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Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

US perspective (eg theft of bikes / crime is not AS serious a problem as Brazil, although it can be bad):

I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand, I fully empathize with the delivery drivers (particularly if the rules / policy of the app is NOT doorstep delivery) and where theft is a real issue.

However, as a (US) consumer, where the apps DO allow us to request doorstep delivery, I think there is no issue with consumers wanting to get the service they paid for. Uber Eats / Doordash charge a pretty hefty premium in terms of markup & delivery fees, and we're paying for the service of having food delivered to our door. You can call us lazy or whatever other names you want, but consumers do have the right to expect to receive a service they've paid for. And it is not our responsibility to make sure the delivery services are paying the drivers properly.

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I think this is exactly the problem. The expectations should be clear on both sides. If I am expecting delivery to my streetfront I will be happy to go down and get it. If I am expecting delivery to my apartment door I will be annoyed if they refuse to do that.

If people want different things there could be an option in the app to decide what you want (with an appropriate price difference).

> The expectations should be clear on both sides. If I am expecting delivery to my streetfront I will be happy to go down and get it.

That's great, and apparently you are not the kind of app user that the deliverers are up upset about.

> "According to Rappi and iFood, which control over 90% of Brazil’s app delivery market, drivers do not need to make doorstep deliveries. On paper, representatives from both companies told Rest of World, their rules already require delivery workers to only go as far as a street-level point of contact, from which customers are asked to collect their meals."

Sounds like they should add a toggle in the app to get that extra service for extra payment.

No, they shouldn't.

But they should make it clear on their interface. I'm sure it's on some terms of use somewhere, but this information is missing from the entire UI of the app.

(Not that this would impact most people. Closed spaces in Brazil usually disallow delivery people from entering too.)

That's an idea, but it sounds like the risk to the deliverer of doing that in Rio de Janeiro is quite high.

Add the toggle. When a Rio de Janeiro customer clicks the toggle to request doorstep delivery, pop up an error dialog saying that doorstep delivery is not available in this area for driver safety.

With this setup:

The feature exists if the company wants to support it in certain areas.

It is not supported in RdJ and other dangerous areas.

Expectations are clearly communicated.

Ehhh no ethical consumption and all that but I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with that last sentence. If I become aware of a business treating workers poorly I’m inclined to find an alternative.

> If I become aware of a business treating workers poorly I’m inclined to find an alternative.

I agree, provided there is actually clear evidence of it. A generic "Well we all know these services don't pay their workers enough" doesn't suffice.

And the solution is to find an alternative, and not "Let me pay this guy a nice tip because I know he is poorly treated, so that I can enable those who hire him to continue to pay poor wages."

Very fair point. I considered revising that as I wrote it. I think consumers can and should be able to "protest" (for some definition of protest) by either choosing an alternative or tipping more or whatever. But that should be a consumer decision, not necessarily an obligation.

As someone else mentioned, "tipping more" does not protest the practice of paying workers poorly. In fact it enables and reinforces the practice.

Just because it's not our responsibility doesn't mean we can't vote with our wallets. I try not to give money to terrible companies but ya know what? I'd rather labor laws do that instead.

For example, I have type one diabetes. I'd love to not give Eli Lily another cent but I don't have that option. I know it's not the same as abusing workers, but abusing a captive market is also boycott worthy.

Better prepare yourself for the long list of things you depend on provided by companies that treat their employees like shit. Is your argument that we should try to remain ignorant of these things?

> Is your argument that we should try to remain ignorant of these things?

Is that really the most charitable way you could read parents comment? Obviously they're not arguing for that, but rather arguing for "voting with your money", so stop using services where abuse is evident/apparent.

And yes, it's a fairly large list, but it's not unmanageable. Me and my family try to do the same, it's not a huge hassle and it's not like you have to look up every single company before you buy anything, but if something comes up about a specific brand like "Nestle" or whatever, then we change to something else.

Lastly, the list is smaller than you think, I think. Most common consumer stuff you have at home is made by few huge corporations owning all the brands. "The Illusion of Choice in Consumer Brands" (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/illusion-of-choice-consumer...) is a famous view that shows you the situation.

It isn't manageable. Do you have any idea how electronics are made? How the materials are obtained?

The fact that everything americans buy is built off of oppression is not an acceptable argument that we should ignore such oppression.

It's just entitlement that you should be free to buy such products made with literal slave labor with no moral qualms. We should call it the Nestle argument, that caring about slave labor would be very inconvenient, so we shouldn't.

Instead, you should probably petition the FTC to not allow a company profiting from slave labor to buy up all it's competition.

I'd like to believe I have some clue, yes.

It feels like you allude that I don't. Is there something specific you'd like to mention here, or am I supposed to guess?

It seems like their market is a duopoly, so finding an alternative may not be possible.

Not ordering delivery is an alternative

I do find myself mostly doing this, or ordering delivery from places that self-deliver.

The alternative is to not use apps and stop being lazy / going after the most convenient route.

Humans are addicted to convenience no matter the cost.

>Humans are addicted to convenience no matter the cost.

Another way of stating this is that people pay for convenience, and why not?

Folks subvert _security measures_ due to perceived or real inconvenience also.

In this example one is getting paid to do a task, security controls make the task longer, less convenient, the human will find ways to subvert the inconvenience of the security controls.

Good point. Calls to mind the sharing of access control cards or the using of various means to prevent computers from locking in hospital settings, etc.

According to the article, the deliverers are expected by the terms of the app to bring the order only to the street level door. Some consumers leverage their power to give a good or bad rating to compel the deliverers to bring the order upstairs.

> Some consumers leverage their power to give a good or bad rating to compel the deliverers to bring the order upstairs.

Welcome to the end stage of "The customer is always right."

Rating systems do not work--eventually they get gamed and become a battlefield.

Interesting. I'm frequently amazed just how much of an asshole some people are.

Never forget that some portion of human beings aren't even willing to return a cart to a certain point at grocery stores. A surprising number of people don't see other humans as equals, but rather as pawns to be abused.

If you don't build your system with them in mind, they will abuse anything and everything they can.

That doesn't mean make things suck for people with few resources though, as anti-social behavior is MORE common the higher up in the corporate chain you go, meaning they are usually not poor.

You're advocating seeing people as hapless abusers instead of as equals. Which is probably true; it's just funny.

> consumers leverage their power to give a good or bad rating

I guess they don’t operate on tips in Brazil? In New York, a delivery driver demanding a customer come down to collect would be wagering their tip for time.

A depressing number of customers don’t even tip anyway so I can understand a driver not caring.

Why would you tip and pay a delivery fee? You are enabling the corporation to underpay employees

That’s a very abstract way of absolving yourself of blame. If the delivery driver isn’t tipped then they are underpaid. If you’re not willing to tip then don’t use the service.

If the tip is necessary part of the service then it should be displayed to me up front. I have zero issues paying for a service as long as there is no ambiguity about what it costs.

If you do not purchase your delivery in a tipping culture and deliverers earn a living wage, e.g. Northern Europe, then don't tip.

If you purchase in a place where tipping is the convention (e.g US, Brazil), then do the simple algebra and figure out the real cost. If you do not have the money to tip according to your regional convention, then do not make the purchase. Full stop.

Tipping is not the convention in Brazil. At least in the Brazilian places I lived in, in São Paulo State

There are NO clear conventions about tipping in North America. It’s such a giant cultural meme because of it.

How much should I tip? Can you answer that?

Tipping just isn't part of our culture. Thankfully.

Sorry, but it is insane that people that live in areas with no parking can request doorstep delivery in the United States. People that live on the 10th story of a luxury high rise in the downtown of a major city with a 5 minute security process will request doorstep delivery, forcing drivers to occupy driving lanes for minutes with their hazards thrown as they navigate the byzantine favela that the villager has requested their $8 Mcdonalds order be brought to.

And it is your responsiblity, it is clownlike to fall on your back and flail your hands in the air and shout about how there is nothing you can do about this and your hands are tied etc. Put on your flip flops, and squeak your way down to meet the man downstairs who doesn't speak english and has your McCheesy with McCrusty sauce. Delivery apps prey and set at odds with one another customers who are gouged and drivers who are miserably underpaid all for the sake of... burning VC capital. Both parties, drivers and customers, as long as they continue to participate in the carnival act, should treat one another with good faith and respect as much as is possible, instead of retreating into their castles and pointing at Arial carved into glowing stones that indicate the beginning and end of what they owe one another

> their $8 Mcdonalds order be brought to.

Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.

Look, the customer base for Uber eats is lazy. That’s why they are ordering McDonalds delivery in the first place. Guilting them for meeting at the door isn’t going to work.

In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.

Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.

If drivers don’t want to fully deliver then don’t do delivery.

Now I live in the burbs and ordered Uber eats for my family and the driver wouldn’t drop off food to my door and called to say come out to the driveway to pick up my food. It was kind of weird. They sat in the driveway and wouldn’t bring the food to the door.

This is very different from Brazilian inner city or even an urban setting but it was strange that the driver didn’t want to walk the 30 steps from my driveway to the door.

> Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.

It seems everyone is dancing around the obvious central fact: the drivers get an embarrassingly small amount of that $14 fee. The customer pays a premium, the driver is paid a pittance, it’s hardly surprising there’s an expectations mismatch around customer service.

If the delivery apps charged a fee that accurately represented their role in the transaction (running automated software matching driver with customer) it might be a better experience for both customers and drivers. But the companies have sky high valuations they now need to deliver on, so they can’t.

> Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.

Right. Pre delivery apps I’d order in NYC and have no problems with doorstep delivery. So apply simple logic: what’s changed? The customers haven’t. The drivers haven’t. But there’s a new middleman.

> Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.

Most new-ish developments I've seen have a central lobby or mail room that handles all deliveries. All external doors are locked and require a keycard. No one is delivering to your front door.

Of course, whether they're staffed at 1am to handle your Doordash delivery is a separate issue.

> Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.

Yep, I'd agree that paying that fee for a service which doesn't have to deliver to your door is silly, but some people still do it

> In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.

As a fellow city dweller: yep, I'd agree there, too (that's why I don't order $8 mcwhatevers with $14 delivery) but to each their own

It seems unreasonable to expect every driver to know how to legally park around, efficiently gain access to, and navigate the twists and turns of every building, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect every building tenant/employee to do so for their own. If your building was a house, you wouldn't expect the driver to know how to gain entry and navigate to a specific room in it. That's what an apartment building is: a way bigger and more difficult to navigate house.

> In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.

Then people in this situation should do that.

The only time I've requested delivery to my door was for a grocery delivery when I had a herniated disc and could barely walk. I am totally willing to leave a good tip for such service, but when I order it that way, it is REQUIRED.

I had the delivery driver do a half ass attempt at contact, he ignored my instructions and then he simply went home. No, that's not acceptable. I reported them to the company.

I sympathize with delivery folks, to the point where I almost never order delivery in the first place, but when I need it, I expect it to be full service.

Where does the mail truck park for deliveries. Other delivery persons can just do that. If the building has no lanes at all, then that's nobody's fault but the building owner. You can wait behind the delivery vehicle a couple minutes.

Mail trucks are a bit different though as they are federal vehicles. Private delivery services like FedEx get tickets all the time and pay them as the cost of doing business, but I doubt food delivery services do the same for their drivers.

So then find parking? Even if they need to walk a mile or 2? How is that the customer's problem?

If delivery is not possible it's up to the service provider to refuse service. If they accept the order they agreed to deliver it.

I don't see how it's the driver's problem that the orderer chose to live somewhere impossible for delivery drivers to park while taking food through whatever apartment maze they chose to live in, but there's always the option of meeting at the front door

if that's not possible, it's up to you to refuse ordering. If you place the order, you agreed for it to be delivered according to the terms and conditions.

The service they paid for? According to the article, that's exactly what the drivers are asking for.

consumers do have the right to expect to receive a service they've paid for

So called "independent contractors" also have the right to decide which contracts they will and will not take. Do Uber Eats and Doordash allow them to deny these "doorstep delivery for apartments in theft-prone cities" jobs?

Yes, but my understanding is that you are only allowed to decline so many of them before you stop being offered jobs at all.

Sounds like a no to me.

I often have to go and find delivery drivers because they find it hard to find the entrance of my apartment.

It's slightly annoying and I probably order less because of it, but it's not the end of the world.

If it's that much of an issue, then insurance/replacing the bikes needs pricing into the delivery. It's not like the delivery drivers are currently earning good money, as far as I know they usually struggle to make minimum wage in most countries.

>consumers do have the right to expect to receive a service they've paid for. And it is not our responsibility to make sure the delivery services are paying the drivers properly.

This is absurd. Why doesn't an american have a responsibility to their fellow man to avoid companies that mistreat their workers? What kind of entitlement is that? Don't you have any solidarity for your fellow human workers?

Where I deliver with Uber Eats, the vast majority of deliveries are simple things where I basically drop it off curbside. Only occasionally must I climb five flights of stairs. Am I compensated extra for your stairs? No. Do I thumbs down those deliveries? Only if the apartments are poorly marked and I end up having to climb three separate flights of stairs looking for your apartment.

On the street (outside) versus to your door inside: What is the cost worth to you? Please provide a percentage of your order. For example, a 20 USD total order from fast food place, inside delivery fee might be 10%, or 2 USD. Will you pay it.

Unbelievable how lazy people have become. Obviously people physically incapable are excused.... What a world

Right. You have absolutely no moral or ethical involvement in the outcomes of your purchasing decisions. Uh huh. Sure.

> US perspective (eg theft of bikes / crime is not AS serious a problem as Brazil, although it can be bad):

In the US we take the utilitarian perspective that the thief who took my bike has gained more happiness than I have lost without it, so maybe bike theft is a good thing[0].

In Brazil a bike is probably a fair bit more dear and may more likely be the user's only form of rapid personal transportation.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/ipgafyG.png

Or more likely, the thief just resold the stolen bike for $10, thus negatively impacting the economy (preventing legal resellers from operating fairly; forcing people to spend more money and effort on protection; minimizing the efficiency of the person having the bike stolen; raising insurance premiums) and the ecology (steering people towards cars, which are harder to steal, at least without insurance; forcing people to re-buy bikes and stolen goods). Proper wealth redistribution is not stealing, at least not this kind of "petty stealing".

> In the US we take the utilitarian perspective that the thief who took my bike has gained more happiness than I have lost without it, so maybe bike theft is a good thing

Haha not a snowflake's chance in hell. In much of the USA you can use deadly force to defend against property crime on private property. Conditions do apply, but that's beside the point (and are rarely enforced in self defense cases unless you went full retard on the crim).

Per TikTok/YouTube Brazil allows deadly force against thieves on bikes. Some videos out there of suv/truck drives swerving and plowing over gunmen jumping people on streets. Obviously it’s gruesome so you can look it up yourself if interested. Per the videos this was a recent(ish) law passed. Caveat, obviously I was educated on tiktok but the videos certainly don’t look fake.

Does anyone really think this? The hassle of buying a new bike alone isn't worth it.

It's what rich sheltered people think, which describes most of the online population.

And I'm not saying that as a bad thing, necessarily; if anything, it's probably worse to think in the neurotic PTSD terms of defending your bike to the death because you saved a long time for it and can't afford to replace it. Moreso when you can trivially afford to replace it and the person stealing it is probably in a much worse global situation than you.

I’ve seen family’s of 7 on a moped, surronded by multiple live chickens dangling and a 20gal propane tank on the back. Incredible skill. Sometimes they do blow up sadly if a suv runs into them.

For a lot of people, that moped is their life. Deadly force is appropriate. Horse thieves were hung right?

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