16 ms·

I created a DD account but never placed an order. Quite some time later, they emailed to try to convince me to place my first order — with a $35-off coupon (min

I created a DD account but never placed an order. Quite some time later, they emailed to try to convince me to place my first order — with a $35-off coupon (min $30 order). I ordered $41 of food and was stuck with a $22 bill (including a $5 tip I added). Delivery was "free" for this order. This taught me a valuable lesson: if DD sends you a coupon for less than $20, it is worth zero. If it's between $20 and $35, it is worth about 10 bucks (especially when you consider how they inflate prices for dishes).

rvnx 4y ago
I don't understand, isn't 41-35=6 USD ?
- newfonewhodis 4y ago
  I'm guessing the coupon only applied to the value of the order items and not to taxes + fees (lol) + tips.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  There were a bunch of fees that were added on top. I added a $5 tip, but was expecting the total would be around $12.
lkbm 4y ago
If I'm understanding correctly, it's worth zero iff you attribute $0 of value to the delivery. DD's value prop is that they deliver. If you don't want that, then yes it's probably not for you.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  With Doordash and co the fees over the normal cost of food are so high that even vs traditional delivery fees you're overpaying. - Off the top of my head, yesterday I passed a billboard for McDonalds advertising two large sandwiches for $6. Lets open Uber Eats and try ordering two Big Macs... $13.68 So they don't carry the deals. Not looking good already. Went to checkout... $1.49 delivery fee for a place 6 minutes away. Fair enough. $3.27 service fee. The explanation text is implying the cost of servicing my order (orchestration essentially) is more than double the cost of delivery. $2.00 CA Driver Benefits fee. Delivery drivers were always employees of independent stores, but Uber took such offense to being forced to provide healthcare that they itemize the cost. Grand total comes out to $20 before tax. For a $6 meal in store. - And in case you were thinking "Well Uber isn't DoorDash" this whole time... DoorDash comes out to $22 before tax. Has a "traditional" delivery place ever charged you a 60% delivery fee? It's so absurd I even tried increasing the order size... the ratio of price of fees to price of food actually went up! And all this is before tips!
  - Fnoord 4y ago
    Well, you live in a country with tipping culture, but you're free to not tip. If its mandatory, then include it with the price. Its very American to pull this kind of BS. They mention a price, and then say X is tax, Y is delivery, but then they come with all kind of 'additions' (Apple does it here too, about mentioning environmental taxes or something). I don't give a shit about any of these (they're your expenses), just tell me what it costs and I'll say 'yes' or 'no'. I mean, what on Earth why would you as customer be responsible for 'CA Driver Benefits fee'? That's on the employer. And 'service fee'? Which service? The service you get is a proper delivery.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      Like I said, none of this includes tips, but decided to see if this happens in other countries, so I switched around my delivery location: UK: 10% "Service Charge" on top of delivery fees Spain: "Marketplace Fee" Canada (Montreàl): "Taxes and other fees" which when expanded shows "Service Fee" separate from. Doesn't seem to be tied at all to tipping culture, these companies are quite content taking extra money regardless of social norms
      - Fnoord 4y ago
        In my country the market leader is TakeAway / Just Eat (Thuisbezorgd) and they just mention a price for the food and a price for the delivery. Nothing else, no bullshit. If you're a regular customer, you're better off ordering directly though, since they take a cut of about 10%. Websites of restaurants regularly mention this, and since Dutch like to be cheap I suppose it works. In a way its honest to mention the 'service fee', if they were also upfront that the cut is because they're a broker/middleman.
        BoorishBears 4y ago
        The problem is really that in total Uber Eats was asking for 300% what they claim delivery costs in exchange for what they provide as a broker. That's pretty absurd. - And I was skeptical seeing "no bullshit" in the same sentence as a gig economy app so I had to search, and of course the first result for "Thuisbezorgd service fee" was that they're hiding service costs by charging more than menu price... then turning around and claiming that's because it's the delivery menu. Which of course would mislead any reasonable person expecting to pay what the menu says... the one they'd hand you if you sat down. https://nltimes.nl/2022/05/29/meal-deliverers-misleading-clients-hidden-service-costs-unrealistic-offer https://nltimes.nl/2022/05/29/meal-deliverers-misleading-cli... - There's no way to make the current delivery app model work. The app needs to be small in scope and/or localized otherwise it seems without exception, "growth at all costs" leads to heavily subsidizing food and labor, then increasing costs drastically and decreasing pay once you have people hooked on the system.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  I do attribute some value to the delivery. But this was a promo code plus free delivery. A future promo code that doesn't have free delivery would result in even higher fees. So if it's a code for less than $20 I'd expect that entire amount would be eaten up by fees and the increased cost of menu items. Delivery would be extra.
chrisacky 4y ago
I had identical experience but with Uber Eats. I was given 18 GBP coupon off any orders over 20 GBP. So I ended up buying a breakfast delivery from McDonalds for the family, I added the food and the coupon to the order... The first time I tried the payment my card failed. No idea why... it just said Authorization Failed. Second time round, it went through. Driver came, and I also left a tip. About a week later I was doing my household budget and looked at the charge on my account, and it excluded the discount. Once you added in delivery, service charge and the tip, I ended up paying 30%+ more for the food (and didn't have my coupon). I think this was a genuine dark pattern that they use, although I have no interest in putting it to the test. After a failed payment, they auto remove any applied coupons to your transaction.... This was my first and guess-what, last order.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Paying 30% is worth it to not have to go and get the food for many people.
- onionisafruit 4y ago
  If you get an Uber credit in the future, you can use it to buy takeout instead of delivery. Of course there is no delivery fee or tip involved for takeout. My credit card gives me a monthly $15 uber credit, and I always use it to get takeout bun from a restaurant down the street.
  - p1necone 4y ago
    There's no explicit delivery fee, but I find that most prices on Uber Eats are already inflated by ~10-20% over what you'd pay if you ordered directly from the restaurant. The pricing model is very odd - you'd think that Uber would take all of their profit from the delivery fee - because, yaknow, that's the service that they're providing. But no, they also take a cut from the whole order afaik - which forces stores to inflate their prices to avoid eating into their normal profit margins.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
AmVess 4y ago
Aside from fees, there's tax, tip, and DD charges more per menu item than the restaurant does. Markup is about $2 for fast food item and $5 for more expensive places. One place I like to buy food from, our order costs $35 for pick up. DD cost is almost $52 not including tip. I have no idea how DD continues to lose money with this business model.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > I have no idea how DD continues to lose money with this business model. Labor in the US is too expensive for sufficient number of people in the US to afford it that would allow a business like DoorDash to earn a profit.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    "Growth & engagement" is the main issue. Insane amounts of money are wasted on advertising, marketers, software engineers, etc not to mention subsidies to undercut their competitors and secure a monopoly. Food delivery is a viable business but only if the objective is truly "food delivery" and not "growth & engagement at all costs".
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I suspect they need to spend all that growth and engagement to mask the fact that enough people cannot afford to spend enough such that they earn a profit. Most people were not able to afford butlers or drivers before, and DoorDash or Uber have not changed that basic fact, even if the butler/driver is split over 3 customers per hour. Every time I see an example of a door dash order, it is a $30 per person minimum cost. The median annual wage is $44k and 75th percentile is $75k. Who is affording these on a regular basis?
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        > Most people were not able to afford butlers or drivers before, and DoorDash or Uber have not changed that basic fact, even if the butler/driver is split over 3 customers per hour. I disagree - delivered food has been a thing for a long time, back in the day done by employees of the restaurant itself. If it can work despite the driver being limited to a very specific restaurant, it should work better if the driver can be load-balanced across a wide range of restaurants near their current position to minimize downtime and travel time (in case of a driver owned by a specific restaurant, the journey back after their final delivery is a loss - doesn’t have to happen if they’re no longer bound to that specific restaurant and can deliver another restaurant’s food on that otherwise-lost journey).
rajup 4y ago
Use the coupon and pickup the food yourself. Avoids the tip and delivery fee.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  I considered it. But most of the fees didn’t disappear when I selected that option. I’d have saved the $5 tip, but the hidden fees would have remained. I figured if I’m paying for delivery related fees either way, I might as well get it delivered.
spaetzleesser 4y ago
Same here. They sent me a 50% off coupon a while ago. Once I had completed an order the price with all fees was basically still double the in-restaurant price despite 50% off. InstaCart’s pricing seems way more reasonable.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  My friend did the math and found that her Costco orders were 40% more expensive with IC. It does save her the time of going to the store, which is not trivial (especially with two kids), but 40% is one hell of a markup!
irrational 4y ago
I won a $100 gift card for grubhub. Awesome! That is about 4 meals for my wife and I based on what we usually order. Uh... after all the fees and everything it came out to about 1.5 meals. Even if I include my time and gas to drive and pick up my order myself, I can't see why anyone would ever spend their own money to use grubhub unless you don't have transportation. In that case, it seems to just be a scam to take money from poor people.
porknubbins 4y ago
If they were upfront about high delivery fees that would be one thing, but what is infuriating is the way prices differ across the reataurant website and various apps that try to sneak in an extra $2-3 per item. I used to use Seamless regularly but have found Uber to be among the slimiest kind of algorithmic price discriminators.

rvnx 4y ago

I don't understand, isn't 41-35=6 USD ?

newfonewhodis 4y ago
I'm guessing the coupon only applied to the value of the order items and not to taxes + fees (lol) + tips.
gnicholas 4y ago
There were a bunch of fees that were added on top. I added a $5 tip, but was expecting the total would be around $12.

lkbm 4y ago

If I'm understanding correctly, it's worth zero iff you attribute $0 of value to the delivery. DD's value prop is that they deliver. If you don't want that, then yes it's probably not for you.

BoorishBears 4y ago
With Doordash and co the fees over the normal cost of food are so high that even vs traditional delivery fees you're overpaying. - Off the top of my head, yesterday I passed a billboard for McDonalds advertising two large sandwiches for $6. Lets open Uber Eats and try ordering two Big Macs... $13.68 So they don't carry the deals. Not looking good already. Went to checkout... $1.49 delivery fee for a place 6 minutes away. Fair enough. $3.27 service fee. The explanation text is implying the cost of servicing my order (orchestration essentially) is more than double the cost of delivery. $2.00 CA Driver Benefits fee. Delivery drivers were always employees of independent stores, but Uber took such offense to being forced to provide healthcare that they itemize the cost. Grand total comes out to $20 before tax. For a $6 meal in store. - And in case you were thinking "Well Uber isn't DoorDash" this whole time... DoorDash comes out to $22 before tax. Has a "traditional" delivery place ever charged you a 60% delivery fee? It's so absurd I even tried increasing the order size... the ratio of price of fees to price of food actually went up! And all this is before tips!
- Fnoord 4y ago
  Well, you live in a country with tipping culture, but you're free to not tip. If its mandatory, then include it with the price. Its very American to pull this kind of BS. They mention a price, and then say X is tax, Y is delivery, but then they come with all kind of 'additions' (Apple does it here too, about mentioning environmental taxes or something). I don't give a shit about any of these (they're your expenses), just tell me what it costs and I'll say 'yes' or 'no'. I mean, what on Earth why would you as customer be responsible for 'CA Driver Benefits fee'? That's on the employer. And 'service fee'? Which service? The service you get is a proper delivery.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    Like I said, none of this includes tips, but decided to see if this happens in other countries, so I switched around my delivery location: UK: 10% "Service Charge" on top of delivery fees Spain: "Marketplace Fee" Canada (Montreàl): "Taxes and other fees" which when expanded shows "Service Fee" separate from. Doesn't seem to be tied at all to tipping culture, these companies are quite content taking extra money regardless of social norms
    - Fnoord 4y ago
      In my country the market leader is TakeAway / Just Eat (Thuisbezorgd) and they just mention a price for the food and a price for the delivery. Nothing else, no bullshit. If you're a regular customer, you're better off ordering directly though, since they take a cut of about 10%. Websites of restaurants regularly mention this, and since Dutch like to be cheap I suppose it works. In a way its honest to mention the 'service fee', if they were also upfront that the cut is because they're a broker/middleman.
      - BoorishBears 4y ago
        The problem is really that in total Uber Eats was asking for 300% what they claim delivery costs in exchange for what they provide as a broker. That's pretty absurd. - And I was skeptical seeing "no bullshit" in the same sentence as a gig economy app so I had to search, and of course the first result for "Thuisbezorgd service fee" was that they're hiding service costs by charging more than menu price... then turning around and claiming that's because it's the delivery menu. Which of course would mislead any reasonable person expecting to pay what the menu says... the one they'd hand you if you sat down. https://nltimes.nl/2022/05/29/meal-deliverers-misleading-clients-hidden-service-costs-unrealistic-offer https://nltimes.nl/2022/05/29/meal-deliverers-misleading-cli... - There's no way to make the current delivery app model work. The app needs to be small in scope and/or localized otherwise it seems without exception, "growth at all costs" leads to heavily subsidizing food and labor, then increasing costs drastically and decreasing pay once you have people hooked on the system.
gnicholas 4y ago
I do attribute some value to the delivery. But this was a promo code plus free delivery. A future promo code that doesn't have free delivery would result in even higher fees. So if it's a code for less than $20 I'd expect that entire amount would be eaten up by fees and the increased cost of menu items. Delivery would be extra.

chrisacky 4y ago

I had identical experience but with Uber Eats. I was given 18 GBP coupon off any orders over 20 GBP. So I ended up buying a breakfast delivery from McDonalds for the family, I added the food and the coupon to the order... The first time I tried the payment my card failed. No idea why... it just said Authorization Failed. Second time round, it went through. Driver came, and I also left a tip. About a week later I was doing my household budget and looked at the charge on my account, and it excluded the discount. Once you added in delivery, service charge and the tip, I ended up paying 30%+ more for the food (and didn't have my coupon). I think this was a genuine dark pattern that they use, although I have no interest in putting it to the test. After a failed payment, they auto remove any applied coupons to your transaction.... This was my first and guess-what, last order.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Paying 30% is worth it to not have to go and get the food for many people.
onionisafruit 4y ago
If you get an Uber credit in the future, you can use it to buy takeout instead of delivery. Of course there is no delivery fee or tip involved for takeout. My credit card gives me a monthly $15 uber credit, and I always use it to get takeout bun from a restaurant down the street.
- p1necone 4y ago
  There's no explicit delivery fee, but I find that most prices on Uber Eats are already inflated by ~10-20% over what you'd pay if you ordered directly from the restaurant. The pricing model is very odd - you'd think that Uber would take all of their profit from the delivery fee - because, yaknow, that's the service that they're providing. But no, they also take a cut from the whole order afaik - which forces stores to inflate their prices to avoid eating into their normal profit margins.
  - gnicholas 4y ago

AmVess 4y ago

Aside from fees, there's tax, tip, and DD charges more per menu item than the restaurant does. Markup is about $2 for fast food item and $5 for more expensive places. One place I like to buy food from, our order costs $35 for pick up. DD cost is almost $52 not including tip. I have no idea how DD continues to lose money with this business model.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
> I have no idea how DD continues to lose money with this business model. Labor in the US is too expensive for sufficient number of people in the US to afford it that would allow a business like DoorDash to earn a profit.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  "Growth & engagement" is the main issue. Insane amounts of money are wasted on advertising, marketers, software engineers, etc not to mention subsidies to undercut their competitors and secure a monopoly. Food delivery is a viable business but only if the objective is truly "food delivery" and not "growth & engagement at all costs".
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I suspect they need to spend all that growth and engagement to mask the fact that enough people cannot afford to spend enough such that they earn a profit. Most people were not able to afford butlers or drivers before, and DoorDash or Uber have not changed that basic fact, even if the butler/driver is split over 3 customers per hour. Every time I see an example of a door dash order, it is a $30 per person minimum cost. The median annual wage is $44k and 75th percentile is $75k. Who is affording these on a regular basis?
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      > Most people were not able to afford butlers or drivers before, and DoorDash or Uber have not changed that basic fact, even if the butler/driver is split over 3 customers per hour. I disagree - delivered food has been a thing for a long time, back in the day done by employees of the restaurant itself. If it can work despite the driver being limited to a very specific restaurant, it should work better if the driver can be load-balanced across a wide range of restaurants near their current position to minimize downtime and travel time (in case of a driver owned by a specific restaurant, the journey back after their final delivery is a loss - doesn’t have to happen if they’re no longer bound to that specific restaurant and can deliver another restaurant’s food on that otherwise-lost journey).

rajup 4y ago

Use the coupon and pickup the food yourself. Avoids the tip and delivery fee.

gnicholas 4y ago
I considered it. But most of the fees didn’t disappear when I selected that option. I’d have saved the $5 tip, but the hidden fees would have remained. I figured if I’m paying for delivery related fees either way, I might as well get it delivered.

spaetzleesser 4y ago

Same here. They sent me a 50% off coupon a while ago. Once I had completed an order the price with all fees was basically still double the in-restaurant price despite 50% off. InstaCart’s pricing seems way more reasonable.

gnicholas 4y ago
My friend did the math and found that her Costco orders were 40% more expensive with IC. It does save her the time of going to the store, which is not trivial (especially with two kids), but 40% is one hell of a markup!

irrational 4y ago

I won a $100 gift card for grubhub. Awesome! That is about 4 meals for my wife and I based on what we usually order. Uh... after all the fees and everything it came out to about 1.5 meals. Even if I include my time and gas to drive and pick up my order myself, I can't see why anyone would ever spend their own money to use grubhub unless you don't have transportation. In that case, it seems to just be a scam to take money from poor people.

porknubbins 4y ago

If they were upfront about high delivery fees that would be one thing, but what is infuriating is the way prices differ across the reataurant website and various apps that try to sneak in an extra $2-3 per item. I used to use Seamless regularly but have found Uber to be among the slimiest kind of algorithmic price discriminators.