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Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

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Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#411

Post by dfxm12 »

giarc wrote: post #359
slfnflctd wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We came to the same conclusion a couple weeks ago. As a bonus, you're eliminating a person/environment from the loop (the delivery driver & their car), thereby reducing your Covid-19 attack surface. Edit: I have also both read about & seen firsthand food delivery drivers with someone else in the car. It's almost certainly someone from the same household, but still, that's potentially yet another unknown, potentially…

I've had amazon deliveries where it appears the whole family was in the car. Kind of heart breaking to think that a family of 4 has to drive around so I can get my AA batteries same day. We need drone deliveries.

Not for nothing, but more than drone deliveries, we need to make sure families like this have access to daycare for their kids.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#412

Post by Super_Jambo »

yreg wrote: post #253
shiftpgdn wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full price was paid because a door dash card was used to pay for the order on pickup.

Which should have triggered some sanity check indicating that their scraped data is way off.

They wanted high orders for the negotiation when getting a new restaurant signed up.

"Hey in the last month we delivered X amount of your food! If we don't list you then you'll lose those sales."

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#413

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

imgabe wrote: post #156
akiselev wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many transient backpackers actually work for these companies to fund their immediate journeys and what do they have to do with a debate on localized externalities that they never experience?

No idea. It is probably not anywhere near the number of salaried employees who bully local governments into passing wage laws they will never experience the unintended consequences of. Yet somehow they still feel entitled to decide for other people what working arrangements they should be allowed to make for themselves.

Hi. You must be new to HN.

Lots of people with a 200k salary, entitlement, keyboard, and some time, itching yo have a say on how people making min wage should be able to transact.

Nothing new under soviet-harvard education. Please move along.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#414

Post by jeegsy »

hnick wrote: post #201
Barrin92 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know if I'm living in a different world than everyone else but I've been ordering food and taking cabs all my life and I've never had to deal with any friction. Like, you call the pizzeria, tell them what you want and then some college student delivers your stuff, and if you order for more than 20 bucks it doesn't cost you anything. Not even being facetious, but what problem do these apps solve? I al…

I dunno, even at physical restaurants or cafes I often have issues where they didn't hear my order correctly. Just today I had a guy repeat my order (thank you to people who do this, it's the only way) and he'd forgotten the cheese. Phone calls to ethnic restaurants (as with GP, no offense intended) are another layer of trouble. With my local noisy Indonesian restaurant we had a 50% miss rate on our orders so usually…

DD, UberEats and the like screw up orders too. I've had a few errors even though "i didnt have to talk to anyone"

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#415

Post by deegles »

Traster wrote: post #251
cletus wrote: post #166

Wow, that was great. And honestly good on them for profit-taking on this arbitrage. The author likes to pin this on zero-interest rates ("ZIRP") and that certainly explains why the system is awash with cash but I'd say he's missing a key point here. When I moved to NYC (~10 years ago) I didn't order delivery at all. Honestly it's a huge pain. To call someone up and try and communicate an order to someone who probably…

This is like the iPhone SE conversation - there was always a big group of people who would tell you that the reason they buy the iPhone SE is because it's the smallest iPhone. But its very clear that the company making iPhones is certain that people buy the iPhone SE because it's cheap. It's the same here. Everyone will always tell you that these knew gig economy companies are so much better! Their service is better,…

I'm happy to pay delivery fees to the restaurant. I'm less happy to pay fees to drive returns for growth-obsessed venture funds.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#416

Post by steveklabnik »

MattGaiser wrote: post #56
imgabe wrote: post #49

Just some back-of-the-napkin math if you wanted to do this "right". Let's say you hire drivers as employees and pay them $15/hr plus tips and reimburse them for mileage. You charge a $4.99 delivery fee. Drivers work set shifts and are paid hourly whether they are making deliveries or not. That means each driver needs to be making at least 4 deliveries an hour or you're losing money. That's not even really counting fo…

> Domino's and lots of other places do it, but they probably aren't paying $15/hour and they also have one central location and more predictable demand. One thing to note about Dominos is that people pay at the door, so they would need to look the delivery guy in the face as they stiff him on the tip. Not required for the delivery apps and fewer people tip there.Because people tip, you can pay lower wages. I had a re…

As someone who delivered pizza for a long time, I can assure you that folks who don't tip absolutely do not care about having to look you in the face or not.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#417

Post by Thriptic »

bko wrote: post #338
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The owner made a massive profit and the shelter gets free food and it didn’t cost you anything? We’re in the midst of a pandemic. The restaurant stays afloat, nothing more. The shelter got a donation, and I got promises of comped deliveries and catering. It cost me $5,000; it cost DoorDash over twenty thousand.

This seems very unethical. The fact that you don't like Softbank or DoorDash or the gig-economy or that you're sending pizza to homeless people is irrelevant. The fact is you're exploiting a bug to personally benefit at the expense of investors. Why wouldn't you apply the same principals of ethical hacking, where you would notify the party of the exploit?

I'm confused. Doordash is knowingly reselling an item for 75% off and someone bought many of the items. No one was defrauded; everyone in the transaction was paid what they wanted to charge, and everyone got what they paid for. What is unethical here? Are you saying it's unethical to take advantage of a sale?

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#418

Post by VBprogrammer »

bko wrote: post #405
Majromax wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My original comment said its not okay to steal from a company even if you don't like that company. Your original comment said it was wrong to exploit a bug, to which the parent poster retorted that this was a feature and not a bug. Here, you've gone further to claim that this behaviour is stealing, and I'd like to explore that for a minute: what possible moral or legal right does Doordash have to an operating profi…

I think it is a bug. I think they relied too heavily on automation and scraping to get a list of all the restaurants, menus and prices. From the original article: > My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes. > My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his…

Arguing from the position where you define the ethical framework and then refuse to engage in any discussion about whether that framework is correct is kind of tautological.

In this case a homeless shelter ended up with a lot of pizza (which I'm presuming they consented to receiving), a local business got a cash injection and the OP got some perks. Under your ethical framework a bunch of silicon valley types had to find some other way of pissing $20k up the wall.

I know which outcome I prefer, though I personally wouldn't have done it.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#419

Post by flomble »

bko wrote: post #405
Majromax wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My original comment said its not okay to steal from a company even if you don't like that company. Your original comment said it was wrong to exploit a bug, to which the parent poster retorted that this was a feature and not a bug. Here, you've gone further to claim that this behaviour is stealing, and I'd like to explore that for a minute: what possible moral or legal right does Doordash have to an operating profi…

I think it is a bug. I think they relied too heavily on automation and scraping to get a list of all the restaurants, menus and prices. From the original article: > My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes. > My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his…

This is the crux: does it count as stealing to accept the offer of a contract which causes the offering party to lose money?

My answer is no. They offered the service at a certain price, you accepted it. Whether either party profits or not is not part of the contract.

So no theft has taken place. If you want to claim that's it's unethical to take the free money that they're offering, you need to provide a justification for why that is. The onus is on you.

The only way I can see you attempting to justify it is by saying that it involves taking advantage of unforeseen consequences of the contract. But as has been pointed out, they fully intended to lose money, so that doesn't work.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#420

Post by snowwrestler »

golergka wrote: post #385
mikeryan wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Doordash delivery guy actually has to pick up the food though right? This also does probably provide some legal cover as well.

He can pick up empty boxes and then immediately hand them back as the delivery address is the restoraunt address, no?

If the food delivery driver is knowingly not delivering any food, but is paying for the "food" anyway... that seems pretty close to fraud.

If you order a shitload of real food and the pricing works out well for the restaurant, it's weird but it is still following the rules that DoorDash set out.

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