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Comment by chrisacky | Hacker News Reader

I had identical experience but with Uber Eats. I was given 18 GBP coupon off any orders over 20 GBP. So I ended up buying a breakfast delivery from McDonalds for the family, I added the food and the coupon to the order... The first time I tried the payment my card failed. No idea why... it just said Authorization Failed. Second time round, it went through. Driver came, and I also left a tip.

About a week later I was doing my household budget and looked at the charge on my account, and it excluded the discount. Once you added in delivery, service charge and the tip, I ended up paying 30%+ more for the food (and didn't have my coupon).

I think this was a genuine dark pattern that they use, although I have no interest in putting it to the test. After a failed payment, they auto remove any applied coupons to your transaction....

This was my first and guess-what, last order.

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If you get an Uber credit in the future, you can use it to buy takeout instead of delivery. Of course there is no delivery fee or tip involved for takeout. My credit card gives me a monthly $15 uber credit, and I always use it to get takeout bun from a restaurant down the street.

There's no explicit delivery fee, but I find that most prices on Uber Eats are already inflated by ~10-20% over what you'd pay if you ordered directly from the restaurant.

The pricing model is very odd - you'd think that Uber would take all of their profit from the delivery fee - because, yaknow, that's the service that they're providing. But no, they also take a cut from the whole order afaik - which forces stores to inflate their prices to avoid eating into their normal profit margins.

One effect of this is that if you order for pickup, you're paying prices that are inflated because they incorporate part of the delivery fee.

Or more charitably, if you order for pickup, you're paying to use their platform.

There could also be sales tax reasons to break the fees out like they do — i.e., some types of fees may be subject to sales tax, and other types not, so they fiddle with things to minimize the sales tax while still allocating reasonably.

Uber Eats credits are basically "funny money". My employer sometimes gives us a $25 credit to go get lunch... and it can only be uber eats (not amazon/etc) because those are discounted like 20-30% to get employers involved. Employers feel like they're doing a nice thing for their employees and getting a good deal, because 20-30% discount. Then the restaurants all charge 20-30% more to make up for the fees Uber Eats charges them, and it all washes back out...

Still buys me lunch, but it ain't $25 for them and it ain't $25 for me either.

That's true. The bun dish I order costs $12.95 when I call the restaurant to place my order vs $15.95 with the Uber middle man. We get two orders, so that is an extra $6.49 including tax. So I'm using $15 of Uber Cash to pay $8.51 less real cash than I would have otherwise. That doesn't sound like a good deal except that I have no other use for Uber credits.

> Of course there is no delivery fee or tip involved for takeout

Plenty of restaurants have added a tipping screen to their POS for takeout orders. Some add it (as a service charge) automatically.

Why tip for takeout?

I tip about 10% for takeout- for one thing the packaging work can be quite involved sometimes and also kitchen staff normall get tips from wait staff. Though this mostly only applies to places that are primarily reataurants, not primarily takeout windows.

First time I've heard this. If you tip often in many places I could understand it.

Why not takeout windows? The folks working at McDonald's could probably use it as much as that local business owner and staff. probably

I tip the Dominos takeout window in cash.

Thats a fair question, but I think places that were always takeout or fast food type places didn’t base their business model on dine in guests tipping so they don’t need it as much. I mostly want to support local businesses rather than fast food chains. There is some unfairness to workers possibly but also its a line that everyone has to draw somewhere for themselves.

Paying 30% is worth it to not have to go and get the food for many people.

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