DoorDash and Amazon Won’t Change Tipping Policy After Instacart Controversy

This is the biggest part that is misleading and makes a good service a bit shady.

I tip well because I wanted my food to be handled well and the driver to get a nice payment out of it. I also want the driver to make sure the order is good and correct, I am willing to pay extra for that. Now DoorDash is telling me they decide that for me and the driver. I think they should do something to change that or at least remove that message.

I have also read on reddit in the subreddits for these services like /r/doordash/ that because they pay low for some routes, even if people tip well, that dashers double up on deliveries. Sometimes the service asks them to and knocks their acceptance rate if they don't, or offers really far deliveries for cheap. I wanted to tip enough so they weren't racing or doubling up.

So you change your model to be less base pay and more tips. In door dash’s case, their base pay is $1.

But now you have to worry about the person that stiffs the tip and leaves nothing. Can you feel comfortable paying the driver a dollar for that trip?

Well.. no. So you say you’ll guarantee a minimum per order. If anything the people in the room making this thought they were doing an extra nice thing by adding this guarantee.

The thing is, drivers asked for more of their pay to come from tipping. Most nonapp delivery drivers are paid on a heavy tipping model. If it was messaged drivers get $1 plus tips would people be ok with that?

I used to work in this industry but not these companies. Actual comp doesn’t change on much average through most of these schemes, though there are outliers. Which is to say, they’re all underpaid, even at the “better” ones, as is your dominoes driver.

These workers are vulnerable, at the margins of their economy and are already suffering at the hands of a nation-wide refusal to raise the minimum wage to something livable so they can exercise genuine financial independence.

Please do not take advantage of the situation to force your favorite poorly-regulated finance app de jour on them by only tipping with venmo or square cash. There are a bunch of good reasons not to do this, such as the fact that if you choose venmo it's now necessary for your delivery driver to own a relatively expensive smartphone with a monthly subscription in order to receive your tips, but mostly it's just kind of an arrogant and dickish thing to assume other people don't mind signing up for all the services you use to receive your $5 tip, so please consider just using cash. You'd probably be pissed if someone told you they only tipped in litecoin and you should go download breadwallet.

Restaurants that incorporate the service fee into prices sell less food and particularly booze, leaving them with less money to pay the staff, leading to lower wages for front of house.

Given this experience, tipped workers are generally against any legislation that might change the system.

Some countries don't do it at all (e.g., Japan), and in a lot of countries people tip only in a few cases — exceptional service that went above and beyond, or rounding up the bill in a restaurant after a good meal. For foreigners the practice of tipping to ensure an employee gets at least a living wage in the US is quite strange.

Tipping is deeply cultural, you will be fighting against a phenomenon that is as American as apple pie (metaphorically speaking, it is Dutch in origin of course). Good luck in these days of ongoing identity wars.

Do you know of any good ideas to actually make that shift away from tipping happen?

That’s obviously lame, since you’d have to basically tip over the minimum to see the pay change. But they lying when they say “100%”.

1. Suppose DoorDash provides a minimum payout of $0.01 instead of whatever algorithm they use. Then, clearly, 100% of your tip goes to the dasher.

2. Suppose you tip the dasher $1000 under the current system. The dasher receives $1001 and 100% of your tip feels like it's going to the driver.

3. Suppose dashers are paid a minimum of $100 per order, and your tip never reaches that level. In this case it feels like 0% of your tip is going to the dasher.

We actually don't have enough numbers to know which of these is more like reality as far as I know. If the typical tip is much larger than the minimum, then the minimum feels like it’s just protecting the dasher and their compensation is just tips. If it’s calculated to be right at the level of a typical tip or larger than it is clearly manipulative.

Amazing how every sentence here is accurate and sounds positive yet it describes a scheme where tips are used for the base pay.

In reality, what appears to be happening is Uber is a massive scheme to siphon off vehicle depreciation for an enormous number of drivers that are hard up for cash.

The VCs aren't the only ones subsidizing cheap rides. The drivers are taking the brunt of it.

Doordash, like most food delivery services, takes much more of a cut out of the delivery experience than the value they provide. These apps are glorified CRUD apps with little differentiating them. If anything goes wrong it often is a nightmare, and I’ve never had an experience where one of these apps has correctly detected and fixed an issue with a delivery—each time I have to identify then fight their dark patterns to get a human to help me.

Uber categorically improved taxi service for consumers at the very least. These food delivery apps have honestly made the experience worse for consumers and for drivers.

Don’t give Bezos ideas!

A good portion of the US economy is based on paying workers less because they receive tips. And even the tax system has evolved to guess the tips for workers so that they don't just pocket the money without tax.

https://help.uber.com/partners/article/how-are-delivery-fare...