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Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

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Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#141

Post by Ekaros »

leros wrote: post #114
joshstrange wrote: post #111

I absolutely hate ghost kitchens, I think they should have to be labeled as such since they are often only a step at best above straight up scams. The 2 times I accidently ordered from one ("Oh nice, I didn't know we got an X nearby") the food has been below subpar and generally a huge disappointment. These days I really hate using delivery apps. You have to dodge the ghost kitchens which isn't easy (both the fake br…

There's nothing inherently wrong with ghost kitchens. A restaurant that only serves food for delivery is completely valid. The problem is when existing restaurants pretend they're a ghost kitchen. You order from a cool new chicken wing restaurant and get an order from Chilies. You order from a new pizza restaurant and get a box that says Chuck E Cheese on it. That's just purely deceptive. The other thing I see is the…

I wonder if it would make sense to actually report those clear cases to owners of trademarks.

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#142

Post by jareklupinski »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #69
autoexec wrote: post #8

My guess is that either DoorDash doesn't want to invest in preventing what is basically fraud on their platform or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it and let it continue no matter how terrible the experience is for the people who order food. Uninstall DoorDash and the problem goes away for you, and if enough people uninstall DoorDash the math changes and the problem goes away for…

> DoorDash doesn't want to invest in preventing what is basically fraud on their platform or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it The latter. Of course, it drives users to uninstall. But it juices today’s returns. (Uber Eats does the same. Sometimes I report it to zero effect.) Caviar used to be a high-quality service in New York; I uninstalled it after DoorDash bought them. There i…

what do you use now? caviar is still alright in my neighborhood but I'm looking for the next thing...

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#143

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jareklupinski wrote: post #142
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DoorDash doesn't want to invest in preventing what is basically fraud on their platform or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it The latter. Of course, it drives users to uninstall. But it juices today’s returns. (Uber Eats does the same. Sometimes I report it to zero effect.) Caviar used to be a high-quality service in New York; I uninstalled it after DoorDash bought them. There i…

what do you use now? caviar is still alright in my neighborhood but I'm looking for the next thing...

> what do you use now?

Call the restaurant or go out.

We had a window of honesty. But when purveyors lie about from where their food comes, and everyone from the delivery people to the restaurants and developers go along, the chain is morally bankrupt.

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#144

Post by devchix »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #69
autoexec wrote: post #8

My guess is that either DoorDash doesn't want to invest in preventing what is basically fraud on their platform or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it and let it continue no matter how terrible the experience is for the people who order food. Uninstall DoorDash and the problem goes away for you, and if enough people uninstall DoorDash the math changes and the problem goes away for…

> DoorDash doesn't want to invest in preventing what is basically fraud on their platform or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it The latter. Of course, it drives users to uninstall. But it juices today’s returns. (Uber Eats does the same. Sometimes I report it to zero effect.) Caviar used to be a high-quality service in New York; I uninstalled it after DoorDash bought them. There i…

> There is an open niche for a real-restaurants-only delivery service

... but not at a sustainable price for workers and consumers. The trajectory of this industry is birthing crazy illogical things like ghost kitchens, weird liminal areas of food service that's not quite restaurant, not quite food-delivery, shaping bad human behaviors and creating dark patterns due to excess capital and perverse incentives.

Food costs. Making it, serving it, cleaning up. It costs more than people are willing to pay, maybe there's a strata of the market for whom the value is worth it, but not for the majority. Pizza delivery within a radius is successful but not everything can scale.

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#145

Post by philwelch »

dejawu wrote: post #20

It's insane. I once found a restaurant that had ghost kitchen'd itself EIGHTEEN times: https://i.imgur.com/7jwBlFG.png Some of the name variations are pretty funny though.

Are you sure that’s not just all ghost kitchens? Or maybe a parking lot for food trucks?

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#146

Post by philwelch »

Balgair wrote: post #112

Aside: The piece on DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage is always a great read [0] Not sure if it's still working out for A.J.'s Pizza, but that it did at any time should tell you everything you need to know about DD's internal structure; there is no there there. [0] https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage

This reminds me of Carlo Cipolla’s infamous essay on the laws of stupidity: http://gandalf.fee.urv.cat/professors/AntonioQuesada/Curs192...

In particular, his third law: “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.”

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#147

Post by ac29 »

antifa wrote: post #132
leros wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing inherently wrong with ghost kitchens. A restaurant that only serves food for delivery is completely valid. The problem is when existing restaurants pretend they're a ghost kitchen. You order from a cool new chicken wing restaurant and get an order from Chilies. You order from a new pizza restaurant and get a box that says Chuck E Cheese on it. That's just purely deceptive. The other thing I see is the…

> You order from a new pizza restaurant and get a box that says Chuck E Cheese on it. Do they actually do this? I at least expect the fake brand's name or generic brand. If it says Chuck-e-cheese I'd claim order never arrived.

Chuck E Cheese does operate a ghost kitchen brand: https://www.pasquallyspizza.com/

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#148

Post by rootsudo »

stephenboyd wrote: post #15

The worst ghost kitchen I've seen is for an exclusively gluten-free pizza place in Seattle. That's an appealing prospect if you have a serious celiac case and you can't eat food that's made in a typical pizza place where flour gets everywhere in the process. I looked up the address and it's actually a typical pasta and pizza Italian place with gluten in most items.

Try Mod Pizza, in Seattle. Great price, unlimited toppings, they do not offer exclusively gluten free but they have the option and IMO they are very accurate. - no issues yet. I would order from their website over the doordash app, but if the promo works for pickup, it probably would be cheaper. I was for a while ordering them on Doordash for $6 picked up w/ unlimited toppings, and $3 of that was for the gluten free option.

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#149

Post by magnus_blackarm »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #108
woutr_be wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this was a bug, but more a deliberate feature. From my understanding, they probably target customers who don't order that much, but are willing to pay a monthly fee for the "pro" features, which includes free delivery, and some discounts. But I can't comprehend how this is worth it to Foodpanda, I'm an already paying customer, ordering 3-4 times a week, me not being a "pro" user should be making them mo…

Yeah, that's why I can't help but think that some of these dark patterns arise as bugs. Maybe I just have too much faith in humanity, but I can't imagine some PM sitting there thinking this would be a good idea that wouldn't eventually blow up in their faces. But who knows, maybe I'm just naive.

i would think that it was the customer who came up with the idea, not the pm.

Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

#150

Post by galoisgirl »

UncleMeat wrote: post #105
nonrandomstring wrote: post #34

Seriously, all of you lazy toads, learn to cook It's one of life's exquisite pleasures. You'll save a ton of money. Massively improve your health. It really impresses any potential partner - many a lifelong relationship started in the kitchen not the bedroom. Cookbooks are recipes are really fun. Surely my fellow hackers, don't we love to know how things work and be in control?

I love to cook. It is a skill I have developed deeply. I can look at what I have in the fridge and throw together a coherent meal even with dregs. I can cook a better meal than all but one restaurant in my entire city, and even that is a close race (it is a small city). I am skilled and cooking meals from a wide range of different cuisines. There is one day a week that my wife and I both have a ton of meetings. At th…

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