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UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

businessinsider.com

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Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#121

Post by cortesoft »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #113
cortesoft wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I am not saying it isn't doable to order the old fashioned way, but the newer system is CLEARLY easier and faster. There is simply no way you could order and be done with a call in order in 15 seconds. Your argument (that it is not much of a barrier to use the old way) can be made for so many of the quality of life improvements we have made over the course of human history. Not every advancement is an entire n…

Personally, I prefer to give my money directly to the food maker if possible. They are local and I want them to succeed. Admittedly I don't use these services often, but a couple of local places have mobile friendly webpage and I'm happy with the friction. I think over the food makers will simply gat decent platforms.

I like having a single portal to order from hundreds of restaurants. I use them for food discovery, and then I can order from any without having to re-enter info.

I would happily pay more for this service. I don’t want to take advantage of anyone, so please charge me enough to get me this kind of service and pay everyone a fair wage.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#122

Post by vkou »

barkingcat wrote: post #106
vkou wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because any food business already has insanely tight margins, and operates incredibly efficiently. The scenario proposed by the grandparent poster adds so much waste and slack and overhead in the system that the family-owned-and-operated Thai kitchen on Main St. will eat Uber's lunch, and the Dominos franchise two doors down from it will pick through its bones.

the family operated kitchen on Main St. has rent, fire codes, safety equipment needs, some form of sanitation code/inspection to pass with the city. Uber Chef ignores all of that and bypasses all overhead - you don't need a restaurant or even the physical location of a building to employ chefs to cook food. No need for health inspections or expensive fire suppression equipment. (you use people who want to rent their…

The reason a restaurant wants the physical location of a building to cook food is because you can't make industrial quantities of food in your kitchen. Well, you can try, but it's going to be slow, inefficient, and your kitchen will become unusable quite quickly.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#123

Post by maxerickson »

cactus2093 wrote: post #67
supernova87a wrote: post #32

Uber is making it harder and harder to get on board with the idea that it's not an employer. Leveling out people's pay over multiple trips or retroactively adjusting the reward per job sure sounds like an employer having very strong control over the work conditions and compensation. And this almost brings back echoes of Doordash (?) when it was caught taking drivers' tips so that their pay was reduced to the minimum…

Just 17% of Uber and Lyft drivers surveyed want to remain full-time employees [0]. How does this not stop this whole conversation in its tracks immediately? There's so much grandstanding about this, you and every other politician or upper middle class tech worker has their takes on how these poor drivers are being tricked into bad deals they can't understand and need the protection of full-time employment. But it's n…

Might as well link the source of the survey vs a Forbes blag: https://therideshareguy.com/california-sues-uber-and-lyft-fo...

Too bad they didn't ask questions like "do you want to deal with independent contractor taxes" and "do you want to set your own hours" and so on, to drill down into why they liked the independent contractor status.

Maybe the solution is to force ride share companies to truly act as matchmakers, where they show passengers and drivers the book and collect a small fee for completed transactions rather than using opaque pricing to maximize their take from both sides of the transaction.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#124

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

zepearl wrote: post #114
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland is strange because restaurant food is so tremendously expensive there compared to the rest of the world. In most cities in America, for $5 you can get a half-decent meal that's quite a bit more palatable than airline food, and for $10 you can get something from (mostly immigrant-run) restaurants that's somewhat nutritious as well. There are meal-delivery services here that are basically what you describe,…

Thanks for the reply - I agree & disagree with you. On one hand you are absolutely correct stating that swiss restaurants are in general more expensive than anywhere (subjective - e.g. a 30$ small menu might be ok here, but we do have as well a higher income and going to the restaurant is not something that people do often), but on the other hand I did like airline food (which you basically describe as being "the wor…

I can expand upon the $5 - $10 meal by example.

I'm from southern California. I worked in Wellington, New Zealand for a stint, and I found that restaurants were priced about the same as back home. That is to say, an average sit-down restaurant meal of equivalent quality was roughly the same price in USD.

However, in America, there's an entirely different class of much cheaper food (takeout food), and younger people in metropolitan areas eat this food very often. These were usually powered by cheap immigrant labor, often paid under the table to skirt taxes and mandatory benefits.

Labor protections in New Zealand are much higher, of course, and without an easily exploitable underclass, this food simply can't exist there. There weren't really regular kiwis who ate out 1 - 2x per day - virtually all of them cooked most of their meals at home themselves.

This is the environment in which these food delivery companies are operating. These restaurants already have extremely thin margins, consumers are price-sensitive, and as long as the delivery company is just a middle-man, they'll struggle to do this thing profitably. If they lose access to their cheap labor by having to re-classify drivers as actual employees, it might be impossible.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#125

Post by ABCLAW »

cortesoft wrote: post #96
Balgair wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to trivialize your experiences (toddlers are not easy), but for me, the list you give isn't all that much of a barrier. Yes, it is simpler to use the app, but not all that much more. Also, where I am, they take the credit card at the door, not over the phone. Most use a Square-style card reader attached to a work phone, even the mom-n-pop delivery, even now in the pandemic (they use gloves mostly).

Again, I am not saying it isn't doable to order the old fashioned way, but the newer system is CLEARLY easier and faster. There is simply no way you could order and be done with a call in order in 15 seconds. Your argument (that it is not much of a barrier to use the old way) can be made for so many of the quality of life improvements we have made over the course of human history. Not every advancement is an entire n…

> I feel like there has been a backlash against time saving tech

It isn't a luddite backlash. It's just that in many cases the value-add for customers doesn't justify the price difference.

There are certain benefits to apps that exist, don't get me wrong. Discoverability, flexible pricing, direct-to-consumer-marketing, etc. But most of those don't apply to me at the consumer level. Do I want to pay 20% more for the convenience of browsing menus? Not really. I'm on the app to buy food and get it delivered. Insofar as some places now offer delivery where before they didn't, I benefit. Insofar as the same places I used to frequent now apply a markup to cover the cut the app gets, I lose out.

The UX improvement of being able to press 'reorder' has never eclipsed calling into my favourite local spot, asking for the regular, wishing the owner well, then discovering he put extra dumplings in the bag for me.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#126

Post by cortesoft »

ABCLAW wrote: post #125
cortesoft wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I am not saying it isn't doable to order the old fashioned way, but the newer system is CLEARLY easier and faster. There is simply no way you could order and be done with a call in order in 15 seconds. Your argument (that it is not much of a barrier to use the old way) can be made for so many of the quality of life improvements we have made over the course of human history. Not every advancement is an entire n…

> I feel like there has been a backlash against time saving tech It isn't a luddite backlash. It's just that in many cases the value-add for customers doesn't justify the price difference. There are certain benefits to apps that exist, don't get me wrong. Discoverability, flexible pricing, direct-to-consumer-marketing, etc. But most of those don't apply to me at the consumer level. Do I want to pay 20% more for the c…

I guess the features means more for me... I would pay 20% more for the consistent menus, one touch ordering and reordering, not having to re-enter payment information, and not having to talk to anyone on the phone.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#127

Post by svrb »

ABCLAW wrote: post #125
cortesoft wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I am not saying it isn't doable to order the old fashioned way, but the newer system is CLEARLY easier and faster. There is simply no way you could order and be done with a call in order in 15 seconds. Your argument (that it is not much of a barrier to use the old way) can be made for so many of the quality of life improvements we have made over the course of human history. Not every advancement is an entire n…

> I feel like there has been a backlash against time saving tech It isn't a luddite backlash. It's just that in many cases the value-add for customers doesn't justify the price difference. There are certain benefits to apps that exist, don't get me wrong. Discoverability, flexible pricing, direct-to-consumer-marketing, etc. But most of those don't apply to me at the consumer level. Do I want to pay 20% more for the c…

> It's just that in many cases the value-add for customers doesn't justify the price difference.

Hold on, why does your opinion about the value-add get to determine whether I should be allowed to pay for that convenience?

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#128

Post by propogandist »

cortesoft wrote: post #96
Balgair wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to trivialize your experiences (toddlers are not easy), but for me, the list you give isn't all that much of a barrier. Yes, it is simpler to use the app, but not all that much more. Also, where I am, they take the credit card at the door, not over the phone. Most use a Square-style card reader attached to a work phone, even the mom-n-pop delivery, even now in the pandemic (they use gloves mostly).

Again, I am not saying it isn't doable to order the old fashioned way, but the newer system is CLEARLY easier and faster. There is simply no way you could order and be done with a call in order in 15 seconds. Your argument (that it is not much of a barrier to use the old way) can be made for so many of the quality of life improvements we have made over the course of human history. Not every advancement is an entire n…

by using Uber and virtually all delivery apps, you're eating into the restaurant's margins and allowing a big corporation to shaft the delivery guy and really everyone in the supply chain.

You're also enabling a parasitic corporation to generate more revenue, when it should be shuttered with nearly a billion in losses every quarter.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#129

Post by awodol »

iso1631 wrote: post #78
awodol wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is most restaurants in my city unless they're pizza just don't deliver, and this applies to lots of cities across the country let alone suburbs.

I wonder if it's a cultural thing, what country are you in?

US. I've had delivery when I visited family in London or Dubai where there was a much better delivery experience so I know it can be great, but it just doesn't seem to be a thing outside of a few cities here.

Re: UberEats could be underpaying delivery drivers on 21% of trips

#130

Post by treeman79 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #35
supernova87a wrote: post #32

Uber is making it harder and harder to get on board with the idea that it's not an employer. Leveling out people's pay over multiple trips or retroactively adjusting the reward per job sure sounds like an employer having very strong control over the work conditions and compensation. And this almost brings back echoes of Doordash (?) when it was caught taking drivers' tips so that their pay was reduced to the minimum…

> It's like Uber are trying to shoot themselves in the foot with all the cost squeezing and profit seeking at the same time they're in a fundamental fight defining what they are. I don't think they have a choice. UberEats is fundamentally unprofitable. If it was run profitably, the high(er) prices would drive a large portion of their customers away and into the arms of other "startups" willing to run at a loss or tow…

I once got paid 17 dollars to deliver a smoothie. Took me nearly an hour.

I found most of clients fell into two categories.

  Poor and really should not be using the service.
Rich areas where cost isn’t an issue.

Middle of the day was to a lot of businesses/schools. Lunch tips were crap so I avoided that time frame.

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