It is inevitable for DoorDash to make tipping an even more annoying and intrusive part of Deliveroo. I can't wait to see how europeen users react to that.
> tipping always led to worse delivery success rates
What does this mean? If you don't tip on doordash in the US, your order just arrives a few minutes later than usual since the auction starts at a lower price and drivers will reject the lowest prices
That’s an understatement. Your order sits on the shelf for while before someone picks up if you don’t tip, sometimes more than 30 mins, until DoorDash forces some poor underpaid driver to pick it up sometimes with incentives, but mostly threats on their livelihood. In some cases, drivers do pick it up, don’t deliver, eat your stuff, or drive in other directions to focus on other orders. Orders without tips do extremely poorly these days.
Customers will not correlate poor tipping with poor service, because tipping is considered so culturally different. If that behaviour starts to happen, customers will just use it once or twice, have a poor experience and decide "nope, that doesn't work for me, I'll not use that any more".
In the UK Deliveroo offers me a chance to tip when making an order but only really "pushes" it after delivery, conforming to the UK sense of a tip being in response to great service. I've only been minded to do it once when a driver genuinely did something exceptional when I messed up an order - so he got a £5 tip on a £2.50 delivery fee from a restaurant about a mile away from me.
DoorDash could actually try something innovative here - they could eradicate tips, and push service fees up a little, and make a big deal of it in their marketing that their gig economy riders are getting a great deal. If it catches on, you could find this ripple out into other services like Uber, and perhaps change the tone on tipping in general in other scenarios, too.
A tip is essentially an extra 15-20% pseudo-tax on food delivery (at least in the US-where some people feel entitled to be tipped just for doing their job).
>at least in the US-where some people feel entitled to be tipped just for doing their job
In the US, many food-related jobs are paid rates predicated on the workers being tipped. Sure there are some laws requiring the business to make up the difference to minimum wage if not met (over an average), but that’s still only up to minimum wage which is criminally low in many states.
Some states have started requiring the companies running app-based gig jobs to also ensure a minimum wage is paid, but not many yet.
No, a tip is a variable component of the price of having your burrito delivered to you in a private taxi cab, and if you don't want to pay it, go pick up your own burrito.
No, I'm already paying for a delivery service fee. A tip is an extra thank you. If restaurants charge me a mandatory fee ("tip") on top of my food price, there's no extra tip on top of that.
I mean, you can choose to pay or not pay for the service. I'm not saying you should go out of your way to patronize businesses that charge you more for your burrito taxi than you think it's worth. But if your burritos arrive cold because you are the lowest bidder for the service, I think you've lost some of the moral high ground to complain.
I have a high moral high ground because I don't use these services at all due to poor treatment of employees.
It's difficult to conflate the moral high ground with maximal participation in a weird auction format when people are just trying to buy a burrito.
In most other countries (like mine Australia) the price of the good is the advertised price. There is no extra weird moral based financial game played on top.
I mean, OK, but they're treated badly because they're not paid enough, which makes tipping a strange complaint! You could use the service, if you wanted. Just pay what it really costs.
> they're treated badly because they're not paid enough
They're also treated badly because they don't know how much they'll get paid in practice, which makes financial planning even more difficult, including comparing job offers. Instead of just getting the higher-paid job, you get lured into accepting a low-paying one with promises of tips that may or may not materialize. My salary is basically the main thing that's legally enforceable when I sign an employment contract, but I wouldn't even get that if I relied on tips.
> Just pay what it really costs.
How much is that exactly? Is that +5/10/20% of the initial price?
Oh certainly, it doesn't make sense at all. We should be presented the cost of the service, including a reasonable wage for the driver.
But it's a little odd to turn this into a moral issue when the app actually does give you the means to pay the driver what you believe is actually fair, above the base amount being charged.
So what this really tells me is that you just think the true cost is more than you want to pay. Which is totally fine.
It doesn't make any sense and it's purely exploitative.
However, you should still tip, because not tipping isn't a protest. You're not hurting doordash by not tipping, you're just hurting the driver and yourself. The driver who, as we've all rightfully pointed out, is already exploited.
Yes so your solution is to buy into that exploitative model?
It’s not a tip. A tip is an additional sign of appreciation for the quality of service. When this becomes a compulsory addition (as it seems to be in US culture) it’s simply a hidden tax, paying it in advance of receiving said service is even more ridiculous. In this case - as we seem to have established - it’s a model that hurts both worker and consumer, allowing exploitative employers to externalise costs by presenting a false moral dilemma.
That's not a solution, but it's what you should be doing. A solution is legislation, any other "solution" is a lie and we should actively disregard anyone who claims otherwise.
> it’s a model that hurts both worker and consumer
Yes, it is. But by not tipping, you're objectively hurting the worker more. Notice my choice of words here - objectively. That means don't bother trying to argue against it.
You haven't even begun to further explain nor explore the wider economic and social implications of what you claim to be the one true way, nor potential alternatives (and why they are impossible or insufficient). You're making increasingly bold claims, therefore you should perhaps back them up. Simply declaring what you think to be true as objectively so, doesn't make it such.
> That means don't bother trying to argue against it.
Thanks, wasn't sure if this was meant to be humorous but it did give me a chuckle.
Because as I’ve stated, it only hurts the worker. You’re not materially improving their lives, you’re literally doing the opposite.
Maybe the hope is that if you kick people already down they’ll “learn a lesson” and then change their behavior? Which, I don’t know, maybe. But it seems to me it’s more likely they just continue doing what they’re doing but now worse.
And, by the way, I’m using objectively correctly.
If you don’t tip them, the worker makes less money on that order. Is less money for workers a better or worse outcome? It’s an incredibly simply line of logic. And, for the record, you haven’t even attempted to refute it. You haven’t said why not tipping is good. So… I’m inclined to believe I’m right and you know it. Maybe there’s some cognitive dissonance there where you want to simultaneously be pro-labor and pay labor less.
Tipping isn’t a culture. Well, it is, but because we allow it to be via legislation. Of course companies enforce and employ tipping - it’s a win for them. You can’t dismantle the culture without addressing the root cause. It’s like proclaiming you’re gonna solve a poverty culture by driving around in a Range Rover. Yeah… that doesn’t fix anything.
You want to believe you’re doing your part by doing nothing at all. It’s a nice thought and I’m sure comforting, but it’s not real. If you want tips to stop, then force employers to pay living wages and prevent them from gathering tips. There, problem solved.
It's not purely US. In the UK, an "optional" (though not really) ~10% service fee is often added for sit-down service though not if you just pay at the bar. So more like Anglosphere than just US--though US is both higher and more pervasive. I forget what it was the other day but I was asked about a tip for some totally routine retail transaction.
Ask for it to be removed, it's absolutely optional. In many cases, though not all - because I ask discreetly every time - it doesn't even translate to any benefit for the staff, they get paid the same and it just goes in as general takings which makes it even more of a flagrant piss-take. If I do want to tip as a sign of genuine appreciation I give them cash separately and ask they share it with the kitchen team.
No such wide spread culture or requirement in 50% of the counties considered to be in the Anglosphere.
Whilst it might exist in some capacity, a capacity that is far more limited, not applied in the same manner and easily avoided. It’s not even remotely the same as the situation in the US where it’s effectively mandatory across the board.
There is no reason for a tip to be given before the actual service is provided. A tip is meant to show appreciation for the quality of service, not to be an insurance to get a barely decent one.
If food delivery services were presented to end users as some sort of bidding model, sure, but it's not. It's presented as simply as "you order food, food gets delivered to you". There's no ability to see how my order might be affected by how much I pay.
For the record, I never use food delivery services because the upcharge is absurd. If I want food delivery it'll be pizza and that's it. At least that's an honest transaction and I don't have to wonder when my food will arrive or how cold it might be.
I don't think GGGP was complaining about the price. I think they were complaining about it being a non-disclosed fee (like tax) while also not being a clearly defined amount (pseudo-tax) and with aggressively bad consequences if someone doesn't go along with the mind game (deliverer eats the food, wastes an hour of your time while you're hungry, need to follow up with support, etc) rather than just an up-front rejection.
Obviously nobody wants to order food on ebay, and if you're going to argue that an auction is the only possible outcome why wouldn't that apply to the restaurant itself too? The restaurant could aggressively underpay/understaff chefs, then you go to pick up the order and restaurant says "Oh someone else offered to buy food at a higher price, but feel free to order again and offer more, and sit here for 30m while we prepare it!"
I’m not from the US so I’m barely concerned with tipping but it seems to me that even in the US, the amount you tip is dependent of the QoS you got.
So I really don’t see the point of tipping beforehand. You can tip the driver when he delivers the meal if that’s what you want.
Anything before the service have been delivered sounds like a fee and, if I understand other comments here, a mean to pay for your position in the queue which imho sounds pretty disgusting.
To be honest, this is all nonsense. When I Doordash I don't really tip and things are fine. My wife tips 10% and she's fine. But I think it's pretty funny that you're going around defending pricing dark patterns with the latest Twitter-trend-du-jour. It's a pity you couldn't refer to the burrito as "slop" eaten only by the "deeply unserious" who need to "go to therapy" because you're "begging them, please read a book". Maybe a little description of how the "enshittification" of the delivery process leads to "ghoulish" requests that demonstrate "late-stage capitalism" in a "mask-off moment".
Extra profit for the app, on top of the 30% they charge the restaurant. They do technically pull from the delivery fee for the base offering to drivers, but they certainly don't start the offering there.
In the bay area we're talking 25min vs 30min. It's a pretty simple auction: The price increases until someone accepts. The driver has no idea how much you tipped.
Note the implications: If every driver in your area accepts orders at the same price, doordash will absorb the entire tip from every order. I dunno why people make up FUD instead of just doing an image search for what the driver's UI looks like.
Edit: while it is true that base pay does go up if an order gets declined, it doesn’t ALWAYS go up and if it does, it takes a while to get it to a reasonable rate. That is when your order just sits there.
It’s my understanding that it may be different in some markets, but generally while drivers may not know exactly how much you tip above a certain amount venue accepting the order, they do seem to generally know if you haven’t tipped or have tipped a tiny amount.
I wish they just exposed the auction system to make the whole tipping thing moot. A slider that sets your delivery fee that updates based on demand / driver availability would eliminate a lot of the awkward social dynamics.
Low fee slower less likely to get a driver. High fee faster drivers will take your order
over others.
I explained why you don't need to tip before delivery; your food will just arrive 5min later. Ignore the replies making up fake consequences. He's clearly never used doordash.
It means if you add a tip there's a higher probability of them screwing up the delivery, either not finding my flat (apartment) at all or being severely delayed because they sent someone who cannot read the simple English directions. If you do not add a tip then this tends not to happen. It's the inverse of what you'd expec. It may be some side-effect of Deliveroo asking for the tip in advance - one theory is that the delivery agent thinks I'll give a cash in hand tip and therefore tries harder; or it could be something more obscure, eg perhaps the illiterate delivery agents (of which there are many in London now) generally work faster but cope less well with any modest complexity and they are being rewarded by an algorithm that does not take that into account.
These things are omnipresent in European capitals, it's quite striking. It might be inconvenient but it's not gonna stop people any more than the privacy concerns of the apps do.
Tipping is NOT omnipresent in the European capital I live in. Of course some apps have tipping options but I never found correlation in service quality to tipping. On the contrary, when I tipped, service quality was “less optimal” and I noticed visible entitlement.
That being said, it is cultural norm here to tip by rounding up the order(say total is 2.59/ you tip by asking to make it 3.00/) when you are ordering in person and the service is/was good and the food is/was also good quality. Alternatively, in some restaurant, it is not usual to tip as order is collected by someone near the cash register while served by someone else entirely and someone else is preparing it. Once you are done eating, you return the dishes and go home, so there is no option to tip as you simply don’t tip at the prepayment step because you don’t know the food and service yet, you don’t tip the server as they simply bring the food and walk away.
I don't know why both replies are about tipping when I didn't mention it at all. I meant these delivery drivers are everywhere. I've never used these data-sucking app so I don't know anything about them.
I live in France and use Deliveroo (or UberEats some rare times) maybe once a month.
There is already a tipping UI in the app, but it is not intrusive, nothing as aggressive as what you'd experience in the US where you're inclined to pre-tip even before the delivery happens.
As for the capitals, yes it is becoming a thing but from my personal experience it is limited to touristy places
The one and only time I used Deliveroo I gave a 1 pound tip. A pound or two is a normal service tip for many places in the UK. You would tip your hairdresser or the taxi 1-2 pounds.
I usually give whatever decent change I have laying around, or a fiver if I know them and it has been a while. I never tip via the app. I do tell the driver they'll get a cash tip in the instructions though.
>It is inevitable for DoorDash to make tipping an even more annoying and intrusive part of Deliveroo. I can't wait to see how europeen users react to that.
On demand food delivery is a premium luxury service (though the platforms have done their best to market it as otherwise). Please tip accordingly. These people work their asses off and are generally from a very low income background. If you have problems with that, go to the grocery store.
> On demand food delivery is a premium luxury service, though the platforms have done their best to market it as otherwise. Please tip accordingly
I stopped automatically tipping in New York City and the Bay Area. They earn a minimum wage now [1]. If they go above and beyond, sure, I'll tip. But if they just do their job, there are now regulations that have them get paid.
> Wait staff have had minimum wage protection for a very long time at the federal level, do you not tip them anywhere?
Different contexts. Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't. And delivery drivers in New York and California are making well above the federal minimumw wage. Most importantly: a restaurant tip is split between skilled servers and kitchen staff. It's going to multiple people, each of whom have developed a specialised skill that adds value to my experience. None of that is true for someone carting my food to my home.
Absent regulation, I think tipping drivers and delivery staff is good. With regulation, the tradeoff has sort of been made for me.
> Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't.
This is the one thing that really irks me. This is a known thing. But everyone seems to think the solution to that is "well, the customer should fix that". Any attempt to try to fix that through Departments of Labor is met with reasons why not. Servers don't want to report their employer, etc.
And then that leads to tropes like "If you don't tip well, I am being taxed to serve you". No, you're not. The IRS taxes you on an estimate of your tipped income - if you can show that it was less than that, then that's what you get taxed on. The reality is that the IRS's estimate assumes that you get 8% tips (when was the last time you ever saw that?), so most servers are undertaxed on tipped income, and don't want to rock that boat.
Last time I mentioned this here, a few people piped up that this "didn't matter", because there is "no way to document cash tips for the IRS"...
NYC and California are 10% of the US population and I'd be unsurprised if the two make up 50% of the food delivery market. Flyover states aren't dense enough for drivers to drop off 3 orders on the way to your home and the median income in many states isn't high enough for people to buy private taxis for their burritos
Because logically I should give tips to every service worker I interact with that makes min wage. I'm obviously not going to do that. If I do tip some category of service workers, it's certainly not going to be the ones that eat/delay/spit in my food as a get back for not tipping them, and it's certainly not going to be the group that makes well above min wage (I. E waiters are the highest-paid min. wage staff).
> Explain the logic of not tipping people who make minimum wage?
It's more that they're regulated, the price of the delivered food is already high, and I'm not putting a premium on their labour above e.g. the folks who prepared the food.
or maybe let's not play guessing games with the livelihood of people working in these fields, and let's bake a livable wage in the price... like any other service job ?
Except no other service job does. Outside of a patchwork of local ordinances here and there, few servers makes beyond the state/federal minimum wage without tips. A minimum wage which is almost always below the poverty line.
I live in Oregon and employees here make a minimum of $14.70/hour and $15.95 in the Portland Metro area before tips. California and Washington have slightly higher minimums, seemingly state-wide. There are other states listed that are not as generous.
I tip but am sympathetic to my relatives who don't. Many places expect you to pay and tip, then take your drinks and food to the table, bus your tables, etc.
The dollar amount doesn't matter if it doesn't add up to a living wage. $15 an hour at 40 hours a week is 31,200 annual before taxes. Is that a living wage in Oregon?
The comment rears like "This is impossible to do in the US", while it is commonplace in many countries around the world. And of course, there are also many countries where it's more shaded (in Germany you don't need to tip, but it is definitely appreciated and it's leaning a bit more towards the US, but still far away from it)
These kinds of comments always leave me a little puzzled. The people working at the grocery store may well be low income people as well, as well as anyone on the chain of growing and transporting that food.
If they want to deliver they can. If they don't they don't have to. There's no problem here. There's a market clearing price and a regulation to protect not being paid enough. I don't also have to guess at a price higher than that. It doesn't give me too much pain if something isn't delivered on time or at all. I can happily adjust plans and rate down the thing I can't get.
As HN frequently points out "your business model is not my problem".
My two cents,
tipping should be optional and only reserved for exceptional service.
It is problem with business taking advantage of low income groups and business should be guilt into doing the right thing. Not people for not tipping.
If a company can't exist/ will be bankrupt ( or whatever the greedy business owners complain) if they can't provide livable( not minimum wage that was set 10 years ago and never account for inflation) wage to workers they should not exist in first place.
Tipping just enables this exploitation and at the same time paying billion of dollars to shareholders . I have read news about companies, owners taking share of the tip.
delivery drivers should protest and make sure government to pass bills to stop this exploitation.
these business are taking advantage of situation of vulnerable people who either have to sleep hungry and not exploited or be exploited but have a meal.
No idea how we can as a society make it better.
