6 ms·

> I want my favorite restaurants to survive this pandemic, but I couldn't care less about these delivery startups. Does the tip go to DoorDash, or to the perso

> I want my favorite restaurants to survive this pandemic, but I couldn't care less about these delivery startups. Does the tip go to DoorDash, or to the person that delivered for DoorDash? I want the restaurants to survive too, but I have to imagine a lot of these DoorDash delivery people were either Uber drivers or employed somewhere else a few weeks ago until furloughed, and may have a less stable income than someone working at a restaurant which is getting takeout orders.

d1str0 6y ago
This is a question with two answers. It depends on the company. There is lots of evidence of some delivery companies using your “tip” to cover the base salary of their employees. So if a driver is guaranteed $5/hr, and you tip $3, DD/UberEats/etc. will claim they only have to pay out $2 for that hour.
- uoaei 6y ago
  DoorDash was in trouble about a year ago for skimming tips off the top in some strange convoluted scheme that was too ingenious to be an accident. It appears they haven't changed that behavior yet, despite getting a lot of bad PR and promising they will look into it. Corporations are not moral agents. They cannot be shamed into acting to the benefit of the majority, and their promises mean nothing.
  - ravenstine 6y ago
    Skimming puts it lightly. If the driver's base pay was $5, for instance, and the customer tipped $5 through the app, the driver would receive $0 in tips because PoorDash would use the tip to offset as much of the base pay as possible. That's theft and borderline fraud because the term "tip" implies that the money will go to the person responsible for delivering your food, not Tony Xu the CEO.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      Every time this comes up I'm always astounded that most people have no idea how tips work. In a lot of states, at least for restaurant workers, this is normal practice and explicitly allowed for by law. In those states, this has been common practice since ... forever? The laws there require restaurant owners to pay the waiters such that their wage + tips combined should be at least the minimum wage. If a waiter makes more than the minimum wage in tips then the owner only needs to pay a less than minimum wage amount. See https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped So as an example, in Texas, if a waiter made more then $5.12/hr in tips, the restaurant owner needs to pay him/her only $2.13/hr. The question I have is: Why are we OK with this for waiters but suddenly get upset when this happens to the drivers? Do you ask your favorite restaurants their policy?
      - ravenstine 6y ago
        > The question I have is: Why are we OK with this for waiters but suddenly get upset when this happens to the drivers? Do you ask your favorite restaurants their policy? It's not OK, and it's part of the reason why I don't often go to restaurants even though I could afford to eat at one every night. There is one difference, though, which is that restaurant staff are well aware of the nature of their pay. Most DoorDash drivers didn't realize that they were being gypped. I know this because, when I was driving for GrubHub, I would sometimes bump into DoorDash drivers and I would ask them about DoorDash's pay model. Most didn't have a clue that they were getting tipped but that the tip was disappearing into the pockets of DoorDash. I'm sure that DoorDash had something about that in 6 pt font somewhere, but not everyone will read or even comprehend that. Unless the customer asks if you got the tip, there was no way for a driver to even know if they had a tip when that tip did not exceed their base pay. At least restaurant workers know that there are tips and can see the full amount. Until this came out, a lot of drivers considered DoorDash to be supplementary because the customers were "stingy", when in fact that may not have been the case. But no, I do not ask my favorite restaurants their pay policy. Perhaps I should. EDIT: Another key difference between restaurant workers and food delivery app drivers is that customers of DoorDash almost always tip ahead of time, so it's not as if the driver can do much if anything to improve their chances of getting a bigger tip. With traditional tipping, it's implied that an advantage in being paid mostly in tips was that better service could equate to more pay. DoorDash a few years ago was taking advantage of people's common understanding of what it means to tip someone and keep both prices and costs down, with the driver being the one to get screwed and not even realize it.
- rockinghigh 6y ago
  Only DoorDash and Instacart did this. UberEats never did. > As DoorDash grew to become the biggest on-demand food delivery app in the country, it began doing something unconventional with customers’ tips: It used them mostly to subsidize its payments to delivery workers. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol...
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I sympathize, but I have no particular desire to validate or support the gig worker model. I'd much rather some company with health benefits and vacation time employs them in the future. And if I'm going to pick who to support from my own limited funds, it'd be the people working at the restaurants I very much want to patronize when this is over. Some of my favorites are already gone for good.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Well, you're already supporting the restaurant and their workers with your funds by ordering food there. It's entirely possible most the waiters and waitresses at that restaurant are now out doing delivery gig work because that restaurant with health benefits and vacation pay (which likely paid them minimum wage and relied on tips to make the job worth doing, so good luck using that vacation pay as equivalent income during that time) isn't scheduling them to work. For me, if it comes down to the cooks and limited waitstaff left at the restaurant and getting paid by the restaurant get a few extra bucks from me or someone that lost their stable income and is scrambling to make ends meet, I definitely want it going to the latter. I can't be sure what situation the drivers are in, but to me it seems more likely their position is less stable.
monocasa 6y ago
It's unclear, but appears that door dash is still keeping tips despite saying that they'd change their model. https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-tips-despite-pay-model-change-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-...
- taftster 6y ago
  No they're not, at least from what I can tell. My daughter drives for them, and the base pay + tip amount is exactly what she is paid. They might have made some adjustments with base pay over the years, or they might be hiding what the customer actually tipped vs. what is reported to the drivers. But from our perspective, it looks like this issue has been resolved.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    > they might be hiding what the customer actually tipped vs. what is reported to the drivers. That is something Uber has been caught doing. Uber now makes it against ToS for drivers to ask. : /
  - mthoms 6y ago
    Just out of curiosity, how much does she make? (I totally understand if you don't want to answer)
    - taftster 6y ago
      Sent a reply to your gmail account.
  - lozenge 6y ago
    Apparently they offer a low "base pay" and if nobody accepts the order, they increase it slowly. Therefore, higher tip orders get accepted sooner and with a lower base pay.
    - taftster 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ravenstine 6y ago
The tip, or at least a portion of it, goes to the driver. What DoorTrash used to do was steal all or part of the tip in order to subsidize the driver's base pay. It think they changed their pay model(after public outrage) to not do that, but I stopped delivery driving a long time ago so I can't say that with 100% certainty. For GrubHub, the entire tip goes to the driver.
- chrischen 6y ago
  This practice can’t really be stopped though. Industries generally adjust their base pay to reflect average tipping income. Doordash was doing it at a dynamic per-order level. But if they can’t do that they can still do it on aggregate based on predicted tips. Basically, tipping an average amount contributes to the problem. Everyone would have to keep raising the tip amounts but that’s not easily coordinated.
  - henryfjordan 6y ago
    The restaurant industry operated under the pay model of "you get $2/hour + tips but if you don't make at least minimum wage we'll pay the extra", which is exactly what DoorDash was doing. California outlawed this practice years ago in the restaurant industry, saying you need to pay at least the minimum + tips, none of this $2/hour nonsense. There's no reason they couldn't do the same to the gig economy.
    - vonmoltke 6y ago
      I don't see any indication that California ever had a separate minimum wage for tipped employees. Are you referring to some California-specific provision? Seems like a strange way to do things.
      - Groxx 6y ago
        California has quite a few California-specific employment laws. https://www.worklawyers.com/tip-gratuity-laws-california/ https://www.worklawyers.com/tip-gratuity-laws-california/ ("3.4. Minimum Wage: No Tip Credits Allowed" specifically)

d1str0 6y ago

This is a question with two answers. It depends on the company. There is lots of evidence of some delivery companies using your “tip” to cover the base salary of their employees. So if a driver is guaranteed $5/hr, and you tip $3, DD/UberEats/etc. will claim they only have to pay out $2 for that hour.

uoaei 6y ago
DoorDash was in trouble about a year ago for skimming tips off the top in some strange convoluted scheme that was too ingenious to be an accident. It appears they haven't changed that behavior yet, despite getting a lot of bad PR and promising they will look into it. Corporations are not moral agents. They cannot be shamed into acting to the benefit of the majority, and their promises mean nothing.
- ravenstine 6y ago
  Skimming puts it lightly. If the driver's base pay was $5, for instance, and the customer tipped $5 through the app, the driver would receive $0 in tips because PoorDash would use the tip to offset as much of the base pay as possible. That's theft and borderline fraud because the term "tip" implies that the money will go to the person responsible for delivering your food, not Tony Xu the CEO.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    Every time this comes up I'm always astounded that most people have no idea how tips work. In a lot of states, at least for restaurant workers, this is normal practice and explicitly allowed for by law. In those states, this has been common practice since ... forever? The laws there require restaurant owners to pay the waiters such that their wage + tips combined should be at least the minimum wage. If a waiter makes more than the minimum wage in tips then the owner only needs to pay a less than minimum wage amount. See https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped So as an example, in Texas, if a waiter made more then $5.12/hr in tips, the restaurant owner needs to pay him/her only $2.13/hr. The question I have is: Why are we OK with this for waiters but suddenly get upset when this happens to the drivers? Do you ask your favorite restaurants their policy?
    - ravenstine 6y ago
      > The question I have is: Why are we OK with this for waiters but suddenly get upset when this happens to the drivers? Do you ask your favorite restaurants their policy? It's not OK, and it's part of the reason why I don't often go to restaurants even though I could afford to eat at one every night. There is one difference, though, which is that restaurant staff are well aware of the nature of their pay. Most DoorDash drivers didn't realize that they were being gypped. I know this because, when I was driving for GrubHub, I would sometimes bump into DoorDash drivers and I would ask them about DoorDash's pay model. Most didn't have a clue that they were getting tipped but that the tip was disappearing into the pockets of DoorDash. I'm sure that DoorDash had something about that in 6 pt font somewhere, but not everyone will read or even comprehend that. Unless the customer asks if you got the tip, there was no way for a driver to even know if they had a tip when that tip did not exceed their base pay. At least restaurant workers know that there are tips and can see the full amount. Until this came out, a lot of drivers considered DoorDash to be supplementary because the customers were "stingy", when in fact that may not have been the case. But no, I do not ask my favorite restaurants their pay policy. Perhaps I should. EDIT: Another key difference between restaurant workers and food delivery app drivers is that customers of DoorDash almost always tip ahead of time, so it's not as if the driver can do much if anything to improve their chances of getting a bigger tip. With traditional tipping, it's implied that an advantage in being paid mostly in tips was that better service could equate to more pay. DoorDash a few years ago was taking advantage of people's common understanding of what it means to tip someone and keep both prices and costs down, with the driver being the one to get screwed and not even realize it.
rockinghigh 6y ago
Only DoorDash and Instacart did this. UberEats never did. > As DoorDash grew to become the biggest on-demand food delivery app in the country, it began doing something unconventional with customers’ tips: It used them mostly to subsidize its payments to delivery workers. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol...

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I sympathize, but I have no particular desire to validate or support the gig worker model. I'd much rather some company with health benefits and vacation time employs them in the future. And if I'm going to pick who to support from my own limited funds, it'd be the people working at the restaurants I very much want to patronize when this is over. Some of my favorites are already gone for good.

kbenson 6y ago
Well, you're already supporting the restaurant and their workers with your funds by ordering food there. It's entirely possible most the waiters and waitresses at that restaurant are now out doing delivery gig work because that restaurant with health benefits and vacation pay (which likely paid them minimum wage and relied on tips to make the job worth doing, so good luck using that vacation pay as equivalent income during that time) isn't scheduling them to work. For me, if it comes down to the cooks and limited waitstaff left at the restaurant and getting paid by the restaurant get a few extra bucks from me or someone that lost their stable income and is scrambling to make ends meet, I definitely want it going to the latter. I can't be sure what situation the drivers are in, but to me it seems more likely their position is less stable.

monocasa 6y ago

It's unclear, but appears that door dash is still keeping tips despite saying that they'd change their model. https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-tips-despite-pay-model-change-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-...

taftster 6y ago
No they're not, at least from what I can tell. My daughter drives for them, and the base pay + tip amount is exactly what she is paid. They might have made some adjustments with base pay over the years, or they might be hiding what the customer actually tipped vs. what is reported to the drivers. But from our perspective, it looks like this issue has been resolved.
- monocasa 6y ago
  > they might be hiding what the customer actually tipped vs. what is reported to the drivers. That is something Uber has been caught doing. Uber now makes it against ToS for drivers to ask. : /
- mthoms 6y ago
  Just out of curiosity, how much does she make? (I totally understand if you don't want to answer)
  - taftster 6y ago
    Sent a reply to your gmail account.
- lozenge 6y ago
  Apparently they offer a low "base pay" and if nobody accepts the order, they increase it slowly. Therefore, higher tip orders get accepted sooner and with a lower base pay.
  - taftster 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ravenstine 6y ago

The tip, or at least a portion of it, goes to the driver. What DoorTrash used to do was steal all or part of the tip in order to subsidize the driver's base pay. It think they changed their pay model(after public outrage) to not do that, but I stopped delivery driving a long time ago so I can't say that with 100% certainty. For GrubHub, the entire tip goes to the driver.

chrischen 6y ago
This practice can’t really be stopped though. Industries generally adjust their base pay to reflect average tipping income. Doordash was doing it at a dynamic per-order level. But if they can’t do that they can still do it on aggregate based on predicted tips. Basically, tipping an average amount contributes to the problem. Everyone would have to keep raising the tip amounts but that’s not easily coordinated.
- henryfjordan 6y ago
  The restaurant industry operated under the pay model of "you get $2/hour + tips but if you don't make at least minimum wage we'll pay the extra", which is exactly what DoorDash was doing. California outlawed this practice years ago in the restaurant industry, saying you need to pay at least the minimum + tips, none of this $2/hour nonsense. There's no reason they couldn't do the same to the gig economy.
  - vonmoltke 6y ago
    I don't see any indication that California ever had a separate minimum wage for tipped employees. Are you referring to some California-specific provision? Seems like a strange way to do things.
    - Groxx 6y ago
      California has quite a few California-specific employment laws. https://www.worklawyers.com/tip-gratuity-laws-california/ https://www.worklawyers.com/tip-gratuity-laws-california/ ("3.4. Minimum Wage: No Tip Credits Allowed" specifically)