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DoorDash from Application to IPO

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#81

Post by cstejerean »

danenania wrote: post #36
mynameisvlad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My order from a restaurant that's a 5 minute drive away (raising a puppy, I can't really leave him alone right now) arrived almost 40 minutes after it was picked up. I was given a credit that didn't even cover the delivery and service fees, let alone the tip that they don't let you edit after the order.

UberEats has a "guaranteed delivery time" feature that they pretty much never go past in my experience. The delivery usually arrives sooner, but at least you know what the worst case scenario is. They also recently added "priority delivery" which lets you ensure the driver won't make any other stops between the restaurant and your house for a few extra bucks--this seems to drastically improve predictability and is we…

Guaranteed delivery hasn’t been my experience with Uber Eats. I almost always pick priority delivery but on many occasions I’ve had food sit at the restaurant for 30+ minutes waiting for pickup. And Uber always was hiding behind we’re waiting for the restaurant to prepare the order when in reality they’re waiting to assign a driver.

After 3 such incidents I gave up and deleted the app. I don’t mind paying $10+ in fees for convenience, but not knowing if the food will show up on time or an hour late destroyed all the benefit.

Problem is they all seem to be flaky. The challenge of working with an unreliable army of independent contractors I guess.

So at this point when I need food to show up on time I go and pick it up myself, and save delivery for when I don’t care if the food is an hour late.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#82

Post by mrkramer »

I don't use food delivery services so I'm not familiar with industry but from the business point of view can somebody explain me how GrubHub being 15 years old has $1.3bn of revenue but UberEats and DoorDash being much younger have $2.5bn and $1.9bn of revenue respectively.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#83

Post by bitbckt »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59
sxg wrote: post #15

As a customer, DoorDash is just consistently a terrible experience. I have the DashPass, which was advertised as free delivery for many restaurants. Turns out it only works if you spend $12, and even then sometimes it doesn’t apply. If you check prices between the app and the actual restaurants’ websites, there’s often an extra $2-3 added on for each item on DoorDash (I don’t blame the restaurants). When it’s all sai…

> DoorDash is just consistently a terrible experience In New York, Caviar used to be great. The quality noticeably plummeted after DoorDash bought them. To the point that I have since deleted the app.

That's been my experience in San Francisco, as well.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#84

Post by pensketch »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59
sxg wrote: post #15

As a customer, DoorDash is just consistently a terrible experience. I have the DashPass, which was advertised as free delivery for many restaurants. Turns out it only works if you spend $12, and even then sometimes it doesn’t apply. If you check prices between the app and the actual restaurants’ websites, there’s often an extra $2-3 added on for each item on DoorDash (I don’t blame the restaurants). When it’s all sai…

> DoorDash is just consistently a terrible experience In New York, Caviar used to be great. The quality noticeably plummeted after DoorDash bought them. To the point that I have since deleted the app.

FWIW Caviar is/was still my favorite app for ordering food. No major quality reduction in the SFBay from what I've noticed (aside from pandemic related issues like slightly longer delays on peek evenings). Hopefully the kinks get ironed out for ya in NY.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#85

Post by dmitriid »

akarma wrote: post #50
strictnein wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users get something, restaurants lose, delivery people are abused and underpaid, but the founders will be very rich. Looking at the entire system there was very little added, there's just a lot of money being shifted to a small group of people.

At least in DoorDash's YC application, they pitched that delivery drivers wanted to make more money. When the drivers worked for one restaurant only, they would be sitting around most of the time waiting for an order. By delivering for many restaurants at once on DoorDash, they would be able to make more money and have less idle time. I'd love to see data, but I can intuitively imagine this being true, and the common…

> I'd love to see data, but I can intuitively imagine this being true, and the common view of "underpaid" being a view that isn't consistent with the history of the space.

Except, you know, the history of the space is consistent with delivery drivers being consistently underpaid, cheated out of tips and hazard pay etc. etc.

With Doordash alone multiple lawsuits against it for payments alone. So far Doordash has been settling those for millions of dollars ($5 mln in California, $2.5 in Washington).

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#86

Post by andirk »

saisundar wrote: post #27

Congrats to Doordash! The pandemic certainly helped accelerate this process, but I will add that within the bay-area, anecdotally, my first circle were all Dashpass subscribers for a while before 2020 too. Their partnerships with Chase, amongst others were smart, big moves. I do want to link here a super insightful/funny article that calls out how Doordash acquires new restaurants( amongst other ways of course) , and…

And I'll link to how cities, including in the Bay Area, are catching up to their price gouging shenanigans and puttig a stop to it https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/07/13/food-delivery-berkel... .

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#87

Post by KyleJune »

sxg wrote: post #15

As a customer, DoorDash is just consistently a terrible experience. I have the DashPass, which was advertised as free delivery for many restaurants. Turns out it only works if you spend $12, and even then sometimes it doesn’t apply. If you check prices between the app and the actual restaurants’ websites, there’s often an extra $2-3 added on for each item on DoorDash (I don’t blame the restaurants). When it’s all sai…

I used a coupon once then got an order confirmation email that didn't show the coupon. Tried disputing it to get them to apply the coupon, they refused and demanded a screenshot of the order before I clicked checkout which I obviously didn't have since I didn't expect them to scam me. I pressed further and they basically responded saying they spent more time on this issue then allowed and just offered a $5 credit for a future order. After using that I'll never order through doordash again. That $5 coupon just brought the price down to what it would be if I ordered directly from the restaurant.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#88

Post by therealx »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #68
anaphor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consistently get late orders, missing items, or the app is just completely down after I order and I can't access anything. Literally the only reason I keep using it is because of the lax refund/credits policy which results in me getting free food.

And as someone who uses both DoorDash and Skip the Dishes, those weirdly only ever happen to me on DoorDash.

They happen a lot with Postamtes too :/. Maybe it's locational?

I also noticed that Postamtes seems to give drivers either instructions or photos of last delivered foods based on time of day or something, as my deliverys between a bracket of hours are always in the same wrong unit, yet it's tons of different drivers and I complain each time.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#90

Post by treis »

danenania wrote: post #29
strictnein wrote: post #21

Another example of tech "disruption", which typically just means siphoning money from an established system and adding little in return.

The users apparently feel they are getting something in return. Otherwise why download and use the app (and pay extra for the food)?

At the moment Doordash is an elaborate scheme to funnel VC money to the restaurant/grocery business. So yes, it's good for customers and those businesses now. But their valuation implies that at some point that's going to change and they're going to start extracting ~$10 billion a year in value. It's hard to see how they're going to do that in a way that ultimately is good for customers.
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