I think it is too much to ask knowing how much money these rent-seeking companies want to make and how expensive it is actually to have individuals deliver you stuff.
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?
#22What about the hidden service fee? They gladly tell you the delivery fee is only $5 (or free!) but it’s not until you’ve fully ordered and paid that you see the itemized service fee that can be greater than 25%. But at least they tell you how much you paid for the service. The worst for price transparency is “same day” costco delivery by Instacart. They markup the prices but never tell you how much more you’re paying…
Even with membership, I’ve never paid less than $300 on Costco Instacart. It’s a total joke, the whole point of wholesale is to save money. I’m far too lazy to do the math, but I think I save more money Instacart shopping Aldi than Costco
If it’s likes BJ’s you need to not select BJ on instacart directly but instead use their direct site which appears to be a white labeled Instacart service, if you want the wholesale prices . In this example it’s https://delivery.bjs.com/ vs instacart.com.
They scrub most evidence of this being a white label service but it’s the same ui/ux and even the favicon is the Instacart carrot as of the time of this comment. Last time I compared my households ~$300 bill on the white labeled site was ~$450 on the main Instacart site
Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#23The 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.
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Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with membership, I’ve never paid less than $300 on Costco Instacart. It’s a total joke, the whole point of wholesale is to save money. I’m far too lazy to do the math, but I think I save more money Instacart shopping Aldi than Costco
If it’s likes BJ’s you need to not select BJ on instacart directly but instead use their direct site which appears to be a white labeled Instacart service, if you want the wholesale prices . In this example it’s https://delivery.bjs.com/ vs instacart.com. They scrub most evidence of this being a white label service but it’s the same ui/ux and even the favicon is the Instacart carrot as of the time of this comment. La…
Did you use a BJs account? Weirdly enough, I live right next to one.
Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#25The 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.
Quoted post unavailable.
Yes, a lot of gluten free is just hype. But I have friends that may die if they get gluten. Celiac is not a joke and can kill.
Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#26Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, a lot of gluten free is just hype. But I have friends that may die if they get gluten. Celiac is not a joke and can kill.
Then they should just give up takeout?
That’s true, if I suffered something that difficult I wouldn’t gamble with takeout. You know how many dishes contain traces of grains?….
Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#28>Is it asking too much to have a service that's transparent, functions well and have the end product taste good?
In my city (Vancouver), a restaurant owner actually setup a local only food delivery service during the pandemic with the idea that they keep costs as low as possible to run the service and restaurants didn't charge a markup which allowed for a flat service fee for every order and the restaurants pivoted employees to do deliveries instead of laying them off. The only downside for using it for most orders was that the options tended to be higher end dining.
It just shows how much VC money these larger services waste on their shitty services that get more and more expensive when maybe a couple of people were able to deliver the a better experience in a few months at the start of the pandemic. Unfortunately it seems like the service is shut down now as it always says "ordering unavailable", so maybe it wasn't that sustainable as a business.
Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#29I think it is too much to ask knowing how much money these rent-seeking companies want to make and how expensive it is actually to have individuals deliver you stuff.
> how expensive it is actually to have individuals deliver you stuff
That's not actually the expensive part. The expensive part is the greedy investors behind it and their attempt at monopolizing the industry (which thankfully is failing).
Re: Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
#30One of the absolute worst dark patterns I’ve seen was on Foodpanda. When you’re just browsing, you see prices crossed out, with a cheaper price below it, which seems to indicate there’s some sort of promotion. You can continue browsing a specific restaurant, and order a “discounted” item, your total price will be the sum of the discounted items. That is, up until you actually want to check out, suddenly your total ju…
I've had kind of similar things before with DoorDash or UberEats. They'll show I have a discount or some amount off ($5 usually), and then only once I'm ready to actually submit my order the full fine print shows up that I needed to have a subtotal of $30, $40, or whatever. Maybe that's fine for a family but for one person it stinks to think "oh cool I've got a discount" and I waste my time thumbing through restauran…
I truly don't get these kind of patterns, because to me, it just looks like they'll miss out on orders from people (like you), who thought they would get a discount, but then end up not getting it and cancelling their order.
Surely it would make more sense to advertise that customers can get a $5 discount, if they order for $30 or more. That way, if your order only adds up to $25, I would be inclined to order a side that gets me to $30 or more.