4 ms·

I'm surprised DoorDash et al. didn't do away with tips. It causes consternation for the couriers, is easily forgotten by the customers, and seems to have no be

I'm surprised DoorDash et al. didn't do away with tips. It causes consternation for the couriers, is easily forgotten by the customers, and seems to have no benefit. You can choose to set the tip when placing the order, or give a cash tip when the driver arrives. The former is convenient, but meaningless; how do you set a tip for a service not yet performed? The latter is inconvenient, especially if you don't carry the necessary cash. It complicates the delivery interaction, is more likely to be forgotten, and still won't be very accurate. Are you going to take the food out of the bag and check it before you tip and let the courier leave? Uber did away with tips, and it's wonderful. Drivers know how much they're going to make, riders know how much they're spending, there is no awkwardness or pressure, and the rating system does a far better job at maintaining level of service. My only experience has been with DoorDash. They should do away with tips and overhaul their post-experience rating system. Right now the only options are to give one overall rating to the whole experience, which is useless, or to report a problem, and even then you're only able to report one problem. If, for example, both your delivery was messed up and the order was wrong, you can't tell DoorDash about both. You have to choose one. And their customer service takes 12 hours to respond, with completely arbitrary refunds. Compare to Uber who has responded to all my inquiries within 3 minutes. Still worse, when I report a problem with my order (wrong items) ... who gets blamed? Does DoorDash investigate and see who was at fault, to correctly apply blame, or do they automatically blame the restaurant? None of that is made clear to the customer, and so it gives me pause whenever I report problems.

awakeasleep 11y ago
Does anyone know how having a tipped postition affects the law? I'm curious if these companies gain some sort of protection (from fulltime workers, from minimum wage laws, etc) by having their employees be paid by tip.
- josu 11y ago
  I don't think they are considered "employees".
- MaxGhenis 11y ago
  The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13/hour, but the employer must top it off to non-tipped MW if the worker's total earnings w/tips fall short (in reality many don't ask for this for fear of employer retribution). California's tipped minimum wage is the same as its non-tipped though.
SilasX 11y ago
>how do you set a tip for a service not yet performed? As if tipping had logical regularity to begin with? You're expected to tip at coffee shops long before receiving the service, and for takeout orders, where there is no service. (At least, they try to dupe you into thinking it's expected.) "Add a tip to this order when placing it" sounds stupid, but it's only revealing the pre-existing stupidity of the convention it's trying to parallel. If they go the other route like Uber and say "tip's included", then they trigger an angels-on-a-pin lawsuit about "well which part was the tip because you can't take a cut of that".
- SeoxyS 11y ago
  I tip before getting my order at coffee shops where I'm a regular, and where I like and know the people who work there. Other coffee shops, I don't tip. I'm a good tipper at sit-down restaurants (restaurants where a check is brought to you after your meal), at bars when I have a tab, for my barber, etc. Some situations require tipping. Some don't.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Right, I was just speaking to the issue of whether there's some logical pattern to the practice that allows you infer which case is which without relying on "that's just how they do it".
jcrites 11y ago
Postmates used to require you to specify the rating & tip on the courier's phone on pickup. Some time ago they changed it such that now you can specify the tip on your own device any time after receiving the order. (I had sent this suggestion to them by email and I was glad to see it be implemented.) Consequently, I usually tip after having eaten the entire meal, just like in a restaurant, so that I know all the food is correct. I also much prefer this scheme because it makes the drop off faster and more frictionless. Courier knocks, hands over the food, and leaves. It takes only moments, which is great - just like getting out of the car with Uber. No fiddling with devices etc. It avoids the problem of the courier having to stand in the doorway awkwardly while I unbag and check all of the food. Now the drop off is quick and I can assign the rating and tip at my leisure. (If there is a food problem they can't really fix it by then anyway) I had the same concern about "who/what exactly am I reviewing?" However I eventually resigned myself to simply reviewing the overall customer experience. It's up to Postmates to perform quality assurance on each component of the delivery process. I think the courier has the most effect on overall delivery quality. Bad couriers will miss restaurant mistakes even when obviously printed on the receipt. Good ones will catch mistakes even if they're not, by reviewing the order verbally on pickup with the host or hostess. There is also a central dispatch component of the service, the phone reps who call in orders; they can also make mistakes. I suspect Postmates could increase their accuracy if they could get restaurants to participate, so they could send orders in writing. Granted, there are certain restaurant problems that Postmates cannot catch: like the kitchen makes and boxes the wrong item without realizing it, such that the wrong item is on the receipt and the host doesn't catch it on pickup. This failure mode seems to be fairly rare at professionally run restaurants though. A good courier can catch nearly all mistakes by comparing the receipt to the order, and by reviewing it with restaurant staff; and courier delivery is the majority of the variable delivery time since restaurant kitchens typically get food out in 20 min - so overall I also think it is appropriate for them to carry the bulk of the review/rating focus. If you rate 3 stars or lower, Postmates also asks you to check what went wrong: missing items, etc. Ultimately, we should as customers report our experience on each delivery and trust that the service will dig in appropriately to whichever component is responsible for quality failures and fix it - that's one of their value-adds. We should not worry that our reviews will be misused or misapplied because that would be assuming bad judgment on the service's part. As a customer I don't want to, and shouldn't have to, think about where the source of mistakes might be. That's where I've mentally ended up on that issue. I have had quality issues from time to time, that once led me to send an email to their CEO after a string of 1-3 star orders (no response; didn't ask for one), but lately and most of the time things are pretty good and arrive as they should. Postmates CS has always made mistakes right with me, which is why I kept using them even despite the errors. At one point I worried they would suspend my account for fraud, when I was asking for refunds on 30% of my orders, rising eventually to 50% during what was presumably a growth spurt. But I sent CS pictures of the mistakes (which they said was not necessary) and always got the appropriate refund. Mistakes are fairly rare now, and most of my orders are 5 stars, though I imagine their concession rate will be a major area of focus in general going forward.
MaxGhenis 11y ago
Fortunately, Uber is getting into food delivery, so DoorDash will soon face a competitor without the inconvenience and awkwardness of tipping. Given Uber's popularity, as well as the trend of restaurants like Joe's Crab Shack ending tipping, I'd expect DoorDash to follow suit at some point. Obligatory plug for http://reddit.com/r/EndTipping http://reddit.com/r/EndTipping which discusses these issues, lists tip-free restaurants, etc.

awakeasleep 11y ago

Does anyone know how having a tipped postition affects the law? I'm curious if these companies gain some sort of protection (from fulltime workers, from minimum wage laws, etc) by having their employees be paid by tip.

josu 11y ago
I don't think they are considered "employees".
MaxGhenis 11y ago
The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13/hour, but the employer must top it off to non-tipped MW if the worker's total earnings w/tips fall short (in reality many don't ask for this for fear of employer retribution). California's tipped minimum wage is the same as its non-tipped though.

SilasX 11y ago

>how do you set a tip for a service not yet performed? As if tipping had logical regularity to begin with? You're expected to tip at coffee shops long before receiving the service, and for takeout orders, where there is no service. (At least, they try to dupe you into thinking it's expected.) "Add a tip to this order when placing it" sounds stupid, but it's only revealing the pre-existing stupidity of the convention it's trying to parallel. If they go the other route like Uber and say "tip's included", then they trigger an angels-on-a-pin lawsuit about "well which part was the tip because you can't take a cut of that".

SeoxyS 11y ago
I tip before getting my order at coffee shops where I'm a regular, and where I like and know the people who work there. Other coffee shops, I don't tip. I'm a good tipper at sit-down restaurants (restaurants where a check is brought to you after your meal), at bars when I have a tab, for my barber, etc. Some situations require tipping. Some don't.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Right, I was just speaking to the issue of whether there's some logical pattern to the practice that allows you infer which case is which without relying on "that's just how they do it".

jcrites 11y ago

Postmates used to require you to specify the rating & tip on the courier's phone on pickup. Some time ago they changed it such that now you can specify the tip on your own device any time after receiving the order. (I had sent this suggestion to them by email and I was glad to see it be implemented.) Consequently, I usually tip after having eaten the entire meal, just like in a restaurant, so that I know all the food is correct. I also much prefer this scheme because it makes the drop off faster and more frictionless. Courier knocks, hands over the food, and leaves. It takes only moments, which is great - just like getting out of the car with Uber. No fiddling with devices etc. It avoids the problem of the courier having to stand in the doorway awkwardly while I unbag and check all of the food. Now the drop off is quick and I can assign the rating and tip at my leisure. (If there is a food problem they can't really fix it by then anyway) I had the same concern about "who/what exactly am I reviewing?" However I eventually resigned myself to simply reviewing the overall customer experience. It's up to Postmates to perform quality assurance on each component of the delivery process. I think the courier has the most effect on overall delivery quality. Bad couriers will miss restaurant mistakes even when obviously printed on the receipt. Good ones will catch mistakes even if they're not, by reviewing the order verbally on pickup with the host or hostess. There is also a central dispatch component of the service, the phone reps who call in orders; they can also make mistakes. I suspect Postmates could increase their accuracy if they could get restaurants to participate, so they could send orders in writing. Granted, there are certain restaurant problems that Postmates cannot catch: like the kitchen makes and boxes the wrong item without realizing it, such that the wrong item is on the receipt and the host doesn't catch it on pickup. This failure mode seems to be fairly rare at professionally run restaurants though. A good courier can catch nearly all mistakes by comparing the receipt to the order, and by reviewing it with restaurant staff; and courier delivery is the majority of the variable delivery time since restaurant kitchens typically get food out in 20 min - so overall I also think it is appropriate for them to carry the bulk of the review/rating focus. If you rate 3 stars or lower, Postmates also asks you to check what went wrong: missing items, etc. Ultimately, we should as customers report our experience on each delivery and trust that the service will dig in appropriately to whichever component is responsible for quality failures and fix it - that's one of their value-adds. We should not worry that our reviews will be misused or misapplied because that would be assuming bad judgment on the service's part. As a customer I don't want to, and shouldn't have to, think about where the source of mistakes might be. That's where I've mentally ended up on that issue. I have had quality issues from time to time, that once led me to send an email to their CEO after a string of 1-3 star orders (no response; didn't ask for one), but lately and most of the time things are pretty good and arrive as they should. Postmates CS has always made mistakes right with me, which is why I kept using them even despite the errors. At one point I worried they would suspend my account for fraud, when I was asking for refunds on 30% of my orders, rising eventually to 50% during what was presumably a growth spurt. But I sent CS pictures of the mistakes (which they said was not necessary) and always got the appropriate refund. Mistakes are fairly rare now, and most of my orders are 5 stars, though I imagine their concession rate will be a major area of focus in general going forward.

MaxGhenis 11y ago

Fortunately, Uber is getting into food delivery, so DoorDash will soon face a competitor without the inconvenience and awkwardness of tipping. Given Uber's popularity, as well as the trend of restaurants like Joe's Crab Shack ending tipping, I'd expect DoorDash to follow suit at some point. Obligatory plug for http://reddit.com/r/EndTipping http://reddit.com/r/EndTipping which discusses these issues, lists tip-free restaurants, etc.