It’s all in the judgment.
If it’s based on hours worked it might be both, or neither. People are allowed to have two (or more) jobs. The companies they work for don’t get to use that against them.
Put another way, there is never a time when a driver is working for both Lyft and Uber. When they pick up an Uber passenger they are working for Uber. When they pick up a Lyft passenger they are working for Lyft.
And if they also work at McDonald’s or wherever that’s when they are a McDonald’s employee.
This line of thinking might be net negative for drivers since that suggests the only time they would be considered employed is when they have IDed a client to pick-up and drive.
I believe many drivers have both apps up during their downtimes so unclear what those periods would translate to.
There are just so many things wrong with this scenario. Not the give back part but the original issue.
Honestly this issue is only going to get worse from here on out.
“Some people only tip $1.50? I should feel great about tipping $2.50 on my $100 order of groceries!”
The problem is, and this keeps coming up… it’s not 100 dollars in groceries. It’s like 85 dollars in groceries, plus a delivery fee, plus some sort of convenience fee plus some other thing they might call a regulatory fee. So something that would cost someone 85 dollars is somewhere around 100 dollars, a 15 dollar premium before the tip. So it’s somewhere between like a 15-18% mark-up for the person buying the groceries, and they’re assuming of that those delivery fees are actually going to the person that is doing the delivery. Then we wind up with videos like these with someone literally upset because he doesn’t think customers are paying enough for delivery.
There is a serious problem with a business model where a an almost 20% mark-up, and that’s assuming there is not an an additional mark-up on the items themselves, which there usually is, isn’t enough to pay the driver.
The problem isn’t that this guy only got a 1.50 in tips, the problem is these companies are getting their 20-30 bucks and they are not even paying the drivers.
Indeed. One should not have to rely on tips to be paid.
Wait. The drivers don’t get a percentage of the delivery cost?
I am not entirely sure what they are getting, but almost every video I’ve seen, and I have seen a number as they become viral, focuses on the tips not being enough. It’s like they think it’s the fault of the customer and not the company they sort of work for. It’s lopsided.
How can I pay between 20 and 30 dollars more for a delivery and be told that the tip is what they survive on? Where is the rest of that money going? How can Uber and DoorDash, Postmates and I forget the other one, be be getting some mark-up on each item, charge a delivery fee, often a separate service fee so they can discount the delivery fee, throw on any regulatory fee and still not pay these drives so the tip is extra… not the difference between eating and not eating?
There is something not right here.
I agree. I was under the assumption that they got some kind of decent wage. OTOH I don’t use these for delivery. I’m not paying anything more than what it actually costs. Of course YMMV and I am judging nobody here. Otherwise I always tip my drivers very well. And nobody gets less than 5 stars.
I started using a couple of them during the pandemic. It seemed like a thing I could do to save time and help people who have no hope at all in landing a job right now.
There was a time when they were guaranteed a specific amount per job I think, but they would take the tip and use it to boost to that, and then others didn’t seem to get the tip so some drivers were demanding cash. And then you had that one weirdo lady who wasn’t happy with I think it was 7 dollars so she refused to deliver the item. It’s a terrible system, and I don’t plan on using once we pull out of this mess.
Here is the other part though. I’ve tried to order directly through websites of these companies… it’s still freaking DoorDash.
I find that restaurants that use DoorDash and the rest sometimes have simple delivery. If you ask for it. I always ask. If the place says something like only (delivery service) but not their own delivery, well, I can get behind pickup.
DoorDash pay to driver is minimum $2/order for orders over $10, plus 100% of the tip (though some companies used to “take” the per-order fee out of the tip, which was hella bullshit). They do offer promo rates for peak time deliveries, completing extra deliveries, taking long trips, etc. The rest of their upcharge is going toward the small army of programmers, marketers, managers, and executives hanging out in their overpriced offices in Tech City Du Jour (SanFran for DD), and/or servicing the massive debt to their various VC investors. . .
edit: Instacart will dangle low-wage orders (like $15 worth of items, $1 tip) for 20-30 minutes, then begin “bundling” them with higher-value orders from the same grocery store. Screws over one of the customers since their food sits in a car twice as long, but it can be the only way to tempt shoppers/drivers into picking up those shitty orders – they’re the only way to get a lucrative high-tip order.
Yeah I got a refund for one of these. It was in their car for almost an hour and just cold when it got here.
Yeah and the result of that was hesitating to give more tips since the driver wasn’t even getting it.
Well office work is still work. We have a lot of such people on this site, but perhaps they are a bit lopsided compared to other companies.
I don’t know if using these services helps or not, but relying on me to do pick-up means… less ordering. I just don’t step away to get it that often during working hours.
I hate that people are hurting, and he’s not right about tip culture being a part of our culture to bump up sub minimum wage. I am kind of mad that in our state, which that is against the law, these so-called independent contractors don’t get more than that…
We have a separate thread on this issue, but I HATE our tipping culture. It needs to die in a fire, pronto. No worker should have to rely on vague and voluntary remuneration. On the flip side, customers deserve to see the clear cost of something. So bad all around with zero redeeming qualities. The whole tipping ensures better service is bullshit.
Oh, to be clear, yes, programmers deserve money, but paying an army of young dudes to afford to live in SanFran means squeezing Momma’s Chicken Tender Shack for an extra 20% on every order and making sure that Joe Driverdude doesn’t get jack or shit from your cut. And even then, most of these companies still don’t turn a profit. The model might just be inherently broken :(
I don’t think any of these companies have turned a profit… just like maybe one quarter or something. There is definitely something broken with this model, but that doesn’t mean we need to undervalue office staff. It’s not just programmers that have value there. There is simply something fundamentally wrong when you have a business where the restaurants are not happy, the drivers are getting pay that doesn’t even keep food on the table, AND the customers are feeling fee’d and price gouged.
The problem with all the food delivery service is the business model doesn’t work and I believe fatally flawed. Consumers aren’t happy because by the time delivery charges and tip is added, the cost of food often goes up 50%. Restaurants hate it because it lowers their already razor thin margins. Drivers hate it because they don’t even make min wage. (The two ride share drivers I know both have stopped working for Door Dash and uber eats.) Investor will soon hate them because, all of them are hemorrhaging money and post pandemic it is going to get worse . Doordash lost $.13 on every dollar worth of sales.
I think it pretty simple, there is reason only crazy rich people have personal shoppers, it is really expensive to provide this level of service. Paying someone to drive from A to B to C to feed 1-4 people makes no sense.
When my brother was living in London he mentioned that Tesco (grocery store chain) delivered. Clearly density has something to do with it but is that the only reason grocery delivery works in at least some places?
Grocery deliver works (in some place) for the same reason that package delivery works. Routes. The driver goes to a central location, the warehouse or store, picks up lots of items for a variety of customers, and the delivers the items to multiple customers in organized fashion.
You can live with getting your groceries that afternoon, or even the next day or so. People won’t tolerate a 4 or 5 hour delay for dinner.