I ordered from my favorite Chinese restaurant through Caviar (bought by Doordash a while back and now basically the same thing).
When I clicked on the restaurant it said “no delivery fee” at the top. Ordered.
Indeed, the "delivery fee line is $0.00. There was, however, a 15% “service fee” plus a 2% “Berkeley fee.”
It’s not like they’re providing any service to me other than delivery. Maybe I’ll file a false advertising complaint.
They all do that. The non-delivery fees ARE the delivery fees.
Yeah, it is indeed false advertising.
is doordash the one where tips didn’t go to the driver?
They’re ALL terrible. No one should ever use them. They screw the drivers, they screw the restaurants, and they screw the consumers. I will only order delivery from places that expressly employ their OWN delivery drivers. Which means the last time I ordered a meal delivered was a Jimmy John’s sub in 2012 in Hillsboro, OR.
Also, I’m cheap and impatient. Picking up a takeout order myself is faster, less expensive, and it’ll get to my house warmer, tastier, and unsquished by 4 other orders piled on top of it.
As much as I didn’t understand it as a kid, I really appreciate my parents never getting food delivered and always picking it up themselves. That extra cost was something they couldn’t justify. It’s helped me avoid the world of tech delivery, though I understand those who consider it a lifeline to avoid exposure shopping in stores these days
This order came so fast the guy could not have made any other stops. Whether that’s a difference between Caviar and Doordash I don’t know.
If they were stealing the tips, they stopped. The app says explicitly that 100% of tips go to the driver. The order came so fast the guy couldn’t have made any other stops.
I’d have gone to pick up the order myself except I had a 9pm meeting with a coworker on the other side of the planet, and didn’t have time.
Oh well . Shit happens. Bfd.
You have a case, Robert. But let’s clarify this. Who should pay the fee for a delivery service, the restaurant or the consumer? Perhaps it should be shared?
I don’t think it matters WHO pays it, as long as the person paying for it KNOWS about it.
That’s part of why these 3rd party services suck so badly. They obfuscate who is being charged what by whom, so no one has any idea what the cost of anything actually is, and, surprise surprise, it turns out those 3rd parties are double or triple-dipping.
They’ll steal orders from a restaurant through deceptive search engine practices, charge restaurants a ‘service fee’ for inercepting their orders, so whatever $ the restaurant was going to for the food is already, say, 10% down off their set prices. THEN these same apps have the gall to charge the CONSUMER a ‘service fee’. And THEN they fuck with their employees’ (yeah, they’re ‘contractors’. bullshit. they’re doing an end run around labor laws) app and compensation formulas to steal tips and minimize the meager fees they pay their drivers.
The gig economy is much like pawn shops or payday loan places. In theory, they exist to fill a very specific need. In reality, they become predatory and their business model parasitic and they add value for no one but VC douche bags. See also: ‘ride sharing’ (no, illegal taxi), airbnb (illegal hotel)
The restaurant can make whatever deal works for them and the customers can decide if delivery is worth the extra cost.
I don’t expect free delivery. I just don’t like being lied to.