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Comment by chaboud | Hacker News Reader

I have a simple answer: I will never use Instacart or Doordash again, ever. Even if they change their policy, they are dead to me as companies, and any company that acquires them is similarly dead to me.

If you're out there, upstart disruptors, know that pulling stuff like this will cost you at least one customer for life. I'm sure that there are more people like me.

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Instacart workers have urged customers not to boycott the company, which would cut even further into their earnings.

this is depressing

Instacart workers should not allow themselves bullied to this point.

There's plenty of former employees who've left issues with low pay and these policies. I'd rather show solidarity with them by not supporting their exploitative former employer.

Those Instacart workers can go drive for the other companies that will get my business. I'm not skipping out on grocery and food delivery. I'm voting for good behavior with my wallet.

Note: I recognize the same people driving for different services pretty regularly.

What other company has the same opportunities or market share as Instacart?

If we use this logic then there will never be an alternative. We need to create a vacuum and that might negatively affect the shoppers in the interim.

Edit: It looks like Instacart is making some kind of amends and changing policy.

Shipt is one. It’s a bit limited but it is growing.

Irrelevant.

This is exactly why I don't boycott WalMart. Because as abhorrent and their policies are, the last thing I want to do is put some poor person barely scraping by out of a job.

The solution here is not to boycott these places, it's to use your power to lobby for better laws to protect the workers, which will apply evenly to all companies, including future companies that might try to take advantage of people.

They'll get their jobs back pretty quick. Wal-Mart is pretty good about recognizing problems within a Q or two and 'fixing' the issue

You can lobby for better laws and boycott businesses that treat their employees poorly at the same time.

Hopefully your business will stimulate growth in companies that treat their employees fairly, and they will hire those who are still stuck working for bad employers.

Or you could support a competitor that treats their employees well, giving them more business so they can expand their business and hire the people that eventually leave Walmart...

This is why I avoid Walmart and Amazon, even if it hurts my bottom line.

Okay, but what do the ex-Instacart workers have to say?

Can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either it’s not impacting workers as much as the article and our imaginations would lead us to believe, or it is. If it is, then yes voting with your wallet is 100% appropriate despite temporary disruption it might cause workers.

For these workers, it's really "neither have your cake nor eat it". They get screwed by Instacart and DoorDash stealing their tips, and then screwed further when they can't make as many deliveries because people boycott.

I'm not saying we should support shitty companies. But these boycotts ostensibly happen because we have empathy for workers. We shouldn't lose track of that empathy when workers talk about how the boycotts affect them.

This just goes to show that all industries need competition. If there's a third company that also provide this service, they could market themselves as more ethical, and if the people truly are as conscientious as it seems to be here, then it will gain market share.

Competition might be necessary to fix this, but it's certainly not sufficient. The restaurant industry is competitive, but according to the Department of Labor [1] "nearly 84 percent of full-service restaurants it investigated between 2010 and 2012 had violated labor standards, including but not limited to tip violations".

[1] https://nyti.ms/2GjqIyu

Mostly false.

https://www.businessinsider.com/instacart-shoppers-threaten-...

Some Instacart workers. Let's not conflate a small group of vocal people as representative of the entire group.

They're welcome to their opinion, and we're welcome to ours. If the point is to help every Instacart worker as much as possible, then the answer is complicated.

If the point is to not support businesses that lie to their customers, then not supporting them anymore is the right move.

Domestic violence victim urges police not to arrest spouse, as it will only make them angrier.

The few times I've used them [1] they were just choked with dark patterns. Stuff like [2] "Hooray, on your first order, we waive service fees!" -> "Delivery fee $4.99." Huh? What's the difference?

[1] I'm not a big food delivery user FWIW.

[2] just from memory -- I don't know the exact terminology

You can give cash tips instead.

I wonder if those companies use the lack of tips as an indicator for not providing excellent service... and then use that as an argument to not use those drivers.

At least for DoorDash you tip ahead of time so it doesn't really make sense to associate the tip with the quality of the driver.

I wonder if they use it to indicate the quality of the customer.

Yep, I often wonder if the driver sees the tip amount before they deliver, and puts less importance on your order if the tip is considered low.

Other comments state that they do see the tip amounts before they deliver.

But they don't get the tip so why should they care?

I’m a Dasher, and we can’t even see tips per order we complete, only how much we got in tips and how much we got from DoorDash during a session of deliveries.

Are Uber and Lyft doing this too? Should we tip them in cash? I've wondered if that was better for them.

100% of tips goes to the driver for both Uber [1] and Lyft. [2]

[1] https://www.uber.com/drive/partner-app/how-tips-work/

[2] https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013081368-How-to-...

I would prefer this be phrased as "Uber does not take a cut of tips for drivers."

Drivers would definitely prefer, for a given dollar, that it be given in a way that does not create a taxable paper trail unless they elect to declare it.

I’m all for helping out the worker and always tip fairly even though I think we should abolish the custom, but I draw the line at changing my behavior in order to enable tax evasion.

Uber/UberEats pays their drivers a flat time/distance rate. If a customer gives a tip, this doesn't affect their pay for the drive (unlike DoorDash/Instacart), and the tip is 100% owned by the driver.

I pretty much gave up on all the delivery and quick convenience companies like this.

It's all about pushing risk on to the employees, some of whom really don't know the risk and what their net pay even is.

Why take such drastic measures? Just use their system against them.

What I always, always do, is put $0 as a tip in the system and then tip the delivery person, in cash or using some app/paypal/etc., when they bring my order.

Same here. I used Instacart heavily for about a year until I started reading more about what a total scum bag company it is.

It’s very clear they only reversed this tipping policy because they are facing pressure. They would never do it otherwise. This is a consistent pattern with them — keep doing unethical behavior until the pressure requires you to change.

This is the correct approach.

Vote with youir wallet, and stop giving money to companies that don't deserve to exist.

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