eat all the credit card tips, and cash tips placed inside the bill / check folder.
In the case of Instacart, I already gave up on them. They make too many shopping decisions on your behalf. Like ring your phone, and claim "they called you", and pick replacements themselves.
I would like to know if GrubHub steals from the tip jar as well.
Are you sure you weren't just looking at the $6 delivery fee and your tip would be added later?
I don’t see an edit option so I’ll say here. This comment got a lot of attention so I should clarify. Some are saying this should be a huge story, it’s illegal in CA (where this occurred) etc.
I’m not sure how the DoorDash app works from the Dasher’s perspective, so I was taking her word that the tip was $6. Also I was incorrect on my tip amount - it was 20% which was $14.21 (the order was $92.00 including fees and tip). She did show me an amount under $10 ($6 or $7?) as her pay for this task. She did have to wait for a while at the restaurant because their food was not ready in time, and I was under the impression that the figure she showed me was her total compensation for the delivery. If she in fact received my $14 after as some are suggesting that would be an improvement. She said she was somewhat new to DoorDash so there could have been a misunderstanding, but she was under the impression they had been stiffing her on previous nights as well, so I’m not sure it’s a simple case of her not knowing she would be tipped more later.
Is anyone else here a Dasher who would be willing to confirm tip amounts with some customers? You do enter the tip in to the app before finalizing the order, so they will know.
Charge higher price, but pay workers less.
Switch to cheaper ingredients with lower price, but pass only a small portion of the saving to the customers.
It's the same with Uber. During a rainy day rush-hour there are rarely any medallion cabs available, so Uber created a way to get transportation on those days (surge pricing) that incentiveizes drivers to work during those times.
So normal (expected) peaks and troughs in utilization result in a price signal that reflects demand on a much more granular time scale than simply a full time or part time worker with a schedule planned months in advance.
There are two ways to solve this, and Instacart and Uber are both following the approach that is more economically sound -- pass the actual price signals to would-be workers, so that they can self-select in an optimizing way.
Nearly ever Uber driver I talk to is very pleased to be able to make the money on his/her terms, even if it's not great money, or if it's not as good as it used to be.
If we create an old-fashioned, industrial-era labor market overlay for the gig economy, all we'll accomplish is taking away some good employment options for those who need them most.
All of the "perks" of the industrial-era labor movement are geared at a specific labor/employer dynamic. Uber and Instacart are shifting that dynamic and doing the work of matching supply and demand to make work available that was not available before.
We must adjust our view of what a "good" and "fair" job is, when we consider that without the matching mechanism these jobs would not exist. Let's not kill them off just because someone exploited a loophole about ordering massive size cases of water.
Ultimately I think the ideal version of "uber for everything" is a worker-owned cooperative, but until VC gets tired of helping to prove out the model, such cooperatives are at a disadvantage. That is a temporary disadvantage. Let's not hamstring the cooperatives before they can even launch!
This is not an excuse to short-change the people doing the labor.
I can't repeat this enough.
How are they being short-changed? If someone makes $10 per hour some of the time, $8 on average, with some "hours" amounting to $1 per hour, why is that a) unfair or b) a problem, assuming the average wage is itself fair and the worker wants to continue doing the job?
From a labor power standpoint, gig economy firms are significantly weaker than industrial firms. Most Uber drivers have the Lyft app running at the same time, and soon enough they might have several more running (including one that is from a worker-run cooperative).
So gig economy firms have very little market power over employees. They simply offer infrastructure for matching supply and demand and take a bit of profit in the process.
The only way for gig economy firms to succeed is via employee loyalty. There has been some indication that they are competing for loyalty, but I think so far it's mostly just funneling VC money into financial incentives, not long-term loyalty.
Of course employers tried to cheat, by setting the per-piece rate very low. You had to process many pieces to get a reasonable wage.
The Federal government was forced to step in. They required monitoring of all this activity so that "all employees, including piece work employees, earn at least the minimum wage."[1]
If only the people running the sweatshops in the old days thought to call their people "contractors" instead of "employees". They could have avoided most of the pesky regulation.
I'm being sarcastic. Clearly those people were employees under any reasonable definition. Same should apply here. This whole gig economy crap has gotten totally out of hand.
Fundamentally, an Instacart worker only has flexibility of when to work. The rest is more-or-less predetermined. Should that person be a contractor instead of an employee because he has his choice of the order in which to traverse the supermarket aisles? Should that person be a contractor because he has his choice of which streets to drive on from store to destination?
If I stop paying taxes and declare my consultancy a religion does that make my innovative? I’m instantly 40% more profitable than the next guy. You can “donate” via a mobile app too! It’s not a payment, it’s a donation. Please note the donation must be as it states on the invoic... err, donation services document.
This is disingenuous. Uber started out with Uber Black, which was attractive because of its customer service. UberX was only launched in response to Lyft. Airbnb skirted some necessary hotel laws, and many unnecessary ones. Agree on Postmates and other delivery services.
Uber launched Uber Black, and not UberX, because it was convinced a ride-sharing service would be shut down by authorities. When Lyft failed to be shut down, Uber panicked and responded. Next to this ambiguity are several cities' track records of racist, horrible cab drivers fully embracing their state-sponsored monopolies.
Being forced to work i.e. be productive is very psychologically important.
Now being forced to be a slave is a different story.
What needs to happen here is for the government to step in when I crime is being committed. I.e. an employee is being paid less than promised.
Wow, I'm really saying that.
Funny how we were hearing these stories about Uber as well a few years ago, where people online were pretending some drivers became millionaire working for Uber. We now know none of this was true.
This is going to go like Napster, we'll find a better way when it is gone.
This -- just remove the parasites. If you, as an insta-serf, can tell your customer that "the retail price is $X, you're being charged $Y, and I'm being paid $Z," you can become a true "independent contractor" by cutting InstaSerf, Inc. out of the equation. If the difference is greater than zero, split it.
What I think this demonstrates is that the issue is very uneven demand. An analogy might be the electric company, which at some points of the day is literally seeing net negative demand in areas with enough renewable generation. They have power plants that can run any time, though, whereas gig workers cannot always pick and choose when they work.
In Australia we have control of our borders and the price of unskilled labour is more respectable.
NYT: Workers Lured to Australia Find Low Pay and Tough Conditions
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/world/australia/temporary...
This seems like an unnecessary and out-of-context dig at lawyers. Also, the citation provided doesn't square with the claim: the settlement they linked to allowed total damages of $2 million, and capped the attorney's fees at 25%, so the maximum payout is half a million.
In this case, a large part of the issue seems to be certain orders from people (and companies) that have found loopholes in the pricing (bulk orders of large, heavy goods).
If contractors could decline these orders with no repercussions, they wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue. Instacart would fail to deliver these orders and quickly learn they need to change their pricing structure.
The argument could be made that you can go too far in giving contractors the right to decline. I can imagine various forms of extortion occurring or problems being unable to blacklist problematic contractors, but it's a tradeoff that seems to be too far in the company's favour right now. Maybe disincentiving contract work in service-critical environments is a good thing, considering the complaints about rising part time and contracted work and not enough full time work.
All the rest give you a pittance, some even based on mileage. Its a pity!
Every packaged item has a barcode that you can look up to see the weight.
...but of course, that would make the commercial delivery services viable competitors to instacart on big orders right? Can't have that.
If they can't get anyone to do the job, they will be forced to pay more or fix the conditions. If they have a terrible reputation, nobody will want to work for them.
It's simple supply and demand.
Most people have a herd mentality and it's very hard to get out of it, especially with the huge amount of propaganda telling everyone that everything is someone else's fault. Disgusting.
In Bangalore, I routinely see people from not only grocery delivery companies, Big Basket but food delivery like Freshmenu carrying huge carry bags with god knows how many items. Couple of times I have seen people struggle to get up the stairs with that much weight on their backs. And those are not contractors but employees.
I am sure few years later, we will need a study of back or some orthopedic problems associated with "shoppers".