DoorDash delivery drivers are striking on Saturday for tip transparency and higher wages

[zuul]

Link to tweet

'NO DASHER = NO DELIVERIES:' DoorDash Drivers Strike for Tip Transparency

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkbvgz/no-dasher-no-deliveries-doordash-drivers-strike-for-tip-transparency

On July 31, gig workers on the food delivery app DoorDash will refuse to work for the day in what appears to be the first coordinated strike in DoorDash history.

Gig workers are demanding that the platform show them their tips before they agree to deliver an order and institute a base pay of at least $4.50 per order. (Base pay is the amount drivers earn on an order before tips. Thanks to recent pay cuts, many drivers earn as little as $2.00 before tips).

The strike isn't affiliated with any organization, but hundreds of Dashers on Reddit and Facebook have discussed the strike in recent days, and circulated a graphic and list of demands. Motherboard heard from seven drivers who plan to strike, and many more have stated they will participate because they've seen their base pay drop and want to be able to see their tips before they accept orders.

"I'm striking because they lowered the base pay from $3 to $2.50 here, and with gas increases, it’s hard to make any money," a driver in Overland Park, Kansas told Motherboard. "Without tips we’re not making anything."

[LisaM]

1. I don't do the gig economy, so this is new to me.

Why would you tip before a service is rendered? I guess if you had a difficult order or a hard to find place, there is some logic there, but is it common to tip prior to receiving a service?

Note for the record, I am a generous tipper and don't short a server if something goes wrong, I just don't, but this seems backwards and one of the many issues I have with the gig economy.

[crickets]

4. Pre-tips do seem strange at first, but they work fine.

I know where you're coming from -- in the beginning it felt odd, but it works great.

I've had excellent experiences with setting a tip before receiving groceries from InstaCart. I show a 20% tip with my order and it's always snapped up immediately. Shoppers do a good job of picking groceries the best they can, go out of their way to text with photos if my first and second choices are unavailable, and then they drive right over with my purchases. InstaCart has an option to change the tip after the fact, which I would never dream of doing because to me it seems like a cruel bait and switch, however it's there in the event of awful service. It's never been an issue for me.

I offer a great tip and make a point of giving high ratings feedback afterward to reward the people willing to shop for me. I figure if I can pay a 20% tip for someone to carry a plate to my table, I can certainly do the same for someone who has dragged groceries across town to my doorstep. Others may have had different results with delivery service, but for me it's been a godsend. I think showing the tip beforehand has had a lot to do with that. YMMV.

eta InstaCart has issues as well in how little they pay, which is one of the reasons why I tip so much. I do wish they would pay better. It sounds like DoorDash is really screwing their workers. That's a shame, and good for them for striking over it.

[haele]

5. Delivery services add the Tip to the delivery, to ensure drivers pick up small orders.

It's because their minimum wage while "on dash" is less than the cost of two gallons of gas an hour. Without tips, they actually make less than a kid hired as a driver on dinner/closing shift from Dominos used to make, from what Laz says - and he used to manage a successful Dominos.
Let me tell you what happens -

Someone Dashing in a city during rush hour looks at his/her app, and is given the choice of delivery A, which will make them $21.50 or delivery B, which will make them $6.00 or delivery C, which will make the $16.50.

Delivery A is two restaurants, the first in one part of town town, to a house in another part of town, them to a restaurant near the delivery location to another residence near that location.
Deliveries B and C are the segments to delivery A, but the driver doesn't know that when s/he accepts the Dash.

So delivery A is picked. When the Dasher gets to the first restaurant, that's when s/he learns this is a 2-part Dash, and s/he is only making $2.50 from that restaurant plus a $3.50 tip.
It's rush hour; it takes him/her half an hour to collect and deliver someone's $20 meal from 5 miles away, and then have to book it another 2 miles to get to the next restaurant delivery - where there may or may not be the next leg, consisting of a $4.50 payment with a $12.00 tip waiting... if the order wasn't cancelled because another driver or delivery service was able to pick up before our Dasher was able to get there.

So, if once s/he gets to the end of the first delivery, s/he has to get back on the app, see if the next delivery that s/he had accepted 35 minutes prior to going to the store to make that first delivery is still active.

If so, great! If not, the Dasher has to search for the next delivery nearby that will make up for the lost $16.50. And hopefully, that first delivery didn't land him/her in a fast-food wasteland, costing some serious gas to get to the better deliveries.

That's how Door dash screws with their drivers. The lack of transparency in the app is a major problem, as drivers can't "see" anything but the location of the first place they will be going to amongst a selection of payments to choose from. Sometimes they get segmented deliveries due to an algorithm, sometimes it's just a single delivery. The drivers don't know.


Haele

[LisaM]

6. Wow, now I am really glad I don't use them.

I was shopping a couple of weeks ago during the day, and inadvertently got behind a couple of either DoorDash or InstaCarr shoppers. Horrible experience (well, it would have been if I was in a hurry, which I wasn't, luckily, so it was educational). It took for frickin' ever while these two people had to separately pay for and then bag multiple orders. I now know what to look for not to get in their lines. It seems pretty thankless. And I know the app services screw restaurants and drivers. It all seems unsustainable and unfair.

[haele]

2. I have no problems at all with this -

With my current disability, I have difficulty standing and moving around, leaving me pretty much unable to shop, clean, or cook. I rely on delivery when my husband or granddaughters are unable to do so either.

A neighbor who "dashes" has been complaining about the lack of transparency in their pay and tips for the last few months, especially since Postmates has been pushing some deliveries off on Door dash with incomplete information.

It affects time, the route and stores they pick up from while they try to figure out how much they will get picking up from A, delivering to B, picking up from a store near B, then delivering to C, when they may actually make more money skipping Delivery A to B and go straight from store near B to C, and take a chance on the next delivery from C, simply because of the gas and time involved to go from A to B.

I always tip well, more if I am purchasing under $40 or if the restaurant is farther away, because I know they have to make a profit beyond gas money, and they're saving me pain and gas money doing that work for me.

Go on strike, brothers and sisters. Transparency and trust must go both ways in the gig economy. I'll make do, if I have to.

Haele

[Decoy of Fenris]

3. Problem with Doordash is their after-price fees.

They dink you delivery (To push Dashpass), they hit you with a 20% fee post-taxes on top of it, and then you're paying tips on top of -that-. I'd rather they just pay drivers a living wage as opposed to a 10 dollar order ending up a 20 dollar order after all fees and a half-decent tip. Gods help you if you order for more than one person; A 30+ dollar meal can end up running you close to $50.

That said, I also know that in a lot of areas, Dashers can rack up to 25, 30 an hour or more if there isn't much competition, so it'd actually be a pay cut if you took away the tips they'd otherwise get. I'm also not a fan of Dashers knowing what their tip is beforehand on principle; Diehards will slam every high-value delivery they can all at once, knowing they've got a guaranteed payday, leaving other dashers (and some deliveries) out in the cold; Same point, people like me who prefer to tip the dasher in cash would never get a delivery again. (I almost always tip 20-25%, but I've had deliveries end up 2 hours late and stone-cold; Why would I want to tip for a service I essentially didn't get as ordered?)

I get the feeling that no one's going to win this particular strike in the end.

[TheProle]

7. Solidarity