DoorDash and UberEats Cost Drivers $550 Million In Tips, NYC Says (gothamist.com) 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gothamist: City regulators on Tuesday accused Uber and DoorDash of deliberately altering their app interfaces to discourage customers from tipping food delivery workers, a move that has cost the employees more than $550 million over the last two years. A report (PDF) published by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection argues that food delivery app giants retaliated against minimum wage rules for delivery drivers that took effect in December 2023 by implementing "design tricks" that obscure opportunities to offer a tip in their mobile apps.
DoorDash explicitly blames the new wage rules for removing the simpler tipping option. "In response to regulations in New York City, you will now only be able to add a tip for your Dasher after they have been assigned," a message on the app's checkout page states. Other food delivery apps like GrubHub allow customers the option to add a tip before checking out. The average tip for DoorDash and Uber Eats drivers in the city fell from $2.17 to 76 cents per delivery after the companies made the changes to their apps, the report found. Both companies also issue messages to customers in the city telling them the prices for their orders were "set by an algorithm using your personal data." Further reading: Uber and DoorDash Try To Halt NYC Law That Encourages Tipping
DoorDash explicitly blames the new wage rules for removing the simpler tipping option. "In response to regulations in New York City, you will now only be able to add a tip for your Dasher after they have been assigned," a message on the app's checkout page states. Other food delivery apps like GrubHub allow customers the option to add a tip before checking out. The average tip for DoorDash and Uber Eats drivers in the city fell from $2.17 to 76 cents per delivery after the companies made the changes to their apps, the report found. Both companies also issue messages to customers in the city telling them the prices for their orders were "set by an algorithm using your personal data." Further reading: Uber and DoorDash Try To Halt NYC Law That Encourages Tipping
Now they're employees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
DoorDash and Uber Eats should be paying their drivers more.
No one should EVER tip before check-out, or even before the service has been completely rendered, that shouldn't be an option.
The entire concept of payment for service in America is broken.
Re:Everything sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
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You will when you experience drivers refusing your order because there is no prepaid tip. How you think it should work doesn't determine how it actually works.
What I don't believe is the absurdly low average tips reported in the article. For me, preauthorizing less than $10 increases the odds the order will not be delivered.
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I don't experience that at all, but then I live in a place where people don't tip because tipping culture is stupid.
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Yes. I don't understand tipping for a delivery prior to that service being satisfactorily rendered.
I'll only do this for places that do their own delivery, not using one of these "services" and I have a history with them knowing how good the service is. Then I'll throw a nice fat tip on top of the initial payment, and most of the time I end up getting extras for it after a time or two. That's what these driving services have really messed up for us, developing a personal relationship with restaurants in your area. They know I'm going to come back, and tip well whether I dine in or order delivery, and I k
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Yes. I don't understand tipping for a delivery prior to that service being satisfactorily rendered.
Easier to tip in advance assuming serve will be good enough to justify the tip and reduce after the fact if it isn’t.
Re: Everything sucks (Score:1, Interesting)
I signed up for DoorDash to get a ton of airline miles after making one delivery.
Holy cow they treat drivers horribly. $8 offer for a 10 mile run sounded fine. The restaurant said the order was already picked up. So I had to cancel. Which DoorDash threatened to ban me over for cancelling a stolen order.
Then my second order was $4 for 8 miles. I snagged it annoyed because I wanted the miles.
Restaurant order wasnâ(TM)t ready. I pressed âoeorder not readyâ button. Nothing changed. 15 min
Re: Everything sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Customers should pay more, but they don't want to.
Customers could tip more, but they are choosing not to.
For the employers to pay their workers more, customers have to pay more, but we know they don't want to (if they did they'd tip more).
The problem is there are drivers that will accept the lower pay, as long as there are workers will accept the lower pay, there's no reason for employers to increase wages.
Re: Everything sucks (Score:2)
I tip pretty well even though Iâ(TM)m annoyed that I have to pay their salary. It should be done for good service. They donâ(TM)t get it because they demand it.
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Is it the customer's responsibility to pay more than the price? It's kind of a norm, but it's also kind of not, due to the digital nature of this. And there are plenty of situations where there is no norm to tip. You wouldn't dream of tipping when a ticket handler admits you at a concert or the security guard points out the guestbook.
On the other hand, what these companies seem to want to do is to replace tips with offers and get rid of tips. They want customers to make an offer of extra money for the drive
Re: Everything sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, you know what REALLY adds to the costs? Parasitical services sitting between the customer and restaurant who take a 15-30% cut merely for facilitating the transaction. AND slapping a delivery charge on top. AND processing fees. AND expecting the customer to tip when their own delivery metrics / ratings could reward prompt delivery with a bonus. AND payout schedules to restaurants which disadvantage them even more by withholding money by up to a week.
There is no one remedy for this BS, but requiring these services to break down their charges separate to restaurant's "walk-in" prices would be a major start. And to ban services from scraping menus from restaurants without consent or adjusting their prices. And to ban ghost restaurants. And to treat drivers as employees with guaranteed paid time off, sick pay and a set minimum wage. And some regulatory scrutiny of the whole industry which exists to set customer against restaurant and vice versa when it is the parasites in the middle everyone should be blaming.
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Firstly these companies are not "employers".
Courts all over the world disagree. A contractor has significant autonomy, Doordash drivers do not. If you have no autonomy then you aren't a contactor.
Re: Everything sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Customers should pay more, but they don't want to.
What a fucking stupid comment. Customers always pay what they see on the receipt.
Customers could tip more, but they are choosing not to.
Customers shouldn't tip for food unless the service was excellent or to avoid getting lose change. The idea that customers should "tip more" is fundamentally an extension of the stupid broken system that underpays employees and treats the services industry like shit. You don't run businesses at the whim of customer generosity (except in America apparently).
For the employers to pay their workers more, customers have to pay more, but we know they don't want to (if they did they'd tip more).
Customers don't get to express their "wants" when they get a bill. They either pay, or they don't. If your business can't survive based on what the customer is willing to pay then you shouldn't be in business. Restaurants all over the world have a far higher sticker price than the USA despite the USA being the "richest" country. They are doing fine elsewhere.
I take it you've never left your little country so can't comprehend how broken your system is.
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"For the employers to pay their workers more, customers have to pay more, but we know they don't want to (if they did they'd tip more)."
FALSE.
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The entire concept of payment for service in America is broken.
Much of what fundamentally defines America is broken. We have Nazis dragging people out of their houses, or shooting them in the streets. It's just one more thing on the pile.
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Don't lie, you're not dragging them out of the homes and shooting them in the streets. ... You're shooting them in their cars.
PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES A LIVABLE WAGE YOU FUCKING SCUM (Score:2, Insightful)
and leave me the fuck alone with your corporate begging for hand outs. get the fuck off my device. i live in a country where we have $20+/hr minimum wage, we don't tip unless you've done an outstanding job and the customer is rich. like actually just fuck off with your tipping culture; these apps are in a myriad of markets and we don't fucking want your fucking disgusting tipping culture infecting our societies.
PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES A LIVABLE WAGE YOU FUCKING SCUMBAGS
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i completely agree. i don't use these apps but i still feel the indignation.
the food i eat is almost exclusively sourced from the supermarket, and i walk the isles myself. i might not live in a poor country, but i'm poor. the lack of sense exhibited by those with the most dollars is mind boggling.
fuck imagine if the supermarket started auto-prompting for tips at the self-serve checkout; its fucking coming soon to a store near you I promise you.
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relatively high minimum wage , like $15+
$15 / hr translates to ~ $30,000 per year for a full-time job, which these are not. That's not "high" by any reasonable standard. From that, you might take home $20k, after taxes, just to make the number easy. Where are you going to find a livable apartment on $20k per year? If rent is, say, $1k per month, you have a *whopping* $650 left over for your other expenses.
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They allow people to intentionally not tip in order to secure an effective discount at the expense of everyone else.
The price should be the price, if service is bad you complain about it and if service is above and beyond then you can still provide an optional tip.
Re: PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES A LIVABLE WAGE YOU FUCKING (Score:2)
That's why I keep saying it is capitalism itself that is wrong. A person should be payed for the difficulty of the job, not according to the number of people you could be replaced by.
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That's why I keep saying it is capitalism itself that is wrong. A person should be payed for the difficulty of the job, not according to the number of people you could be replaced by.
This is pretty much the same thing... low skilled jobs tend to have a larger pool of applicants, more competition in those jobs means you usually end up with lower wages. The opposite happens when you have a system artificially lower wages so you need to import people who want to work at those wages; I believe the UK had (has?) this issue with nursing wages not growing so the rate of immigrant nurses outpaced the rate of immigrants in the country as a whole.
Cost controls don't work either way.
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No it isn't the same thing. There are many extremely hard jobs with very low pay. Care home worker, social worker, garbage man, most blue collar jobs involve being exposed to the weather. You have no idea what a retail store manager goes through-- they are basically on call 24/7 to fill in at any time. Any job that destroys the body over time. But because these are 'uneducated' jobs, everyone keeps wages low and there is no health coverage.
Controversial Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you go to a sit down restaurant and tip less than 15% you'll be seen as cheap. If you go below 10% or leave nothing you are breaking the social contract and people will be angry and possibly retaliate by yelling or messing w/ your food if you come again. This at least is well understood.
Or if you're a tourist who's never intending to go back then it's a way to get a discount.
Yes it's a totally broken system, it's intentionally designed to mislead customers about the true prices, as well as put pressure on them to pay more than they have to.
In other countries the prices (including any applicable taxes and service fees) are clearly displayed, and your free to leave an optional tip (or not) if the service was very good. If the service was bad you can and should complain about it.
Re: Controversial Opinion (Score:2)
The way I have always read it is that American managers and owners just want to take the money and run. They don't want to field complaints from customers because that makes their job harder.
Re: Controversial Opinion (Score:2)
Cash Tips (Score:2)
People put tips on credit cards?
These apps are predatory (Score:4)
I live in New York City and the experience may not be the same elsewhere, but before the apps, nearly every restaurant/bodega would deliver. There was almost never a delivery fee, and the delivery people never felt like their ability to eat the next day would depend on how quickly the order got to it's recipient, so they weren't operating their vehicles in an (utterly) insane manner.
Everyone pays more and no one gets any more value than before the apps existed.
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It's a case of volume that these apps have changed. For you nearly every restaurant / bodega would deliver, but in reality you'll see that the actual delivery component of the restaurant's operations would have been far smaller back then compared to now. Consumer trends have changed dramatically, and you can offer a free service for something makes up only a small component of your business (or absorb the cost without raising your prices). And delivery was always a shit job, that hasn't changed (though your
I don't DoorDash or UberEats, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I understand the issue, it's that customers could add/specify a tip in an attempt to game the system and get their food faster (or just not have their order sit waiting for someone to pick it up), and now that customers are tipping after the delivery (and drivers are picking up orders blind), tips are way down.
OK, I don't think it's fair to say the services with their post-delivery tipping "cost drivers $550 Million" - it's a made-up number, nothing more - drivers are getting what people want to pay/tip, rather than pre-tip to try and get a better experience...
\o/ (Score:1)
Continuum:
Back in the day: Hunt your own food, kill it, cook it, eat it.
dot dot dot.
Today in fat-ass-world: Someone else hunts for your food, kills it, vacuum packs / freezes it / delivers it to a local hub where yet another someone else cooks it and yet a third guy collects it for you and drops it off.
Presumably the next step is someone else eats it for you then delivers their poop to you for you to deposit in your toilet (or maybe for an extra charge they'll pop it in there for you) ?
Re: \o/ (Score:1)
If they're not independent contractors (Score:1)
If a customer tried to give me money or other gifts personally, I would have to report it to my manager under anti-corruption and anti-bribery policies.
"Tipping" and bribes can influence an employee to behave in ways more favorable to the tipper and less favorable to the employer.
A waiter might do stuff for a good tipper that can be harmful to a restaurant.
A novel ideay (Score:2)
Rent seeking (Score:1)
Get a real job (Score:1)
Gig work is an obvious scam against workers.
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No, mods. This is not trolling. It's just truth.
But so they have ninimun wage? (Score:3)