Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

about.doordash.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 320 posts

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#281

Post by SheinhardtWigCo »

> As always, 100% of a consumer’s tip goes to the Dasher.

“As always” is a lie. Moving the tip prompt to after checkout is far more consequential than they’re admitting.

Previously, the way it worked was that you could tip $0 and they would compensate by steadily increasing their offer for the job until a dasher accepted it. This essentially meant that pre-checkout “tips” were bonus money for DoorDash, not the workers. It sounds like that scam is finally going away. No wonder they refer to the regulatory changes as “bad policies”. This is coming in other major markets and they know it.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#282

Post by bluSCALE4 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #68
bluSCALE4 wrote: post #51

I personally feel like outsourced delivery for hot food orders at peak hours is a flawed idea. I've used Grubhub and it seems like they try to group deliveries. In my situation, I had a driver pick up my food only to drive it around down and deliver it to me 40 minutes later. If I order from a place and they don't have a driver on staff, I won't order delivery.

The problem isn't that they group orders, it's that you weren't aware of it and weren't given the choice. You were made to believe that you were paying for a direct order and it's only after the fact you realize but by then it's too late and getting your money back is a hassle. There would be no problems if you were given the choice upfront to pay less for a grouped order or more for a direct order. The problem is th…

Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, I'm willing to order rolling the dice but once my order is picked up, they should do the right thing and be transparent. They have my money already and as you said, I now have the expectation that "I'm next".

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#283

Post by 4b11b4 »

somethoughts wrote: post #209
dragontamer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Foodsby can't scale to 15 min increments for all restaurants in the city. For some definition of increments and "all", yes they can. Restaraunt#1 delivers at 10:15am. Restaraunt#2 delivers at 10:30am. Etc. etc. etc. Covering the entirety of lunch hours. This is how it works in practice, today. If you're in a location with lots of Foodsby usage, then you might have 3 or 4 different Foodsby locations to check within…

Interestingly in Silicon Valley, there's an angel funded startup founded by an ex-Google foodie who worked with some of the more notable Asian restaurants (the super popular ones with long lines). She arrange it such that users from a given neighborhood could order via the website app by 4:30 from a specific set of 2-3 restaurants per day. The orders from a given neighborhood are bulk ordered for 3-4 drivers to pick…

Hello, what is the name of this? I am currently working with a few restaurants to launch almost the exact model. The idea is to transition from on-demand to in-advance.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#284

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

candiddevmike wrote: post #140
crmd wrote: post #131

As an old person, I'd like to point out that my hometown of New York City had a dynamic, world class restaurant scene, including a cornucopia of home delivery, long before the tech platform companies found a way to siphon ~40% of consumer spend out of the local restaurant economy in exchange for some friction reduction. We were doing great. But you had a drawer full of paper menus and had to call the restaurant.

And if you called the restaurant enough, you typically got on a first name basis with them and had incredible customer service. Now you're just another customer #47523 that created order #37324.

I definitely miss the experience of hearing “the usual?” once I tell them my address.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#285

Post by 4b11b4 »

hypeatei wrote: post #97
bluSCALE4 wrote: post #51

I personally feel like outsourced delivery for hot food orders at peak hours is a flawed idea. I've used Grubhub and it seems like they try to group deliveries. In my situation, I had a driver pick up my food only to drive it around down and deliver it to me 40 minutes later. If I order from a place and they don't have a driver on staff, I won't order delivery.

Yeah, stacked orders are a joke. From DD-related subreddits, it seems the algo typically bundles low tip orders with higher tipping orders. This is so the low tippers finally get their stuff delivered because no one else was taking it individually.

What a joke. This is just a band-aid.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#286

Post by syndicatedjelly »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #266
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often are people on e bikes getting mowed down where you live? What kind of hellscape do you live in where cycling causes you to ingest more polluted air than sitting in your bioweapon-proof, hermetically-sealed, fart-fermenting 3000 kilo Tesla? Sheesh

Are you joking that everywhere is a hellscape, or did you make a typo, or what? Because anywhere that has any air pollution, you'll ingest more when you're breathing harder and have no air filter.

I’m kinda joking, but I genuinely feel bad for people who live in places where cycling makes their health worse because of the air pollution. I had to deal with that situation a few summers ago when wildfires caused ash to rain from the sky and made the air quality shit. It felt like a low-level hell.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#287

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

Nextgrid wrote: post #46
kiba wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't really viable business models to begin with. Only VC funding can keep these online platform up.

The basic concept of food delivery existed long before tech and VC and was viable. The only reason these companies can't turn a profit is because all those microservices, ads and "engagement" don't come for free.

In NYC, before Seamless and the like, restaurants just offered free delivery when you called over the phone. It was just part of the deal; didn't have to be profitable on its own (the business it brought was enough). Restaurants evidently did fine back then.

Seamless et al are really just siphoning money out of restaurants’ pockets because you cannot, these days, be the only restaurant who still makes people call over the phone.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#288

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

theappsecguy wrote: post #144

I feel like the only viable model for these delivery apps is delivery with autonomous vehicles like Nuro (or any other, this is just the company I have heard of). Whether that’s actually viable and how soon, I have no idea, but the model as it stands does not work currently. A whole lot of people will lose income (no matter how mediocre) if this were to come to fruition though.

In New York, there is imply not enough space on the roads for autonomous vehicles to work for this purpose. Delivery only works now because delivery drivers all use bikes, e-bikes, and mopeds, which are immune to traffic.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#289

Post by sowbug »

Sai_ wrote: post #280
darth_avocado wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other part of this is that Doordash workers need to pay for their own delivery vehicles (gas, upkeep etc.) which factors into the actual wages they get. They are not making significantly more than minimum wage workers.

Can they not offset these expenses against their tax? If you’re running a business out of your vehicle, the cost of operating that vehicle is the cost of running the business which should be treated like that by the tax code.

The marginal federal tax rate for someone making $50,000 is 12%. So every dollar spent on gas (or whatever other deductible expenses) would lower federal taxes by 12 cents.

But I'd be surprised if many drivers grossed more than $50K/year. If they earn less, the tax benefit of deductibility is even smaller.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#290

Post by SheinhardtWigCo »

dangrossman wrote: post #11

"Tips" were effectively bids for service under the old model, as they were paid before the service was performed and determined whether a driver felt it worthwhile to accept that order. Now DoorDash will have to dynamically figure out how much to charge the customer to both interest drivers and meet this minimum pay requirement. I'm interested in seeing how it turns out.

It wasn’t even that - just extra money for DoorDash, because they would increase their portion of the offer to compensate for a lower “tip”.
Post reply on HN