As if the tip actually goes to the dashers.

Drivers shouldn't be allowed to see the tip amount prior to delivery completion. That, or tipping shouldn't be allowed until after completion. I hate this more recent model of tipping before receiving service. Because as you said, it's a bid for service, not an acknowledgement of good service.

I'm really starting to feel like some of the people in threads like this who don't get this simple concept you stated are just experiencing cognitive dissonance about the fact that they themselves are happy to exploit the workers because they don't want to tip. (If I'm working for myself, and you hire me to perform a service, then I am your worker. 🤣 Fuck you, pay me.)

This. They are predatory to their drivers, their customers, and the restaurants they almost blackmail into using them. Awful awful company.

The trouble is in England if you don't use deliveroo or whatever, the only food you can get on takeaway (delivered or collection) is kebabs or pizza. The main restaurants tend not to bother with their own takeaway.

Where I live it's about £2 more on a order of any cost. That's not even close to being double, especially with a minimum spend of £10

Look at the socialist over here guys, over here in America we let our children go without lunch if they can't afford it. How else will they learn that they need to be a productive member of society?

It’s worse. They aren’t employees. They are independent contractors who in many cases assume all liability and have to pay their own payroll taxes. Most aren’t reporting it to their insurance company, much less thinking about retirement and healthcare. It only really works as a temporary side gig.

Get a minimum amount of compensation for doing a job? Do you hear yourself? That's madness!

A fine idea. Sadly, no one in that restaurant is being paid a living wage. It ain’t just the drivers.

correct on all parts, it pits dasher against customers. also these companies are still not profitable. that should tell you something.

the truth is that the business model just doesn't work. if you want to pay drivers actual living wages, delivery fees would have to be more than 20 dollars for each order.

Stop patronizing restaurants where they don't pay their staff a livable wage. Stop using delivery apps that don't pay their drivers a livable wage.

This predatory employers are the problem. Stop rewarding them with your business.

I don't use door dash much but I'm pretty in Canada at least there is a mandatory tip . At least there is with skip the dishes that's what I usually use .

You have to pay their wages instead of the giant company that's partially doing so already

If you have to tip to get someone to provide a service your already paying for then that is a bribe.

Modern extortion.

My friend would order food from a different shop that had delivery instead of walking across the fucking street to the place that quite literally was across the street. I could see it from my bedroom window.

Some people will do anything to avoid having to go out and while i'm very similar, I think like 3-4 blocks is my limit as far as walking. 5 mins for driving, any more and I'm just ordering something lol

Why do you just assume everyone can drive? Plenty of people either don't have a license or don't have a car.

"I'm going to the shit food station, you want anything?"

I've used these apps -- when I was quarantining because I had Covid, wasn't in a state to drive, and needed food.

I don't use them anymore, but these types of apps can fill a "need".

There are times these apps make sense. I crashed my motorcycle doing an ubereats delivery and broke my collarbone, and then used the service myself a bunch of times while healing. Ironic, but that's life.

Side note for the people wondering what happens when you don't tip upfront (on UE at least): Prospective drivers see an offer of $4-6 for a job that will take them 45 minutes and say "fuck that" while they slam the 'no' button. This will go on for a while until the system is able to find another order on the way to combine it with, or someone accepts it anyway.

Why? Who's holding a gun to the head of these drivers and forcing them to work for this gig? The onus isn't on the customers, it's on the drivers.

I stopped using them when I stopped being given free delivery because without the discount, a thing that costs about six bucks suddenly balloons to thirty fucking dollars. On top of it taking longer and my food arriving cold.

I had a local burger joint call me up to tell me that the our food was currently, and had been with the driver for the past 30 mins. They knew this because the guy decided to have dinner in the parking lot after picking up our order so I really try to avoid now

We should call it a bid, not extortion. You're (in theory) competing to get your order selected.

Exactly. I completely stopped using those food delivery services after the initial lockdown during COVID. They can almost double the price, can get cold food, and the drivers can be rude if they don't feel you're tip is adequate. It's simply not worth it for me.

Is it even convenient at that point? I don't know if I'd have an extra twenty I can keep tossing out there every time I'm trying to grab a bite.

Dashers can see what you tip on the app on average and nobody will pick up your order unless it's extremely convenient for them. They don't see the instructions until they pick up the order.

Oh, that's a good way to get them to ring the bell. I tried making them ring the bell other ways, but they never do. Uber Eats has a feature where they need to get a code from you to prove they handed you the food. I had several drivers leave the food at the door and then text me, asking me for the code. Fuck off

It’s worth noting that drivers don’t see the note until after they accept the order. There’s a good chance your food takes longer to be picked up because of your $0 tip.

Better to put the tip in the app, give cash, and then adjust the tip back to $0 after the delivery is made. Just communicate that with the driver to avoid confusion.

Before they also said the driver got 100% but behind the scenes they were essentially subtracting that amount from what they were going to pay the driver originally. Thus they could claim the driver got 100% of the tip while still pocketing the value of it.

no that is the truth, what it doesn't tell you is that the drivers are paid like 2.50 to 3 bucks per delivery. so tips makes up the majority of their earnings at this point.

I don't think anyone can outright say that they're lying with any amount of certainly, but it would be very very far from the first time a company got caught in a scandal then just lied about how they're going to fix it.

I don't understand why people want food delivery.. It is kinda expensive and I don't get it unless there is a significant discount.

It’s worth noting that drivers don’t see the notes until they accept the order.

I used to do the same as you until I dashed for a few months to make ends meet.

I can also tell you that some orders literally cost drivers money to make when the tip is too low. I’ve had countless 25-30 mile round trip orders that paid out $6-7 because the person didn’t tip. I passed on those orders because I would have been paying to deliver them. Drivers need to make about $0.75/mile driven to break even, and most look for $2+\mile. I now look at the distance from the restaurant and tip $2/mile for the one direction. But I’m also in a place where they’re pretty likely to get another order pretty quickly and don’t need to make it a round trip.

The problem really rests with DoorDash and Uber Eats for not paying enough. They recently dropped the base payout to $2/delivery, which will never not cost the driver money. It’s absurd and incredibly shitty how they choose to offload the responsibility of paying their drivers into the customer.

That is a legal requirement. But myself and others got a settlement from Amazon after they stole our tips for years. I got a check for $790 that they kept from me. I dunno if DD ever got caught doing the same, but businesses do try to get away with this stuff.

Can they reduce hourly pay based on tips received, as a loophole?

Ya I used to always tip cash but stopped all food delivery entirely ~5yr ago. By turning food delivery into a live auction everybody loses except the company running the service. Drivers compete against eachother accepting the absolute lowest fees while customers need to play the game of choosing an appropriate tip for a prompt delivery while also ideally not shorting the employee who ultimately accepts the order. But since to accept the order they need to compete with other drivers it's naturally going to lead to them accepting lower prices, allowing the delivery company to pocket the difference. Not a good system.

That's if you have the option of driving

How much of it?

I tried Instacart (United States). It tells you exactly what you will get paid before you accept an order. If the tip was more you will see it. Basically if you order Tylenol and 5 other items it will say the Store Name, 6 items, Total payout. (And distance) When you arrive at the store you get a list of the items, and the isle number/shelf if it is available. You scan each item into the app for it to be accepted, if the item is not the same code, it will make you send a message or alternate possibility to the orderer. And they approve/deny.

Long story short. You 100% know what you are getting paid before starting so if 1 order for 6 items says you make 20 dollars, and another says you make 6 dollars. The 20 dollar order will be accepted first.

The order actually does show how much tip comes with it. The system feeds each dasher based on their acceptance rate of orders..so if you accepted an order with a low tip, your position in the queue would be more likely to get the orders with larger tips than someone who turns down orders with smaller tips all the time. Naimsayin?

This comment seems pretty good, can I get your cash app info so I can tip you for it?

you don't know what you're talking about do you. why did you even bother typing all this up if you don't know shit.

the drivers are paid more or less constant and they can see the total payout and mileage. an order that doesn't have tip attached will slowly increase in payout until a driver takes it. so those orders tend to be slow.

orders do get ignored all the time and people complain about cold food all the time too.

You mean "fuck places where I've been socially obligated to pay someone's wage instead of their employer"

It's 100% on the tax system that incentivizes these payments.

I've made more as a server than most Americans make doing "appropriately compensated" work. Hitting median wage for your area as a server is easy in 95% of the US.

Ubereats lets you set the tip after the delivery. afaik the others don't.

Should be illegal to prompt a tip before services are rendered, including at those POS machines that ask you up front to tip even a small amount.

So little of that is actually under the control of the courier. I did that for a little bit, and generally the drive from the restaurant to the customer was the shortest part. You get an order for a restaurant that hopefully you're close to, but maybe you aren't. You get there and maybe the food is ready, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's been sitting on a shelf for half an hour. Maybe traffic is heavy, maybe the GPS gives you shitty fucking directions. Maybe you ordered from the wrong restaurant and instead of being 5 minutes it's 20. Sure, there are shitty couriers, but 9 times out of 10 your food is cold or late because of circumstances outside of their control.

I disagree. By ordering via these apps, you contribute to the people who exploit the drivers, but you don't make the decision to exploit them. It is a very big difference, in my opinion, because by ordering you don't decide the drivers should be exploited. It is the decision of the CEOs to do it, and while you of course have a part in it, I think it is a strong claim to say that OP is actively making it worse.

You're right, this isn't a tip, this is just paying for the quality of the service.

The problem, at least where I live (Montreal), is that for anyone in the service industry, your taxes assume you got at least 15% tip (or at least for waiters)

Tips may have been that way a hundred years ago but I've been in the restaurant industry in the US for over 15 years, and for the duration tips have been used as a means to offload labor costs to the customer. They are not optional for the majority of people who work for tips, they are the difference between paying bills and not.

The practice is antiquated and should be completely removed as the standard way to compensate restaurant workers. But the thing that anti tippers always seem to miss is that the labor costs will still be there and the owners are not going to take it out of their cut. The menu prices will per force go up when companies get rid of tips. The same people will be complaining about that just as loudly, I'm willing to bet.

As I said in another comment, it's a bad system, but if you don't tip, you're a bad person.