You're just opening the whole user rating can of worms thing that leads to fuckery over on Uber and that nobody wants to stage manage.
Really stop using the fucking word tip. Pre delivery tips should be "Instacart is exploiting you and I want to feel less bad" fee. Really though pre delivery tips shouldn't be alterable barring something that would cause a complaint to instacart even if the tip didn't exist.
If the tip is kept, the onus should really be placed on the consumer at this point. It’s not perfect but if the system would work such that when someone orders, they have the option to tip pre delivery or post, doing it pre delivery is locked in and a risk assumed by the customer, and post delivery tip can be made/modified otherwise. It creates a gamble for the consumer if they tip prior to hope for better service but by and large that should occur, those working aren’t our there to actively screw the customer. They are the ones assuming the risk of going shopping, the least one could do is put it a non refundable incentive in return if they expect expedited service etc.
People that do this in general are massive scabby assholes, and they will look for any loophole in the system to get out of paying. If they offer a big predelivery tip, and are 'forced' into it, they'll call to complain afterwards that the delivery wasn't done well or placed right or was packed badly etc etc etc. The whole point will be to get a refund of the tip/delivery fees. People are already doing this with Uber drivers to avoid paying for rides if I'm not mistaken.
The only way to stop this is to make tips (pre-delivery) completely nonrefundable. But no one will do that, so this system will always be exploitable.
Then you make them do that and limit the tip changes/refunds per month. Put onus of effort on the scummy people, not your workers. This is basic UX/CX
A good chunk of gig services (Doordash, Skip the Dishes, etc) don't easily support changing the tip after delivery. The only way to get a refund is to open a support case with them and make a specific claim against the driver. And, even then, the money comes from the company, not the driver (though the driver may be removed from the service if enough claims are made).
The problem is that the pre-tip system isn’t a fucking tip. It’s a contract negotiation. You offer what you think is enough to get someone to take your order. The delivery person looks at the offer and decides if it is enough to make their work profitable. So they should stop calling it a tip and make it permanent, otherwise it leads to abuse.
If they also want to add on a regular tip option, then I suppose you could do that as well, but it would happen after the delivery so that you can base it on service provided. This has the added benefit of making it impossible for someone to try and pre-gauge a tip amount, and will thus be less likely to be counting on a large tip to make their work profitable.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
+12
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
The problem is that the pre-tip system isn’t a fucking tip. It’s a contract negotiation. You offer what you think is enough to get someone to take your order. The delivery person looks at the offer and decided if it is enough to make their work profitable. So they should stop calling it a tip and make it permanent, otherwise it leads to abuse.
If they also want to add on a regular tip option, then I suppose you could do that as well, but it would happen after the delivery so that you can base it on service provided.
But then it would be clear that the price you're paying is just the price floor, and orders would go down. We can't have that, better to lie to both the employee contractor and the customer.
If you define a tip amount pre-delivery, that’s not a tip - it’s a contract. If I offered someone $55 to come paint my house I can’t then drop it later.
If you want to give someone a tip afterwards for an amount you define based on service, go ahead; but the way instacart is doing it is indistinguishable from letting the buyer modify an agreed upon contract after delivery
You're just opening the whole user rating can of worms thing that leads to fuckery over on Uber and that nobody wants to stage manage.
Really stop using the fucking word tip. Pre delivery tips should be "Instacart is exploiting you and I want to feel less bad" fee. Really though pre delivery tips shouldn't be alterable barring something that would cause a complaint to instacart even if the tip didn't exist.
If the tip is kept, the onus should really be placed on the consumer at this point. It’s not perfect but if the system would work such that when someone orders, they have the option to tip pre delivery or post, doing it pre delivery is locked in and a risk assumed by the customer, and post delivery tip can be made/modified otherwise. It creates a gamble for the consumer if they tip prior to hope for better service but by and large that should occur, those working aren’t our there to actively screw the customer. They are the ones assuming the risk of going shopping, the least one could do is put it a non refundable incentive in return if they expect expedited service etc.
People that do this in general are massive scabby assholes, and they will look for any loophole in the system to get out of paying. If they offer a big predelivery tip, and are 'forced' into it, they'll call to complain afterwards that the delivery wasn't done well or placed right or was packed badly etc etc etc. The whole point will be to get a refund of the tip/delivery fees. People are already doing this with Uber drivers to avoid paying for rides if I'm not mistaken.
The only way to stop this is to make tips (pre-delivery) completely nonrefundable. But no one will do that, so this system will always be exploitable.
Then you make them do that and limit the tip changes/refunds per month. Put onus of effort on the scummy people, not your workers. This is basic UX/CX
This wouldn't work, because how many times a month do you need groceries delivered? Once or twice? It still becomes very possible to game the system.
You could ban users that abuse this system, which should be trackable via both dollar amount change and number of occurrences, but this would do nothing for your employees/independent contractors that are getting screwed over until the ban occurs.
What I think should be done is to allow tip changes to be made, but make it so that the customer has to file an appeal that is then reviewed by a human being. And if the tip revision is approved, then the difference comes out of the companies pocket rather than the employee/IC. Additionally, there should be some maximum limit on the tipping such as 20% of the order value, as this would both discourage overtipping scammers (e.g. $50 tip on a $75 grocery order, which isn't reasonable) and would prevent issues like non-tech savvy folks entering the total order value in error.
Of course this will never happen because the goal of the company is to transfer the E/ICs value into profits, and in the case of delivery companies part of the value is the depreciation and hidden costs of vehicle ownership.
In most reasonable systems, the only change you can make to your tip is to increase it. Outside of that, you need to go into the standard complaint/refund process for anything else.
In most reasonable systems, the only change you can make to your tip is to increase it. Outside of that, you need to go into the standard complaint/refund process for anything else.
In most reasonable systems, you don't tip until after service is rendered.
How about we just get rid of tipping and make employers pay a reasonable wage
Absolutely. Or, failing that, at least make the service pay (and charge) something that works out to a minimum wage after expenses, then let tips be determined only after service is rendered.
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
This is a strong indication that it isn't a tip. It is being mislabeled and both parties are ignoring that. One because they're using it as a premium payment to entice interest and the other as a chance at earning a living wage.
The only one actually acting like it is a tip is the middleman who is just skimming.
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
I'm actually a gig worker and I can tell you that being accepted quickly is the main component of service that we provide. Most delays occur either at the merchant's end (which is not under the driver's control) or when an order sits in the queue due to being rejected by multiple drivers. Having a large tip basically eliminates the later. That being said, 80% of orders typically only tip a $1-5, so the largest chunk of your pay will be the fixed fee component. Most gig companies top up non and low tipping orders though, so the low tippers are basically zero tippers (from the driver's perspective), so unless there's a significantly large tip, my decision on whether to accept something will be mostly based on distance first and whether the merchant is slow second. Any gig driver knows that very few people actually add tips after the fact ("I'll tip you in cash when you get here" is basically a meme on gig forums), so the only way the tip makes a difference to us is if its up front.
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
I'm actually a gig worker and I can tell you that being accepted quickly is the main component of service that we provide. Most delays occur either at the merchant's end (which is not under the driver's control) or when an order sits in the queue due to being rejected by multiple drivers. Having a large tip basically eliminates the later. That being said, 80% of orders typically only tip a $1-5, so the largest chunk of your pay will be the fixed fee component. Most gig companies top up non and low tipping orders though, so the low tippers are basically zero tippers (from the driver's perspective), so unless there's a significantly large tip, my decision on whether to accept something will be mostly based on distance first and whether the merchant is slow second. Any gig driver knows that very few people actually add tips after the fact ("I'll tip you in cash when you get here" is basically a meme on gig forums), so the only way the tip makes a difference to us is if its up front.
I think, under that framework, my first impulse would be to offer a $1 tip upfront and then (actually) tip the driver in cash so the app owners can't steal it.
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
I'm actually a gig worker and I can tell you that being accepted quickly is the main component of service that we provide. Most delays occur either at the merchant's end (which is not under the driver's control) or when an order sits in the queue due to being rejected by multiple drivers. Having a large tip basically eliminates the later. That being said, 80% of orders typically only tip a $1-5, so the largest chunk of your pay will be the fixed fee component. Most gig companies top up non and low tipping orders though, so the low tippers are basically zero tippers (from the driver's perspective), so unless there's a significantly large tip, my decision on whether to accept something will be mostly based on distance first and whether the merchant is slow second. Any gig driver knows that very few people actually add tips after the fact ("I'll tip you in cash when you get here" is basically a meme on gig forums), so the only way the tip makes a difference to us is if its up front.
I think, under that framework, my first impulse would be to offer a $1 tip upfront and then (actually) tip the driver in cash so the app owners can't steal it.
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
I'm actually a gig worker and I can tell you that being accepted quickly is the main component of service that we provide. Most delays occur either at the merchant's end (which is not under the driver's control) or when an order sits in the queue due to being rejected by multiple drivers. Having a large tip basically eliminates the later. That being said, 80% of orders typically only tip a $1-5, so the largest chunk of your pay will be the fixed fee component. Most gig companies top up non and low tipping orders though, so the low tippers are basically zero tippers (from the driver's perspective), so unless there's a significantly large tip, my decision on whether to accept something will be mostly based on distance first and whether the merchant is slow second. Any gig driver knows that very few people actually add tips after the fact ("I'll tip you in cash when you get here" is basically a meme on gig forums), so the only way the tip makes a difference to us is if its up front.
I think, under that framework, my first impulse would be to offer a $1 tip upfront and then (actually) tip the driver in cash so the app owners can't steal it.
Nobody wants cash these days.
Anecdotal and all but I've spoke to about a dozen people who have been doing the delivery thing recently because I was considering it as a side job and they absolutely want cash tips.
You're just opening the whole user rating can of worms thing that leads to fuckery over on Uber and that nobody wants to stage manage.
Really stop using the fucking word tip. Pre delivery tips should be "Instacart is exploiting you and I want to feel less bad" fee. Really though pre delivery tips shouldn't be alterable barring something that would cause a complaint to instacart even if the tip didn't exist.
If the tip is kept, the onus should really be placed on the consumer at this point. It’s not perfect but if the system would work such that when someone orders, they have the option to tip pre delivery or post, doing it pre delivery is locked in and a risk assumed by the customer, and post delivery tip can be made/modified otherwise. It creates a gamble for the consumer if they tip prior to hope for better service but by and large that should occur, those working aren’t our there to actively screw the customer. They are the ones assuming the risk of going shopping, the least one could do is put it a non refundable incentive in return if they expect expedited service etc.
People that do this in general are massive scabby assholes, and they will look for any loophole in the system to get out of paying. If they offer a big predelivery tip, and are 'forced' into it, they'll call to complain afterwards that the delivery wasn't done well or placed right or was packed badly etc etc etc. The whole point will be to get a refund of the tip/delivery fees. People are already doing this with Uber drivers to avoid paying for rides if I'm not mistaken.
The only way to stop this is to make tips (pre-delivery) completely nonrefundable. But no one will do that, so this system will always be exploitable.
Then you make them do that and limit the tip changes/refunds per month. Put onus of effort on the scummy people, not your workers. This is basic UX/CX
This wouldn't work, because how many times a month do you need groceries delivered? Once or twice? It still becomes very possible to game the system.
You could ban users that abuse this system, which should be trackable via both dollar amount change and number of occurrences, but this would do nothing for your employees/independent contractors that are getting screwed over until the ban occurs.
What I think should be done is to allow tip changes to be made, but make it so that the customer has to file an appeal that is then reviewed by a human being. And if the tip revision is approved, then the difference comes out of the companies pocket rather than the employee/IC. Additionally, there should be some maximum limit on the tipping such as 20% of the order value, as this would both discourage overtipping scammers (e.g. $50 tip on a $75 grocery order, which isn't reasonable) and would prevent issues like non-tech savvy folks entering the total order value in error.
Of course this will never happen because the goal of the company is to transfer the E/ICs value into profits, and in the case of delivery companies part of the value is the depreciation and hidden costs of vehicle ownership.
That was my point, apologies if it was unclear. Tip changes/refunds would be more a "support" ticket experience leading it not to be absolute that you would get it (this would eliminate many bad actors), then you hard limit the refunds per month (another group of more motivated bad actors), and have a one account/person rule in the Eula and customer aggregation/householding tech to help enforce. This would help a ban be real and put a lot of hurdles to being a shithead
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
I'm actually a gig worker and I can tell you that being accepted quickly is the main component of service that we provide. Most delays occur either at the merchant's end (which is not under the driver's control) or when an order sits in the queue due to being rejected by multiple drivers. Having a large tip basically eliminates the later. That being said, 80% of orders typically only tip a $1-5, so the largest chunk of your pay will be the fixed fee component. Most gig companies top up non and low tipping orders though, so the low tippers are basically zero tippers (from the driver's perspective), so unless there's a significantly large tip, my decision on whether to accept something will be mostly based on distance first and whether the merchant is slow second. Any gig driver knows that very few people actually add tips after the fact ("I'll tip you in cash when you get here" is basically a meme on gig forums), so the only way the tip makes a difference to us is if its up front.
I think, under that framework, my first impulse would be to offer a $1 tip upfront and then (actually) tip the driver in cash so the app owners can't steal it.
Nobody wants cash these days.
Anecdotal and all but I've spoke to about a dozen people who have been doing the delivery thing recently because I was considering it as a side job and they absolutely want cash tips.
I suspect there are two different time frames in place. My understanding is Gig Work in the Time of Corona makes cash a lot less desirable. Before and after I suspect cash will be the best.
+1
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
You can do that with pretty much any app, but if you're bidding for a driver's attention, then doing it up front is not unreasonable.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
I'm actually a gig worker and I can tell you that being accepted quickly is the main component of service that we provide. Most delays occur either at the merchant's end (which is not under the driver's control) or when an order sits in the queue due to being rejected by multiple drivers. Having a large tip basically eliminates the later. That being said, 80% of orders typically only tip a $1-5, so the largest chunk of your pay will be the fixed fee component. Most gig companies top up non and low tipping orders though, so the low tippers are basically zero tippers (from the driver's perspective), so unless there's a significantly large tip, my decision on whether to accept something will be mostly based on distance first and whether the merchant is slow second. Any gig driver knows that very few people actually add tips after the fact ("I'll tip you in cash when you get here" is basically a meme on gig forums), so the only way the tip makes a difference to us is if its up front.
I think, under that framework, my first impulse would be to offer a $1 tip upfront and then (actually) tip the driver in cash so the app owners can't steal it.
Nobody wants cash these days.
Anecdotal and all but I've spoke to about a dozen people who have been doing the delivery thing recently because I was considering it as a side job and they absolutely want cash tips.
Because then they know the app isn't stealing said tip.
Nothing like being at work in your office playing your pandora station on your phone, when a commercial from your own company comes on thanking you for being there.
Grubhub: Restaurants are important small businesses that are in danger of closing down, please order lots from our app so we can take a chunk out of their diminishing bottom line before they go under for good.
Grubhub has cruised to $363 million in revenues this quarter, but the real kicker here is they're barely breaking even. Now the true capitalists among us might be thinking, "If you rely on a nation-wide plague to barely break even, then you might have a bad business model," but then you'd be missing the point. Because the modern capitalists among us - the true true capitalists - would see that Grubhub only breaking even reveals the real plan all along. Grubhub is following the Amazon model. Its mission isn't to make money, at least right now. (Remember, it took years for Amazon to reach profitability.) Grubhub's mission is to crush whatever small businesses stand in their way until the landscape of dine-in and delivery changes and flows through Grubhub permanently.
Grubhub, of course, would deny this. Spokesperson John Collins said, "We only make money when [restaurants] do well. We want them to do well." But if that were the case, then Grubhub wouldn't "secretly be buying up thousands of domain names and using them to create shadow websites that competed with pages operated by restaurants" or be so opposed to commission caps that would allow restaurants to survive. No, the idea is for every restaurant to comply with the cartel-like practices of delivery services and if they can't, as many of them won't, then they'll die.
Some of you might say, "That's capitalism, baby. Only the best restaurants should survive," and while you'd be right, it's important to realize what you stand to lose. This isn't a battle between who makes the best pizza sauce. This is a winner-take-all cage-match between the concepts of delivery vs. dine-in. The restaurant that makes the best food or offers the best service isn't going to be who survives. It's going to be who can best effectively cut their costs to remain profitable for delivery. That means no waiters or dining rooms. That means restaurants being replaced by buildings with "kitchen spaces" as DoorDash has already begun to experiment with.
Doordash was causing him real problems. The most common was, Doordash delivery drivers didn't have the proper bags for pizza so it inevitably would arrive cold. It led to his employees wasting time responding to complaints and even some bad Yelp reviews.
But he brought up another problem - the prices were off. He was frustrated that customers were seeing incorrectly low prices. A pizza that he charged $24 for was listed as $16 by Doordash.
My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes.
My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his website, Doordash had mistakenly taken the price for a plain cheese pizza and applied it to a 'specialty' pizza with a bunch of toppings.
My third thought: Cue the Wall Street trader in me…..ARBITRAGE!!!!
But this is the kicker:
Tricking businesses onto your platform and creating additional headaches for small business owners in the pursuit of Softbankian growth is a bad as it gets. Many restauranteurs were complaining about their Google listings being "hijacked" by Doordash, sometimes even usurping their own preferred delivery.
These underhanded tricks aren't unique to Doordash though. In recent weeks there has been some great work coming out around a Yelp - Grubhub phone scam. This one is just priceless (seriously, read this Buzzfeed piece). Grubhub for their own sites generates a phone number for each restaurant that goes to a centralized, Grubhub owned call center. If someone calls in and orders via this number, the restaurant gets charged a fee. Apparently, some enterprising BD folks came up with the idea that Yelp could put the Grubhub phone numbers in place of the real restaurant phone number on the Yelp listing. Customers who think they’re “helping” their local restaurants by calling in the order are still creating a fee for Grubhub.
Which brings us to the question - what is the point of all this? These platforms are all losing money. Just think of all the meetings and lines of code and phone calls to make all of these nefarious things happen which just continue to bleed money. Why go through all this trouble?
Grubhub just lost $33 million on $360 million of revenue in Q1.
Doordash reportedly lost an insane $450 million off $900 million in revenue in 2019 (which does make me wonder if my dream of a decentralized network of pizza arbitrageurs does exist).
Uber Eats is Uber's "most profitable division” 😂😂. Uber Eats lost $461 million in Q4 2019 off of revenue of $734 million. Sometimes I need to write this out to remind myself. Uber Eats spent $1.2 billion to make $734 million. In one quarter.
Amazon just bailed on restaurant delivery in the U.S.
For some weird reason delivery has never felt right to me. I like the act of getting in my car and picking something up. Probably also because I don't want to pay delivery fee.
So I'm glad that I never got onboard the delivery apps.
I don't know if they exist other places, but Foodora is the biggest doordash equivalent here in Norway.
Last year, the employees went on a strike to get a collective labour agreement (a big deal with real legal power behind it). Foodora caved, but are still in business.
Doordash was causing him real problems. The most common was, Doordash delivery drivers didn't have the proper bags for pizza so it inevitably would arrive cold. It led to his employees wasting time responding to complaints and even some bad Yelp reviews.
But he brought up another problem - the prices were off. He was frustrated that customers were seeing incorrectly low prices. A pizza that he charged $24 for was listed as $16 by Doordash.
My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes.
My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his website, Doordash had mistakenly taken the price for a plain cheese pizza and applied it to a 'specialty' pizza with a bunch of toppings.
My third thought: Cue the Wall Street trader in me…..ARBITRAGE!!!!
But this is the kicker:
Tricking businesses onto your platform and creating additional headaches for small business owners in the pursuit of Softbankian growth is a bad as it gets. Many restauranteurs were complaining about their Google listings being "hijacked" by Doordash, sometimes even usurping their own preferred delivery.
These underhanded tricks aren't unique to Doordash though. In recent weeks there has been some great work coming out around a Yelp - Grubhub phone scam. This one is just priceless (seriously, read this Buzzfeed piece). Grubhub for their own sites generates a phone number for each restaurant that goes to a centralized, Grubhub owned call center. If someone calls in and orders via this number, the restaurant gets charged a fee. Apparently, some enterprising BD folks came up with the idea that Yelp could put the Grubhub phone numbers in place of the real restaurant phone number on the Yelp listing. Customers who think they’re “helping” their local restaurants by calling in the order are still creating a fee for Grubhub.
Which brings us to the question - what is the point of all this? These platforms are all losing money. Just think of all the meetings and lines of code and phone calls to make all of these nefarious things happen which just continue to bleed money. Why go through all this trouble?
Grubhub just lost $33 million on $360 million of revenue in Q1.
Doordash reportedly lost an insane $450 million off $900 million in revenue in 2019 (which does make me wonder if my dream of a decentralized network of pizza arbitrageurs does exist).
Uber Eats is Uber's "most profitable division” 😂😂. Uber Eats lost $461 million in Q4 2019 off of revenue of $734 million. Sometimes I need to write this out to remind myself. Uber Eats spent $1.2 billion to make $734 million. In one quarter.
Amazon just bailed on restaurant delivery in the U.S.
“What is the point of all this?”
Check the CEO’s compensation...
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MeeqeLord of the pants most fancySomeplace amazingRegistered Userregular
I'm working at a small restaurant that does pizza delivery while my regular job is down.
Doordash dropped off a checkin/out station off to the side of the bar what is currently closed and out of line of site to the kitchen, and has been closed for months now. We had a real fun night when a small but noticeable chunk of carryout customers would come in, and their order hadn't been placed. Because Doordashes hardware, which again we didn't consent to or know about, desynced from our wifi and wasn't placing the orders into our system. Which again, we knew nothing about. Those customers who from our perspective had just ordered carryout? Doordash drivers.
Turns out door dash added us, without consulting us in any way. Currently their hardware is "missing", and we're listed as not available on their website. Our drivers were livid, tips from driving are the bulk of our income and these guys were cutting us out of our own jobs.
The while thing sucked, on top of it being delivery in a pandemic. Especially since we offer delivery, and Doordash offered our food without a delivery charge, but left us on the hook for mistakes when their janky ass website got much of our menu wrong.
So at some point, can all the restaurants just class action doordash out of existence? Because it seems now like every time I see a new post in here they've sunk lower.
Doordash dropped off a checkin/out station off to the side of the bar what is currently closed and out of line of site to the kitchen, and has been closed for months now.
MeeqeLord of the pants most fancySomeplace amazingRegistered Userregular
I was real tempted, don't get me wrong. Last I checked it was unplugged in the back, so that whoever has to try and get it has to deal with a pile of irate essentials. It was the worst I could do.
Doordash was causing him real problems. The most common was, Doordash delivery drivers didn't have the proper bags for pizza so it inevitably would arrive cold. It led to his employees wasting time responding to complaints and even some bad Yelp reviews.
But he brought up another problem - the prices were off. He was frustrated that customers were seeing incorrectly low prices. A pizza that he charged $24 for was listed as $16 by Doordash.
My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes.
My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his website, Doordash had mistakenly taken the price for a plain cheese pizza and applied it to a 'specialty' pizza with a bunch of toppings.
My third thought: Cue the Wall Street trader in me…..ARBITRAGE!!!!
But this is the kicker:
Tricking businesses onto your platform and creating additional headaches for small business owners in the pursuit of Softbankian growth is a bad as it gets. Many restauranteurs were complaining about their Google listings being "hijacked" by Doordash, sometimes even usurping their own preferred delivery.
These underhanded tricks aren't unique to Doordash though. In recent weeks there has been some great work coming out around a Yelp - Grubhub phone scam. This one is just priceless (seriously, read this Buzzfeed piece). Grubhub for their own sites generates a phone number for each restaurant that goes to a centralized, Grubhub owned call center. If someone calls in and orders via this number, the restaurant gets charged a fee. Apparently, some enterprising BD folks came up with the idea that Yelp could put the Grubhub phone numbers in place of the real restaurant phone number on the Yelp listing. Customers who think they’re “helping” their local restaurants by calling in the order are still creating a fee for Grubhub.
Which brings us to the question - what is the point of all this? These platforms are all losing money. Just think of all the meetings and lines of code and phone calls to make all of these nefarious things happen which just continue to bleed money. Why go through all this trouble?
Grubhub just lost $33 million on $360 million of revenue in Q1.
Doordash reportedly lost an insane $450 million off $900 million in revenue in 2019 (which does make me wonder if my dream of a decentralized network of pizza arbitrageurs does exist).
Uber Eats is Uber's "most profitable division” 😂😂. Uber Eats lost $461 million in Q4 2019 off of revenue of $734 million. Sometimes I need to write this out to remind myself. Uber Eats spent $1.2 billion to make $734 million. In one quarter.
Amazon just bailed on restaurant delivery in the U.S.
There's a very good comment under that article:
I was the former Head of Innovation at Grubhub, so I have seen the truth behind many of these claims first hand. Sadly, I invented a lot of the food delivery technologies that are now being used for evil. There were so many great points made here, and I’m glad people are finally paying attention to this. I will try to only add to a few.
COVID-19 is exposing the fact that delivery platforms are not actually in the business of delivery. They are in the business of finance. In many ways, they are like payday lenders for restaurants and drivers. They give you the sensation of cash-flow, but at the expense of your long term future and financial stability. Once you “take out this loan” you will never pay it back and it will ultimately kill your business.
In the case of restaurants, these platforms slowly siphon off your customers and then charge you to have access to them. They are simultaneously selling these same customers to your competitor across the street, but, don’t worry, they are also selling their customers to you.
For drivers, they are banking on a workforce that is willing to mortgage their assets, like cars and time, well below market value, in exchange for money now. They know that most delivery drivers are simply not doing the math on the actual cost of providing delivery (time, gas, car maintenance, payroll taxes...etc). If they did, drivers would realize that they are actually the ones subsidizing the cost of delivery.
Delivery platforms are “hyper-growth” businesses that are trying to grow into a no-growth industry. Food consumption really only grows at the rate of population growth, so if you want to grow faster than that, you have to take market share from someone else. Ideally, you take it from someone weaker, who has less information. In this industry, the delivery platforms have found unsuspecting victims in restaurants and drivers.
The competition for customers has not gone away. It has simply moved online. Many restaurants have been too slow, or unwilling to adapt. Delivery platforms and other restaurants are taking advantage of this to gobble up market share. Restaurants need to realize that they are now running e-commerce businesses and they need to act accordingly. Being proficient on Google, Yelp, Facebook and the dozens of other platforms is no longer optional, it is essential.
Does Grubhub etc *have* to take such a big cut? From my own experience, Steam really took off because it took a much smaller cut than all the other web portals. How much does it really cost to send a message from a customer view of an app to a restaurant view of an app?
Does Grubhub etc *have* to take such a big cut? From my own experience, Steam really took off because it took a much smaller cut than all the other web portals. How much does it really cost to send a message from a customer view of an app to a restaurant view of an app?
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A good chunk of gig services (Doordash, Skip the Dishes, etc) don't easily support changing the tip after delivery. The only way to get a refund is to open a support case with them and make a specific claim against the driver. And, even then, the money comes from the company, not the driver (though the driver may be removed from the service if enough claims are made).
If they also want to add on a regular tip option, then I suppose you could do that as well, but it would happen after the delivery so that you can base it on service provided. This has the added benefit of making it impossible for someone to try and pre-gauge a tip amount, and will thus be less likely to be counting on a large tip to make their work profitable.
But then it would be clear that the price you're paying is just the price floor, and orders would go down. We can't have that, better to lie to both the employee contractor and the customer.
Yup. The actual issue here is that tips are a bullshit attempt to foist properly compensating workers onto an informal person-to-person system.
If you define a tip amount pre-delivery, that’s not a tip - it’s a contract. If I offered someone $55 to come paint my house I can’t then drop it later.
If you want to give someone a tip afterwards for an amount you define based on service, go ahead; but the way instacart is doing it is indistinguishable from letting the buyer modify an agreed upon contract after delivery
This wouldn't work, because how many times a month do you need groceries delivered? Once or twice? It still becomes very possible to game the system.
You could ban users that abuse this system, which should be trackable via both dollar amount change and number of occurrences, but this would do nothing for your employees/independent contractors that are getting screwed over until the ban occurs.
What I think should be done is to allow tip changes to be made, but make it so that the customer has to file an appeal that is then reviewed by a human being. And if the tip revision is approved, then the difference comes out of the companies pocket rather than the employee/IC. Additionally, there should be some maximum limit on the tipping such as 20% of the order value, as this would both discourage overtipping scammers (e.g. $50 tip on a $75 grocery order, which isn't reasonable) and would prevent issues like non-tech savvy folks entering the total order value in error.
Of course this will never happen because the goal of the company is to transfer the E/ICs value into profits, and in the case of delivery companies part of the value is the depreciation and hidden costs of vehicle ownership.
In most reasonable systems, you don't tip until after service is rendered.
Disagree. The entire idea of having to tip generously up front, without any idea of the quality of service rendered, is inherently unreasonable.
Absolutely. Or, failing that, at least make the service pay (and charge) something that works out to a minimum wage after expenses, then let tips be determined only after service is rendered.
This is a strong indication that it isn't a tip. It is being mislabeled and both parties are ignoring that. One because they're using it as a premium payment to entice interest and the other as a chance at earning a living wage.
The only one actually acting like it is a tip is the middleman who is just skimming.
Pretty much all the delivery services allow you to add money to the tip after the fact (its just that some allow you to take it away too). If you want to put in a zero dollar tip up front and then add it afterwards based on the service, that is pretty much always supported. The topic of discussion here was whether putting a large tip up front to entice top tier service and then yoinking it away afterwards regardless of the service received was something that should be (easily) supported.
The question, obviously, is whether putting a large tip up front actually entices top tier service. I'd argue that, much the same way that tips after the fact rarely correlate well with quality of service, neither does service correlate with tips given up front. I'm sure it correlates with your order being accepted rapidly, but there's not the most remote of guarantees that the service will be in any other way "top tier."
Ideally an up-front tip would be conditional on some sort of objective measures of complete service...fully filled order, well packaged, etc. That tip shouldn't be considered earned until service is actually rendered. Otherwise, just as there's nothing stopping a customer from yoinking the tip afterward, there's nothing stopping the delivery driver from half-assing the job regardless of tip amount. Neither party has any decent guarantee that the transaction will be honored. It's a terrible way to do business for all involved.
Which is why the ideal system...if we assume tipping can ever be an ideal system...is that a fair fixed fee is charged up front sufficient to equal some minimum wage for a completed service, and then any tip is determined after service is rendered and non-revocable.
I'm actually a gig worker and I can tell you that being accepted quickly is the main component of service that we provide. Most delays occur either at the merchant's end (which is not under the driver's control) or when an order sits in the queue due to being rejected by multiple drivers. Having a large tip basically eliminates the later. That being said, 80% of orders typically only tip a $1-5, so the largest chunk of your pay will be the fixed fee component. Most gig companies top up non and low tipping orders though, so the low tippers are basically zero tippers (from the driver's perspective), so unless there's a significantly large tip, my decision on whether to accept something will be mostly based on distance first and whether the merchant is slow second. Any gig driver knows that very few people actually add tips after the fact ("I'll tip you in cash when you get here" is basically a meme on gig forums), so the only way the tip makes a difference to us is if its up front.
I think, under that framework, my first impulse would be to offer a $1 tip upfront and then (actually) tip the driver in cash so the app owners can't steal it.
Nobody wants cash these days.
Anecdotal and all but I've spoke to about a dozen people who have been doing the delivery thing recently because I was considering it as a side job and they absolutely want cash tips.
That was my point, apologies if it was unclear. Tip changes/refunds would be more a "support" ticket experience leading it not to be absolute that you would get it (this would eliminate many bad actors), then you hard limit the refunds per month (another group of more motivated bad actors), and have a one account/person rule in the Eula and customer aggregation/householding tech to help enforce. This would help a ban be real and put a lot of hurdles to being a shithead
I suspect there are two different time frames in place. My understanding is Gig Work in the Time of Corona makes cash a lot less desirable. Before and after I suspect cash will be the best.
Because then they know the app isn't stealing said tip.
I know this is "ha ha only serious", but Cracked has a good piece on this:
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
The same way Uber and Air BnB operate: it's not actually legal, but until they get their nose bloodied they'll keep doing it.
And they've got MUCH bigger pockets than your average family-owned, or even small chain restaurant.
But this is the kicker:
So I'm glad that I never got onboard the delivery apps.
It would also mean acknowledging that tech isn't a solution to everything.
When UBER collapses in on itself they'll sell their GPS and tracking tech for a trillion dollars.
Last year, the employees went on a strike to get a collective labour agreement (a big deal with real legal power behind it). Foodora caved, but are still in business.
“What is the point of all this?”
Check the CEO’s compensation...
Doordash dropped off a checkin/out station off to the side of the bar what is currently closed and out of line of site to the kitchen, and has been closed for months now. We had a real fun night when a small but noticeable chunk of carryout customers would come in, and their order hadn't been placed. Because Doordashes hardware, which again we didn't consent to or know about, desynced from our wifi and wasn't placing the orders into our system. Which again, we knew nothing about. Those customers who from our perspective had just ordered carryout? Doordash drivers.
Turns out door dash added us, without consulting us in any way. Currently their hardware is "missing", and we're listed as not available on their website. Our drivers were livid, tips from driving are the bulk of our income and these guys were cutting us out of our own jobs.
The while thing sucked, on top of it being delivery in a pandemic. Especially since we offer delivery, and Doordash offered our food without a delivery charge, but left us on the hook for mistakes when their janky ass website got much of our menu wrong.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
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Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
There's a very good comment under that article:
But Celestial, the VCs must FEED.