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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think paying someone to perform a service for you makes you a sucker.

I’ve never used DoorDash (and am pretty unlikely to), but if I did, I would look at as paying someone for a service they provided rather than simply “paying more for the item” (and expecting someone to wait on me personally for free?).

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It’s not like they hide anything about what they’re offering. They advertise service X for price Y and that’s what they deliver. Seems fine. If you don’t think Y is worth it for X then don’t use it.

Now, the part where they use tips to offset driver pay is evil and people should be in prison for it.

Oh come on, all of the service personnel survive on the tips alone just fine, like the cashiers, and the nurses, and the receptionists do. Right?

Well, they hide the fact that the food prices are marked up for one thing. Even if you pick up yourself, menu prices in DoorDash are at least 20% above the restaurant’s posted prices. That undisclosed upcharge comes on top of the delivery fees and service charges they do disclose — but only after you have made your order.

I don’t see a problem with that. They show a price for a product. They have no responsibility to inform you that a lower price for the same product is available elsewhere.

It’s still rude, have you no shame?

This is what distributors do. I don't feel cheated when an Amazon sellers offers something that I can buy for 40% less direct from China, or when a store sells me a loaf of bread for $4 that they paid $2.75 for.

If it's worth it to me at the price offered, I'll buy it. If it's not, I won't.

amazon is a bad example for this because they aren't just saying here is x for y$. they force the sellers into paying at least y everywhere, even if amazon has nothing to do with the sale. they are using their semi-monopoly to raise your price on x everywhere. sort of the opposite of the "the market will solve it" approach.

My local Giant charges $1 more for identical butter than Lidl. What an outrage.

Aren't the prices marked up by the restaurant, not by DoorDash? I thought it was common practice for restaurants to list higher menu prices on DoorDash (and other delivery platforms) to help offset the platform's cut they take from the restaurant. (Which sounds entirely reasonable to me.)

I'm not sure why DoorDash should be responsible for disclosing that; DoorDash may not even know what the regular in-person menu prices are in the first place.

The solution to this is to stop allowing delivery services to take a cut of the restaurant's revenue. Instead they should be required to raise their delivery/service fees charged to the customer. Of course, this will likely result in fewer customers, so they don't want to do that, but it's the only honest thing to do.

I get that the delivery services do provide value to the restaurants in many cases, but ultimately the customer pays for it either way, so that cost should be made explicit to the customer.

Most states allow tips to be deducted from wages down to sub-minimum wages for for most tipped workers. Which sucks to be clear, just saying it's not unique to ride-share drivers.

That’s bad and should be considered theft. But what DD did is even worse. They didn’t just reduce pay, they hid what they were doing and didn’t even show a tip to the driver unless the tip was more than the guaranteed pay. And they did this to the tune of over sixteen million dollars.

> And they did this to the tune of over sixteen million dollars

So like $1 per driver?

Also it's not like the tips they earn correlate with service drivers can provide. At most you can be a bit faster, but generally bound to traffic? (I haven't used them tbh).

You are excusing literal theft to the tune of $16mm. And the excuse is that the company is so large and vast and dominant that the scale to the company is a drop in the bucket.

Does the theft of $16mm become worse if DoorDash was half the size?

If I steal $16mm I’d go to jail but it’s no big deal because a corporation did it? The apologia for this is baffling to me.

Relax it's basically an accounting error.

Not to the drivers, it isn't.

Not sure why you seem to think that the company only matters here, and the workers are irrelevant.

(And no, it's not $1 per driver, way to argue in bad faith.)

How much is it then? Their revenue is 16B per year. Do you really think its worth "stealing" 0.1% to pad your numbers? Are you that naive that publicly traded company can pull this off?

There’s no dispute that they did what they did. What are you even arguing?

Funny how those never seem to favor labor. I wish I could have an accounting error like that don’t you?

I genuinely don't understand how corporate propaganda in the US got people to get to the point where defending corporations is like a Pavlovian reflex for some people.

We’re on a forum run by the VCs who funded DoorDash. A lot of people here dream that they too can one day get funded and go on to steal millions with no consequences.

Nah we just don't let emotions get over the mathematics. DD does 15B in revenue. 16M is ~0.1% of that.

So theft is ok if you’re already rich?

Stealing sixteen million dollars spread out over a large number of people is still theft and should still result in serious prison time.

Have you not watched Superman 3 (or Office Space)?

I think this is different, though. The phenomenon you are talking about is customarily applied to hourly workers, where they are paid a set hourly wage for the time they're on the job, and then tips can deduct from that hourly wage. Hourly workers see both sides of this and can do the math, and know what their take-home will be based on their hourly wage and the tips they accept.

For a DoorDash delivery driver, the problem is transparency. Consider a $7 delivery with a customer tip of $5, and the difference between being told:

"This delivery offers you $7", or

"This delivery offers you $7, the customer has added a $5 tip; we have reduced the delivery offer to $2, so the total you receive is still $7."

In both cases the customer behavior and end result for the driver is the same, but in the first case DoorDash doesn't even mention the tip, and quietly pockets it. Another example, with a driver tip of $10 instead:

"This delivery offers you $7, and the customer added a tip of $3", or

"This delivery offers you $7, the customer has added a $10 tip; we have reduced the delivery offer to $0, so the total you receive is $10."

The 2nd statement in both cases is the honest one, but of course that would make drivers feel cheated, so DD says the 1st thing, and completely hides that they offset "wages" with tips.

Regardless, I personally think this practice (for regular hourly employees or delivery drivers) is garbage; in my state, the tipped minimum wage is set to the same value as the non-tipped minimum wage, so employers don't get to pull that crap.

It's been years since I used DoorDash, so I don't remember: Are you saying they don't charge any fees other than the (inflated) price of goods?

I'd rather the price of goods be fixed, and they tell me what the delivery fee is.

Generally, they inflate prices (or take some % from the restaurant, so the restaurant has to increase prices).

And have a small delivery fee.

And have a small “city wants DoorDash to pay its workers fairly, so it’ll charge you an arbitrary amount extra” fee

And a bag fee.

And sales tax.

And a tip

Oh and don’t forget the service fee.

I’m not kidding, this is from a recent receipt. There are 6 fees PLUS the cost of the actual food.

Other delivery platforms are similar

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