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Comment by sshine | Hacker News Reader

The market decides.

Food delivery most places mean to the door of the apartment, not the apartment complex entrance.

This is terrible for food delivery agents, since it slashes the efficiency of most deliveries.

I always run downstairs, since I am humbled that anyone would cook and bring me food. But as long as this is not the norm, food delivery agents are at the bottom of the food chain. In the past, this was a job for unions.

Postal workers of Denmark had passed by law that mailboxes must be at street level. So all apartment complexes nationwide had to install extra mailboxes at the ground floor if they hadn't already. It can be quite bad for your knees to walk thousands of stairs every day.

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I live with chronic sciatica. Some days, I'm feeling well enough for a walk in the park. Other days, I can barely limp to my kitchen or bathroom. Modern food delivery has been amazing for those kinds of days.

Whenever drivers don't actually dash to my door as requested, it turns a simple meal into an agonizing journey.

This is tough, but there is an easy solution: delivery apps provide a way to communicate with the delivery worker, explain your situation, potentially offer a better tip for the service. They will come to your door.

Sure, easy solution! Door dash provides such a mechanism wherein I can let the driver know how I would like to receive my order.

In fact, for several years now I have used this feature, signaling that I would like the order to be delivered to my door.

Fingers crossed for when the majority of delivery drivers actually start reading it!

> explain your situation, potentially offer a better tip for the service

At some point, it's my business and I would rather not have to explain my disability to strangers every single time I want a meal.

You have to understand something here, before moving to shift responsibility off of the delivery workers: There are kind and unkind people. The kind people are no problem. They deliver the order according to instructions, and get a tip. The unkind people, who are more likely to not follow door dash protocol to begin with, are also more likely not to read my driver notes, are more likely to be rude even when I am forced to explain my disability. In some cases, these people will even harass you before and after delivering your order.

I once had a small animal seizing in my lap who needed emergency items, but I was unable to leave my home and the closest exotic vet was hours away and didn't open till the next morning. An Instacart delivery driver accepted the order, which included a tip of $50, harassed me for 4 hours and literally just lied about ever visiting the store, because they had a bad day. They sat in their car as this animal continued to seize, with zero feeling. They sent me photos, cursed at me, taunted me, all sorts of things.

After speaking with support, they agreed the behavior was unacceptable and allowed me to reorder... I got the same driver again. After wasting 4 hours with this person, support finally figured out how to assign a different driver. This driver immediately went to the store, called me to discuss which items were best to get, and delivered my order with zero fuss. They were happy to receive a large tip, and they assured me I wasn't in the wrong.

The animal ultimately died, that 4 hours was crucial. Should I rely on Instacart for emergency services? Of course not, but that is the nature of an emergency. I would have gladly paid that $50 toward an app specifically geared for that kind of thing.

These are the kinds of armchair moralizing stories about the service industry that the consumer class actually believes about themselves. 99.9% of the time when people would say "If they would've done it, they would have gotten a tip for it..." it's just not true. Drivers are not getting tipped for spending 45 minutes walking around apartment buildings trying to find elevators and struggling to read the font-of-the-month printed on doors and they have to do this dozens of times every day in order to get $2.50, the base pay for a doordash order, and to make an annual salary that is a rounding error of the salaries of the people that they are delivering to. I get it, life is unfair, and not everyone can make the same amount of money. But don't act like we live in a paradise that doesn't have extreme inequality and class tension when you use an app that summons a member of the underclass to do your bidding for $18k per annum and they are rude or have a fucking attitude with you.

> when people would say "If they would've done it, they would have gotten a tip for it..." it's just not true

Except the next guy completed the service as requested, and I handed him a $50 cash tip?

> But don't act like we live in a paradise that doesn't have extreme inequality and class tension when you use an app that summons a member of the underclass to do your bidding for $18k per annum and they are rude or have a fucking attitude with you.

Maybe you're projecting your own ignorance. The majority of my life has been spent in great poverty. I am part of this "underclass". My sister does Door Dash, and it doesn't pay her bills, and I have to compensate for the difference. I'm extremely aware of the exact economics behind Door Dash.

I've usually been at the bottom end of this "extreme inequality and class tension". For you, this might be a realization, for me, it's a reality I've long known. Did it even occur to you that in this situation I obviously didn't have a car myself? This person was already one step above the economic ladder than myself, as they owned a vehicle.

> and they are rude or have a fucking attitude with you.

I spent my youth deeply broke, working as as server for the upper class of my state in a rural area with little economic opportunity. My mom can't hold a job, my dad is not in my life, and I was homeless at 15. All I knew was poverty and sickness for a long time.

If I can not catch a fucking attitude while shaking my governor's hand and getting paid $12 an hour, then some guy who is getting $50 tip + fees for a 3-item order can shut the fuck up and do the job they literally accepted to do, instead of cursing at me and mocking me and intentionally sabotaging my order. I wish I got paid that kind of money back then.

If they have a problem with their socioeconomic position, I'm not the guy to take it out on.

I agree that these gig-businesses cannot be relied on for emergencies, but within the 4 hours did you consider simultaneously using another delivery service? I would imagine that if you had access to Instacart, you would have access to other services like Uber delivery, Postmates, etc. Not to necessarily lay the blame on you because I probably don't fully comprehend the details of the situation, but I feel like if I relied on third parties so heavily to augment my own disability and had the price elasticity to pay an extra $50 tip, I would have many other contingency plans for events like these. If I can't get any help within 4 hours for a pet, how could I be expected to get help for myself or someone else close to me?

> within the 4 hours did you consider simultaneously using another delivery service?

Why yes, I did!

> Not to necessarily lay the blame on you because I probably don't fully comprehend the details of the situation

Yes, you are, and no, you don't.

> I would have many other contingency plans for events like these

This was a medical emergency, it was 2am and the only delivery app which featured a store that had the items I need was on Instacart. I checked all of them.

> how could I be expected to get help for myself or someone else close to me

Call an ambulance? An ambulance isn't going to help me take care of a seizing animal, and an Uber driver wouldn't either because it makes them potentially liable. I was also very low on cash. The $50 was quite a lot for me, but it was the life of another animal at stake, and I value the time of a person who has agreed to complete a critical, time-dependent task for me.

Before you berate me further for having an animal without being rich, this was a friend's animal who was out of state and left the animal in my care. The animal was developing diabetes and the timing was completely unfortunate.

Does this satisfy you?

Sorry to hear that story. My partner gets frustrated by Instacart mistakes and I try to remind her that many of the people doing that job probably have low comprehension and planning skills or they would be doing something else. (Certainly not all though, we've had amazing drivers too). They also probably grew up with different food habits and don't see why a certain substitution doesn't make sense. Sometimes the results is humorous, but it is still annoying when you _already spoke on the phone about it_ or asked to refund instead of replace. Or as it relates to the article, when they knock at the door and wait instead of just dropping it on the stoop as requested.

The problem is that one often relies on Instacart when sick or disabled and the tolerance for mistakes and bad interactions is lowest. Perhaps there is an opportunity for something like vocational nursing companies to offer more skilled shoppers at a premium price...

This man sent curse-laden messages in addition to calling me to taunt me further, complained that the trip was several miles (under 10, and they can see the charge and route before accepting the order), mocked my dying animal, mocked me. He straight-up told me that his plan was to stay on my order so that I couldn't get a different driver, while he simultaneously used a competitor app (Uber Eats) to deliver other orders. Instacart support was not happy about this part, in addition to the negative behavior, this is expressly against the rules to double-dip simultaneously.

He lied about ever going to the store, then after one and a half hours (already wasting two) just cancelled the order, saying nothing was in stock. The next driver went to the same store and got my requested items.

I haven't used Instacart since and never plan to; That was the worst customer experience of my life. The fact that I was promised by support that I would receive a different driver, then was immediately reassigned the same exact driver, was indescribably frustrating to me as a business owner and application developer myself.

> Perhaps there is an opportunity for something like vocational nursing companies to offer more skilled shoppers at a premium price...

That would be amazing. I imagine the only way it would economically work is if it were government owned/subsidized, since the kind of people who need this most (at least in the US) are already spending an exorbitant amount on health care and often don't have that kind of extra money lying around.

That's hilarious.

I've never had an experience anywhere near that bad, but InstaCart is the slider set all the way to the "this is a random person, we vaguely know what's in the store, and you work out what you're actually getting with the random person as they're shopping" end of the spectrum. The good thing about it is that its store flexibility is extremely high.

Prime Now is the slider set to the other extreme: inventory is accurate, your "shopper" might as well be a robotic arm, and your driver is a separate, nameless delivery system. The downside is the store flexibility is limited to Whole Foods.

What did you do before doordash?

Since around 15, my chronic sciatica has affected me deeply and caused lots of issues throughout school, the workplace, and every day life. Quite simply, I suffered and meditated on the fact that it could still be much worse, at least I have good days where I can walk.

The article explains that, at least in Brazil, customers are only paying for street-level entrance delivery as per the app terms of service.

It also depends on locality - around where I live, the delivery guys will go right up to your door, because there are so few apartments that it's not a major issue to ride 'vator for the few deliveries there (which are often seniors, anyway).

But in New York? You might spend most your life in elevators.

Yes that was an interesting part.

Here in France it seems like the apps say the delivery should be upstairs if the customer asked for that, but drivers have the same issue with going upstairs as in Brazil.

And I can see why if they get paid the same.

My guess is, the apps know the issue, but explicit "street-level" deliveries don't sell as well.

Where I live I saw a big shift in delivery people in the late aughts. I live in a city in the northeast (not NYC). These days even most of the apps like DoorDash are still using a restaurant's own delivery drivers.

I lived in a high-rise with elevators. From about 2000 until the late aughts it was like clockwork. They'd ring my buzzer, I'd buzz them in, and they'd stop at my door. In the late aughts it started to shift. More and more drivers would call me from downstairs and tell me I could pick up my food.

I can only imagine what it's like these days in a building like that. I live in a single family house now and 9 times out of 10 they won't even walk the 5 feet to my door from their car.

I mean - after expenses, they're getting paid like $8 per hour. It sucks, sure. But what level of service do you expect for non-livable wages?

Sure, but that was true 20+ years ago too and they came to your door.

I don't disagree with the larger point per se, I just find it interesting that it changed.

Is it the proliferation of giant condo buildings? Cities like Toronto went from having cloisters of 10-15 story concrete appartement blocks to having tons of much taller condo buildings all over in the last 20ish years. More than a few have questionable elevator situations too. There's even viral tiktok videos about residents waiting 20-30 minutes for elevators. Would you want to deliver to the door in a building like that?

> Sure, but that was true 20+ years ago too and they came to your door.

Not really. Minimum wage adjusted for inflation - and especially rent - is down in most places.

You can't pay people $2 for something and that $2 goes less and less far and expect your quality of service to not get worse.

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