What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips • Hacker News Board

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#21

Post by zamfi » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #13

Why do they do these tips?! Why not charge a total and pay all expenses and people from that? I don't understand why the complicated setup and all the fuss that comes from it. Seems like they create problems for themselves out of nothing.

Also: why is the service fee separate from the delivery fee? Why do hotels charge an invisible “resort fee”? Why do airlines and utilities have so many extra fees you don’t find out about until later?

These are all dark patterns that try to hide the actual cost.

If doordash was upfront, saying “your total extra charge from doordash for delivering this to you is $25” instead of “$3.99 delivery; $12.57 service charge; $10 tip for driver” you might be more likely to realize how damn expensive the service is and pick up your own food.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#22

Post by cm2012 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

This is an incredibly open market. If someone doesn't like DoorDash's payments, they can literally just install the Uber or Seamless or one of many other delivery apps and deliver that way. Since DoorDash is the market leader and does the most deliveries (according to the article), that leads me to believe most delivery folks would rather deliver with them, and not trust random articles like this.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#23

Post by rhizome » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #13

Why do they do these tips?! Why not charge a total and pay all expenses and people from that? I don't understand why the complicated setup and all the fuss that comes from it. Seems like they create problems for themselves out of nothing.

Because more than anything DoorDash is a financial engineering play. Delivery-everything is a solved problem. Enlarging margins, however, is an ever-changing landscape.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#24

Post by dylz » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #18

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it isn’t a tip. It’s a fee.

Incidentally tips are like this for many regular non-gig-economy food service workers too - many areas allow an employer to pay less than the minimum wage as long as the total pay (including tips) meets the minimum. So a person who gets $0 in tips gets (say) 7.25/hr from their boss, but if they get 5/hr in tips they might just get 2.25/hr from the boss and not come out ahead at all - your tips are just a fee being ha…

The other problem with places that allow this is that if you're not bringing in enough tips, you effectively get one hour's worth of min wage followed by termination in practice.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#25

Post by cm2012 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

wrycoder wrote: post #7

I would guess that DoorDash is very negative for restaurants and restaurant waitstaff, also.

That doesn't make any sense. It's a choice for restaurants to sign up and they have like 10 services to choose from. If it's not good for the restaurants they'll just stop using it. Any marginal delivery is pure profit for a restaurant.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#26

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

Can't say I'm surprised -- having people in food delivery (read: waitstaff) work for virtually nothing and hoping to make it up in tips is entirely consistent with the American restaurant experience. Although at least restaurants are theoretically supposed to guarantee minimum wage, and don't exploit the car maintenance and depreciation of their workers.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#27

Post by mnm1 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

This is exactly why we have labor laws, especially minimum wage laws. This company wouldn't exist if we had properly written laws that protected all workers, but they hide behind the excuse that people working for them are contractors blah blah... yeah we get it and it's time to close such idiotic loopholes. Contractor or not, at these rates, no one is independent. That's frankly ludicrous unless someone invented a way to clone people and make them into slaves. And the people working these sub minimum wage jobs to make a living deserve better. They deserve the minimum wage like everyone else, although I'm sure plenty of people here will argue that they deserve to starve and die of treatable diseases so they can make billionaires ever so slightly richer.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#28

Post by tempsy » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #26

Can't say I'm surprised -- having people in food delivery (read: waitstaff) work for virtually nothing and hoping to make it up in tips is entirely consistent with the American restaurant experience. Although at least restaurants are theoretically supposed to guarantee minimum wage, and don't exploit the car maintenance and depreciation of their workers.

A major negative consequence for restaurant workers as a result of food delivery apps is that they are busier than ever because they are now fulfilling orders all day from these apps in addition to orders from people that walk in.

I went to Popeyes last week and there’s just a stream of receipts from online orders constantly printing, and they have to fulfill all those while dealing with everyone that comes in. And of course they aren’t getting paid any more to do maybe 3-4x the work they did before these apps got popular.

In that world being paid per job seems better than making the same to do much more work.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#29

Post by dylz » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:02 AM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #25

wrycoder wrote: post #7

I would guess that DoorDash is very negative for restaurants and restaurant waitstaff, also.

That doesn't make any sense. It's a choice for restaurants to sign up and they have like 10 services to choose from. If it's not good for the restaurants they'll just stop using it. Any marginal delivery is pure profit for a restaurant.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-doordash-rest...

https://support.google.com/business/thread/1857758?hl=en

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#30

Post by marcell » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

> “These orders don’t pay for our expenses or our time. We actually lose money when we take those orders. If I pick up an order that is 10 miles away and deliver it 6 miles I’m traveling 16 miles for a $3 order — so I have lost money. I’m in the negative when I account for gas, wear and tear, and other expenses. Not to mention my time.”

This begs an obvious question: why are people choosing to do this if it pays $0/hr? It’s voluntary. Can they find something better to do with their time?