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If you’re thinking of avoiding these services (which may cause you inconvenience, less demand for the service and less jobs generated for workers), I’d recommen

• didibus 8y ago
  Works just like waiters and waitresses no?
  • kurthr 8y ago
    No, increasing tips in the jar increases their pay proportionally. Their starting point is low, but gains are real, except when the manager puts themselves as the 99.9% beneficiary of tips... which would be viewed just as negatively.
    • anamexis 8y ago
      This is not entirely true. The federal minimum wage for tipped jobs is $2.13/hour, with the employer only required to make up the difference if the employee doesn't break $7.25/hour in tips + wages. In these situations, the tips received between the minimum tipped wage and the minimum wage work exactly like the DoorDash / Instacart wages: they are net zero for the employee. Of course state and municipal minimum wages sometimes supersede these minimums, but they often have their own separate minimum wages for tipped jobs.
      • gamblor956 8y ago
        In these situations, the tips received between the minimum tipped wage and the minimum wage work exactly like the DoorDash / Instacart wages: they are net zero for the employee. I'm not sure why people keep repeating this like they think it means something. The tipped minimum wage is $2.13/hour (higher in most states), significantly lower than the regular minimum wage, because tipped workers almost always made more than federal minimum wage when tips were included. To repeat, for emphasis: the federal tipped minimum wage for employees is only $2.13/hour. In the rare event that a tipped worker doesn't make at least federal minimum wage including tips, the employer is required to make up the difference, but this backstop was added to the law much later. It is the exception, not the rule, and it is wholly inappropriate to treat it like the standard case. EDIT: This is different from what Amazon and DoorDash do, since they claim the fee they pay the driver is $X, under the general legal definition of "tip", any tip paid should be on top of the $X. They can look forward to class actions and DoL investigations in their near future since "tip" has an actual legal meaning for labor law purposes that you can't redefine in a ToS.
        • anamexis 8y ago
          Yes, it is indeed rare that a tipped employee would not make minimum wage when tips are included. However, that does not change the fact that the difference between the normal minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage - $5.12/hour - is made up in tips. If there were no separate tipped minimum wage, these employees would be making $5.12 more per hour in money they take home. In both this case and the Amazon/DoorDash case, there is some concept of 'guaranteed wage' which is actually backfilled by tips.
        • didibus 8y ago
          I'm not seeing any difference, appart from the fact independent contractor's minimum wage in the US is 0$ DoorDash says, you are paid 0$, but get to keep 100% of the tips. And it says, if you are tipped less then 10$, they'll pay out the difference so you are guaranteed to make a minimum of 10$ per job, with the max uncapped, left to your tip potential. This seems identical to me. Waiters are paid (2.13$ per hour + tip) or 7.95$ per hour if it adds up to less then that. Drivers are paid (0$ per job + tip) or 10$ per job if it adds up to less then that.
      • rhizome 8y ago
        >This is not entirely true. You're using the wrong "this." Waitstaff don't have their tip-wage adjusted based on tips.
        • anamexis 8y ago
          That's just semantics. I was responding to this: > No, increasing tips in the jar increases their pay proportionally. For the tips that make up the margin between the tipped minimum wage and the standard minimum wage, their pay does not increase proportionally.
      • yardie 8y ago
        The federal minimum is a floor. What DoorDash has done is set a ceiling. If someone was generous enough to give you $100 tip you should $100 + $delivery fee. Instead they’ve kept that tip and tipped you out a small percentage. Which I think is worker hostile and completely inexcusable billshit.
        • anamexis 8y ago
          I agree that these practices are worker hostile and inexcusable bullshit. But I don't think your understanding of their policy is correct. My understanding is that they have some guaranteed amount that the driver will get, and DoorDash/Amazon will then pay the difference of the guaranteed amount and the tip. There is no ceiling - the driver always keeps all of the tip, but the delivery fee will modulate down to some minimum.
        • didibus 8y ago
          That's not what I understood. If you get tipped 100$, you'll make 100$. Think of it as: you get to keep 100% of the tip, but they don't pay you anything extra, unless the tip is less then 10$, then they pay you the difference up to 10$.
• ravenstine 8y ago
  Or just use GrubHub, since most DoorTrash drivers also drive for GrubHub.
• drawkbox 8y ago
  > DoorDash outright deceiving me by prominently saying 100% of the tip goes to Dashers every time I checkout This is the biggest part that is misleading and makes a good service a bit shady. I tip well because I wanted my food to be handled well and the driver to get a nice payment out of it. I also want the driver to make sure the order is good and correct, I am willing to pay extra for that. Now DoorDash is telling me they decide that for me and the driver. I think they should do something to change that or at least remove that message. I have also read on reddit in the subreddits for these services like /r/doordash/ that because they pay low for some routes, even if people tip well, that dashers double up on deliveries. Sometimes the service asks them to and knocks their acceptance rate if they don't, or offers really far deliveries for cheap. I wanted to tip enough so they weren't racing or doubling up.
  • tyingq 8y ago
    They have a history of being misleading too. Aside from the delivery fee and tip, there's also a service fee, and in some cases, a "small order fee". And, sometimes they pad the restaurant prices too. And the UI is pretty good at hiding these things. Pulling up an itemized receipt, for example, is an extra step beyond looking at a past order.
  • fipple 8y ago
    Why shouldn’t they double up?
    • Spooky23 8y ago
      Why should your food be cold?
    • drawkbox 8y ago
      > Why shouldn’t they double up? It is fine if they have to do that where it makes sense, but I want to know so I can choose not to use the service then if the deliveries are far and food is will be affected, or allow customers to tip high enough that the driver does not need to double up. DoorDash should have a service fee that allows you to choose level of delivery then, that you can choose single stop. If they are short on drivers, then increase prices, don't downgrade service. DoorDash forces many drivers to double up, even if the tip is high and it harms them algorithmically on acceptance rate if they don't. DoorDash just provides the logistics. The food quality, speedy delivery and customer should be the focus here. I feel like some of these policies take away from quality from customers and value from drivers. If I am already paying higher costs for the food, a service fee, and a tip, which usually turns into 30-40% higher food costs, you'd think quality, customer desires and driver loyalty would matter.
• idunno246 8y ago
  Let’s say you want to move most of the compensation to tipping. This gives the buyer more control over how much they pay, and drivers may get more money if they do extra. So you change your model to be less base pay and more tips. In door dash’s case, their base pay is $1. But now you have to worry about the person that stiffs the tip and leaves nothing. Can you feel comfortable paying the driver a dollar for that trip? Well.. no. So you say you’ll guarantee a minimum per order. If anything the people in the room making this thought they were doing an extra nice thing by adding this guarantee. The thing is, drivers asked for more of their pay to come from tipping. Most nonapp delivery drivers are paid on a heavy tipping model. If it was messaged drivers get $1 plus tips would people be ok with that? I used to work in this industry but not these companies. Actual comp doesn’t change on much average through most of these schemes, though there are outliers. Which is to say, they’re all underpaid, even at the “better” ones, as is your dominoes driver.
  • Spooky23 8y ago
    I delivered pizzas in college for a few months. I was paid $6.xx/hr (minimum wage) and tips added to my check and taxed if they were done during credit card, and I had to report them if they were in cash. I’m pretty sure that whatever DoorDash is doing is illegal in my state, and they are dodging enforcement by claiming the drivers are contractors. Screw them.
  • guest2457533 8y ago
    I think this framing is off. I think it's this notion that the company is offering compensation as a blend of base rate and tips. Like it's compensation in a blend of cash and stocks. But that seems wrong. The company isn't compensating with tips. The claim that drivers are looking for more of their pay to come from tips seems false. Tips and pay are independent, and saying that drivers want to be paid less by the company seems false on its face. A more accurate framing seems to be that the companies are using the presence of tips to lower the wage for the position to save money. The issue is that variable base rates are directly using customer tips to fund wage obligations. If the company indicates they are giving 100% of a tip to the worker, but then offsets the pay by exactly that amount, they aren't actually giving that tip to the worker like they claimed. So a fixed base rate plus protection against downside risk like you proposed is not the same as the variable base rate these companies are implementing.
• fipple 8y ago
  Reminds me of how some state governments say that “100% of our lottery profits go to the state university.” While not mentioning that they cut the university’s funding from the general budget by the same amount.
• Sir_Substance 8y ago
  >Tip in cash, square cash or Venmo These workers are vulnerable, at the margins of their economy and are already suffering at the hands of a nation-wide refusal to raise the minimum wage to something livable so they can exercise genuine financial independence. Please do not take advantage of the situation to force your favorite poorly-regulated finance app de jour on them by only tipping with venmo or square cash. There are a bunch of good reasons not to do this, such as the fact that if you choose venmo it's now necessary for your delivery driver to own a relatively expensive smartphone with a monthly subscription in order to receive your tips, but mostly it's just kind of an arrogant and dickish thing to assume other people don't mind signing up for all the services you use to receive your $5 tip, so please consider just using cash. You'd probably be pissed if someone told you they only tipped in litecoin and you should go download breadwallet.
  • woah 8y ago
    Wait. How did they use the delivery app without a smartphone?
  • eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    Totally agree. People need to stop being lazy and justifying their support of unethical businesses by thinking tipping outside of the app fixes the core problem.
  • zepto 8y ago
    Makes no sense since the DoorDash driver has a smartphone. Check your assumptions?