
DoorDash still hasn’t changed its tipping policy - t23
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/20/20825937/doordash-tipping-policy-still-not-changed-food-delivery-app-gig-economy
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noodlesUK
This is incredibly annoying. Whilst I don’t really agree with tipping, it’s a
strongly ingrained cultural norm in the US, and what I _really_ don’t agree
with is lying to your customers. I made a DoorDash order just a few minutes
ago and it was the first time I had tipped cash to a delivery driver. The
driver seemed to be pretty pleased. I’d use an alternative delivery service
but I’m not sure which to use, and none of them seem to have the market
penetration doordash has here in the NW.

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Simulacra
I stopped using delivery apps because of the tipping. I hate it and I'm doing
my best to avoid it.

~~~
noodlesUK
Unfortunately when you’re in suburban US and you can’t or don’t want to drive,
you’re stuck with little other choice sometimes...

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kaybe
Can't you just call the restaurants themselves? Or did they stop their own
deliveries?

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Konnstann
A lot of restaurants have switched to delivery through third-party services,
which is a shame because the quality of service has really gone down. The
treatment of the workers is also significantly worse.

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lacker
It would be honest for them to simply remove tipping from their app. You don’t
tip the UPS guy who delivers packages, why should the social consensus be to
tip the DoorDash guy who also delivers packages. Pay them more to make up for
it.

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toomuchtodo
UPS guy has a union and gets paid a living wage. DoorDash can’t afford to do
the same.

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spectramax
Should we let the market forces play that out? No tip, less incentive to join
Door Dash as a driver. Also fix the minimum wage laws.

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gempir
If you let that play out DoorDash goes out because in reality it isn't
feasible to sustainably deliver to your doorstep in minutes.

UPS does it in a 1 day timeframe and not with food which could get cold or
something and they deliver to a lot more houses at once.

While DoorDash targets 1 customers house and lets 1 biker drive there. If you
want to pay for him to have a fair wage then you probably wouldn't order from
DoorDash anymore because it's too expensive

~~~
mytailorisrich
That would exactly be letting the market play out.

At the moment tips are a hidden cost that customers don't see or think about
when they order.

It effectively allows Doordash (and others) to present their service as being
cheaper than it really is.

If presenting the full cost upfront means people stop using the service then
it simply means that there is actually no viable market.

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ukoki
> If presenting the full cost upfront means people stop using the service then
> it simply means that there is actually no viable market.

There are plenty of food delivery companies (eg Deliveroo, Wolt, FoodPanda) in
countries without a tipping culture. Go to any European capital and chances
are you'll see loads of brightly-coloured cube-shaped backpacks cycling around
— so the companies seem to be doing OK.

~~~
mytailorisrich
I am in Europe and use Deliveroo from time to time. There are several of these
companies here, indeed. This does not mean that any of any of them are doing
OK in terms of bottom line.

According to figures from end of last year Deliveroo lost £185m while making
£277m in sale... Any 'normal' business would have collapsed even before
getting there.

These companies are like Uber and Lyft: The business case is very shaky and
they are facing employment law pressures at the same time. So we'll see...

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timoth3y
How is this not wage theft?

It's been a very long time since I've waited tables, but a company keeping
tips in this way is (or at least was) in serious violation of US labor laws.

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SpicyLemonZest
Doordash says they never keep tips; they pay drivers the full amount of your
tip always, plus some extra if you don’t tip enough. You can argue that’s not
the right way to look at it, but it’s hard to argue that it’s factually wrong
in a way that’d violate labor laws. No worker is getting less of a tip payout
than the amount you tipped them.

~~~
jobigoud
Aren't tips taxed differently than wage in the US? Anyway you can also see
this as DoorDash always paying the wage and pocketing the tips. When the user
tip goes towards the wage it's no longer a tip. If they were taxed differently
it would be obvious.

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avs733
of course they haven't. Why would they? There is no penalty for just lying to
their customers and continuing to profit from it.

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peteretep
I feel like there's potential for a class-action lawsuit there on behalf of
the customers.

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avs733
for...?

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hand_of_lixue
Bit bit where they tweeted "We're going to change this" back in July, and got
a bunch of press for it?
[https://twitter.com/t_xu/status/1153867334685089794](https://twitter.com/t_xu/status/1153867334685089794)

It shouldn't take a month to switch your tipping model to work the way it does
for the rest of the industry.

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duxup
I've just tried to avoid the gig economy generally now.

It is all about pushing risk onto "contractors" and customers.

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esotericn
Tip cash.

What, you can't be bothered? It's a faff?

Someone's job is to cart shit around the city, for you. To literally be your
bitch.

Step up.

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moreira
What is it, in your eyes, that makes their job more worthy of tipping than any
other job?

It’s a job, they get paid. I ordered something that cost $X including
delivery, I expect that to be the final total, not $X + “step up”.

If they’re not getting paid enough, enforce a higher minimum wage (it is also
a US-specific issue; tipping isn’t the norm in a lot of other developed
countries and the world doesn’t end).

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untog
They're worthy of tipping because they get paid shit-all.

As you say, the actual answer here is tightening minimum wage laws so that
they're actually effective, but given the state of DC these days I'm not
holding out hope.

So I tip.

~~~
beatgammit
If nobody tipped, restaurants and services like DoorDash would be forced to
pay employees more or nobody would take the job. Yet, we've made it into a
cultural thing, so employers have dropped wages (and gotten legal protection
for doing so) accordingly.

That being said, I think asking for a tip before a service has been rendered
is really weird and really screws up whatever sense there was in tipping.

I find it increasingly hard to tip for things like DoorDash because I'm
already charged directly for the service separately from the product, so that
signals to me that the person is already getting paid. I don't tip my
package/mail delivery person, so why should I tip my food delivery person?

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tkifxxxxvvvv
If you cared you would tip cash. The thing is, people don't care.

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notus
It is inconvenient to carry cash though. I would gladly tip cash if I didn't
have to drive to an ATM just to get it thereby defeating the purpose of having
something delivered.

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auspex
Why not keep a few hundred dollars in cash in a drawer for when you need it?

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miranda_rights
It just means you have a lot of 1s and 5s laying around as you usually want
small denominations for tipping, which (in my opinion) is a lot of cash to
have in the house. It also means that at some point, I'm walking away from the
ATM with a few hundred dollars in my pocket, which is not something I like to
do from a safety perspective.

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kaybe
I'd still want the cash available just in case the power goes out for a few
days.

