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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> Dashers who deliver in NYC will now earn at least $29.93 per hour of active time, nearly twice NYC’s $15 minimum wage for other workers.

What’s a realistic amount of “active time” per hour? I’m assuming waiting for a job is not active time right?

> These new regulations will force us to raise fees for orders in New York City. In order to better balance the impact of these new costs, we’re moving the option to tip in the DoorDash app to after checkout.

So hiding the tip until after closing the sale to pretend the total price is cheaper? Very classy.

What’s funny is that the tip should come after the service is complete if it’s actually a tip for good service (otherwise how did you know what service you got?). But they’re clearly just trying to hide the true price.

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I think you're misunderstanding the change to tipping. DoorDash is effectively eliminating it (or at least making it truly optional). The city's study [1] advocates for this explicitly:

> Beyond productivity, there also exist several other margins for adjustment to higher delivery worker pay. For instance, apps could choose to reduce consumers’ costs through changes to the user interface that discourage or eliminate tipping (or, equivalently, consumers could choose to tip less in light of workers’ higher pay, independent of any changes engineered by apps). The Department finds that if tipping were eliminated at all apps, costs to consumers would increase by $1.06 per delivery (3%) with workers still receiving sizable pay increases.

Basically, the previously "mandatory" tip is now baked into the price upfront. I think this exactly what you want.

[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/Deliver...

> DoorDash is effectively eliminating it (or at least making it truly optional)

it was truly optional before, no? you just had to decide if you were taking an option or implicitly being a jerk before ordering. now you decide after.

perhaps companies need to stop implying such things altogether. such as could be done by not even mentioning a tip until food is in hand. as that is what a tip is.

that the delivery person be paid more upfront and outside of tips is part of the problem that needs solved. a big part, but not the only one.

in fact the case study advocates for more than dd did.

so this doesn’t seem to be what the commenter wanted. progress but not completion. maybe not time to celebrate yet.

The big difference is that before, the tip you picked before placing the order directly reflected the offers that the dashers would see. If you put no tip then very few dashers would be willing to take the order. This is what effectively made it mandatory.

Now dashers won't see tip variance in offers, it'll effectively be post-service from their perspective.

From the consumer perspective, yes, you can tip before you have the food in hand, but it's no different than if you had gone back after delivery and added a tip.

I don't really see what your remaining point of contention is here.

> From the consumer perspective, yes, you can tip before you have the food in hand, but it's no different than if you had gone back after delivery and added a tip.

When you visit a restaurant, do you give a tip to the wait staff when you place your order or do you wait until after the service has been rendered?

Generally I don't have a choice as you tip when money is exchanged. At some places that means when you place the order (but before you've gotten the food), and at others it means when the bill is satisfied at the end of the meal. Other times the tip is forced so you don't really have a choice regardless (unless you want to go above the mandatory amount).

However, the change with DoorDash is now it doesn't really matter when consumers decide to tip since it won't be known to the service provider (well, I suppose DoorDash themselves know, but the dasher does not). Previously the tip impacted the offers dashers saw, so opting to tip after service would impact the service being provided.

tipping

I think tip amount was known to the drivers before accepting an order, so if you select 0 up front you would be likely to wait longer.

this is true. but now the driver wonders about the tip throughout the process. among other issues.

better but still not yet good.

> What’s funny is that the tip should come after the service is complete if it’s actually a tip for good service (otherwise how did you know what service you got?). But they’re clearly just trying to hide the true price.

This. I had a recent order with a "SkipTheDishes". It was a semi-big order, and I left the default tip in place, which was over $20 for a 5-10 minute drive. The driver did a few other deliveries on the way, so when I got my meal it was only vaguely warm. Certainly not worth $20, and enabled by the company as they have a mechanism for a driver to take multiple orders at once.

Truly horrible service is now standard.

Well, you can't pay a tip forward to guarantee good service; it's supposed to be a reward after good service.

It seems like that's the point of the story -- they were willing to tip well, and received bad service. If it came after, then drivers would have a reason to make sure food was delivered fast and efficiently.

Yeah, the way it's setup, with the delivery company on board with stacking deliveries, and no guarantee of good service despite a good tip, there's no incentive to tip at all.

They should be forced to be honest and call it a bid, not a tip.

I think it should be illegal to ask for a variable tip before a service is substantially completed. Go ahead and charge a fixed gratuity, but prepaying tips is silly.

It definitely shouldn't be unlawful for the service provider to ask prior to completing the service but I really wish more people would see it as distasteful, as seemingly most forms of drip pricing are considered. Obviously the tip is for exceptionally good service; if it's baked into the sale price then it's just another form of drip pricing.

I wouldn't burden the service provider, I would burden the payment processor and card network. If there’s a license involved, even better. Some merchant codes can’t have tips, merchant onboarding can’t have tip upselling by the sales team

Regulate behavior by regulating the intermediary

Think about anything this way and you can push the same changes through any form of government

Tipping in the US has become an obligation or entitlement and is rarely associated with the actual service anymore.

I would add: especially when using apps or food delivery of any kind.

The chances of a server spitting in my food for me leaving a bad tip after a meal in a restaurant are 0%. The chances of someone mucking with my food because I tipped $1 on a $40 order are absolutely >0%.

> The chances of someone mucking with my food because I tipped $1 on a $40 order are absolutely >0%.

More realistically, you'd just never get your food.

Drivers have the option to reject low-paying deliveries, and they absolutely will. I've heard of restaurants having a "wall of shame" of food that's been ordered and prepared, but is consistently getting rejected by drivers.

Eventually it'll land on a driver that is truly desperate or is just starting for DoorDash and wants to get some good reviews. Unfortunately, they'll deliver cold food that's been sitting on the Wall of Shame for half an hour and the customer will blame the driver for it.

It works as a bid but only up to a certain amount, above which Dasher just shows the offer with e.g. "$6+ tip", hiding the full tip amount until after the order is delivered.

Oh wow, this is actually interesting.

Out of curiosity, do you happen to know whether the threshold for hiding the full tip amount is based on a percentage of the total order cost or if it is just a flat number? I.e., “anything over $6 gets truncated to $6+” vs. “anything over 20% of the order gets truncated to ${total_order_cost*0.2}+”.

Or could it be based off the 3 pre-selected options for the tip that are displayed at the checkout page, and if it is more than the largest option, then it just shows `${largest_predefined_tip_option}+ `?

My personal guess is that it is the last one, but that’s just pure speculation on my part here, hence the question.

So, it has changed over the years, but it used to be {roof(basePay + $5, floor(mileage) * 2)} so with the $3.50 base pay of the day, anything under 5 miles had a max showing of $8.50, and then anything over would be like, $10+. It still roughly works that way, but the constants change

It seems to be one of several fixed, round numbers depending on the market (city). But there may be other factors. It's an interesting policy choice and I'm curious why they do it. Needless to say, drivers very much want to know the whole tip amount and are annoyed that the displayed value is capped.

obviously drivers would want to know it, but is that good for everyone involved? It would make more of an auction but should it even be an auction?

Keep in mind that in NYC tips are exempt from sales tax, but bids for services are not. So customers would pay 8.875% more if DoorDash stopped pretending the payments are tips.

(there is a sales tax exemption for mandatory gratuities, but that only applies where the ultimate recipient is an employee whereas DoorDash deliverypeople are independent contractors - https://www.tax.ny.gov/pubs_and_bulls/tg_bulletins/st/gratui...)

I know they want to control pricing, obfuscate things, take advantage, extract surpluses etc., etc., but the 'two-sided market' thing would be way more convincing with real legible price discovery. Let people that want their food _now_ throw in an extra $20 for the privilege. If someone in Long Beach wants something from SGV, let them pay whatever it takes to get someone to get someone to drive two hours. Give Dashers tools to build auto-bidding strategies that align with their preferences. Show people ordering what similar trips cost recently. This doesn't have to be an awful dystopic extractive system...

It's only the time between accepting a delivery and finishing it. Time spent waiting for a new delivery offer is not paid.

> After a few minutes of waiting, you are offered and accept an order and drive 10 minutes to get to the restaurant. You wait 5 minutes at the restaurant, then drive another 15 minutes to deliver the order.

> In this example, you spent 30 minutes actively on the delivery, which includes the drive to the restaurant, the wait at the restaurant, and the drive to drop off the order.

https://help.doordash.com/dashers/s/article/Time-Earnings-Mo...

Waiting time for the next order is the same distribution for each one of them. So to minimize the number of pay gaps in a day, you will want to stretch out each delivery as long as possible.

If you are a true believer in the impossibility of good service in the absence of heavily tip-based pay, you set up incentives like this and your belief system won't ever be challenged.

I think they're hiding the tip after the talk about drivers shopping for tips. As I understand it, before you would tip up front, and so the drivers knew which orders would have better tips.

Letting the customer tip after the order has been received lets the customer evaluate, and tip, the overall actual service. And prevents drivers from prioritizing those orders with better tips.

I did a quick search and it appears the law sets a minimum of about $20 per hour. So I guess DoorDash considers there to be about 40 minutes of "active time" per hour?

That seems to "match" what I quickly saw. I'm in no way an expert on this, but I did some quick spot checking of what I could find online. From 5-10 screenshots I saw of people's earnings drivers seem to have about 70% or 75% of "dashing time" as active time.

There were exceptions I also saw, someone at 50%, some other people said they were at ~90% although I didn't see screenshots.

I assume this varies heavily by if your in a city or not or how close to meal time it is which I've got no insight into.

And note this could be all entirely wrong - it's people who chose to post their screenshots online so huge risk for selection bias to it being higher paid workers.

What law are you referring to, and a minimum of $20 per hour for what? Wouldn't your interpretation mean I can sign up for DoorDash, keep the app open, never accept a delivery, and be guaranteed $20/hr?

https://nypost.com/2023/12/01/business/uber-doordash-and-gru...

I don't know, but presumably OP is referring to a $20min wage as covering active time, not "dashing" time. The latter means you have the app open and are scheduled to work. Active means you are actively driving to a restaurant, picking up food or dropping it off.

So if you schedule two hours and the app give you no hits, or you decline hits that time wouldn't count.

Now that said, I know nothing about the $20 min wage and can't say if that's accurate or not.

That states they can choose hourly minimum or "or pay per delivery at about 50 cents a minute" which is in line with $29.93 per hour for what DoorDash calls "active" work.

Wow I totally missed the “active” part, thanks for pointing that out.

Would love to hear from someone with actual DD experience what percentage of time is “active,” and what you have to do to keep that time high?

> Wow I totally missed the “active” part, thanks for pointing that out.

Years of less than honest players have taught me to read press releases like a lawyer redlining a contract. Every last word is in there for a reason.

Dashed for 3 years, it's highly variable. I probably averaged 50% or less tbh. Also, un-tipped orders are weighted more into the pay-by-time in my experience, since you can't say no. It also means you can't avoid slow/bad restaurants, or unsafe/low-tipping neighborhoods.

Hasn't doordash also said if you don't add a tip a dasher is unlikely to pickup your order? Therefore, the tip seems more like a fee to me.

So, I did doordash for three years during the pandemic, working through college. In that time. I received 5 tips post-delivery, out of nearly 2000 deliveries. It was so uncommon that I remember all of them. At the same time, regardless of distance or time, DoorDash would only offer $2-$3.50 per delivery. So yes, if you didn't tip up-front, I was unlikely to take your delivery after I ealized that. My rule of thumb was no less than $5, and $2/mile, decreasing to $1/mile with a long enough distance. Otherwise, between maintenance and gas, I was losing money. I only broke that rule if my numbers were too low. They implemented this style of pay shortly before I left the service, but in my experience, it paid nowhere near well enough to be worthwhile.

Tipping is a cultural convention. You don't tip for service, you tip because it is our custom. You don't have to tip, but then you risk backlash for violating social norms. If you really like the service, you can tip extra. If not, you can give a low rating or and/or write a negative review and/or not patronize them again.

In the UK with Uber Eats/Deliveroo you can select a tip when you order and then you can modify the tip up to a short time after the order. So you can just put no tip and then add one after delivery if it’s good service, or increase/decrease it. Is that not how it works with DoorDash?

It is, and apparently a common shitty thing the drivers experience is big tips that evaporate shortly after delivery.

For DD In Canada, you cant reduce the initial tip in the app/site.

You can add an additional Tip post order/delivery.

I have been tipping only like 50cents for down the road, to maybe 1.50/2$ for within 10 mins drive.

Haven't had issues receiving anyorders.

Plus it's not like you get tipped wages here in BC, but they did recent mandate a $21 delivery wage (2$ cad more than standard wage)

For long distance I have tipped more but I am reducing my tipping overall.

Like I am paying a BC bag fee to get a paper bag for 25 cents, well unfortunately that means I am paying 25 cents less for other things including tip

Ah, AFAIK the tip is hidden for the UK services. They’re also batched so the driver can’t know who tipped/what tip an individual order gave them. It sounds silly to show a tip on the order that can then change later.

Not with DoorDash, drivers recieve the tip no matter what. If you talk to support and get your tip refunded (for poor service or something), DD eats the cost.

https://www.today.com/food/restaurants/tip-baiting-delivery-...

> Tip baiting is when customers enter a certain tip amount when they order their food or groceries on a food delivery app like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub or Instacart and then lower the amount or remove the tip entirely after they have gotten their delivery.

Maybe they changed policy at some point?

I'm not totally sure. There isn't a mechanism in the app to remove a tip as a customer. Drivers on DD-related subreddits say it isn't possible for a tip to be taken back.

> So hiding the tip until after closing the sale to pretend the total price is cheaper? Very classy.

In practice, it is probably to eliminate customers feeling the need to tip, reducing the sting of the higher fees.

Plenty won’t tip if the Dasher won’t see until after.

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