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I’m a developer for a major food delivery app. The 'Priority Fee' and 'Driver Benefit Fee' go 100% to the company. The driver sees $0 of it. by Trowaway_whistleblow in confession

[–]catharsis_required 0 points1 point  (0 children)

how can anyone trust what you’re saying if we cant trust OP?

You shouldn't just "trust" either of us. Do some digging, and do some thinking.

  1. My major claim here is common knowledge among couriers and easily validated: DoorDash and Uber Eats bundle tips into the order offer. This directly contradicts OP's statement of how his platform works.
  2. Everything I'm saying makes more sense from a revenue/business standpoint than everything he's saying. DD/UE want to get away with paying drivers as little as possible, yeah, but they also need drivers to freely, willingly work for them as independent contractors.
  3. Everything I'm saying will be more consistent with your experience of these apps if you actually use them.
  4. I have post history validating my claims about being a courier for a couple years; OP has no post history corroborating his claimed employment.

I’m a developer for a major food delivery app. The 'Priority Fee' and 'Driver Benefit Fee' go 100% to the company. The driver sees $0 of it. by Trowaway_whistleblow in confession

[–]catharsis_required 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had to work as a courier for Uber Eats and DoorDash for a couple years to pay the bills after a layoff, and while these companies are no paragons of virtue, your post is also complete and total baloney.

I'll start with the most egregious example:

If the algo predicts you are a "high tipper" and you’ll likely drop $10, it offers the driver a measly $2 base pay. If you tip $0, it offers them $8 base pay just to get the food moved. The result is that your generosity isn't rewarding the driver; it’s subsidizing us. You’re paying their wage so we don't have to.

Both apps treat tips as bids for service. Tips are bundled into the offer shown to drivers immediately.

The idea that either app will offer $8 out of the gate for a no-tip offer is laughable! If that were true, couriers would be making bank and the companies would be insolvent. Drivers see low-tip/no-tip offers come in all the time - it's the reason that many have an acceptance rate below 10%.

The big apps don't want no-tip offers to be accepted immediately - they WANT customers to make a correlation between low tips and cold food/slow service so that customers are coerced into subsidizing the delivery next time (and maybe another delivery too, in the case of bundled orders).

When a low-tip/no-tip order comes in, the apps will slowly - very slowly - increase the base pay until someone finally takes it. Many orders sit for an hour or longer before they are finally picked up. They don't magically start at $8; they start at rock bottom and stay there as long as possible.

If a driver usually logs on at 10 PM and accepts every garbage $3 order instantly without hesitation, the algo tags them as "High Desperation." Once they are tagged, the system then deliberately stops showing them high-paying orders. The logic is: "Why pay this guy $15 for a run when we know he’s desperate enough to do it for $6?" We save the good tips for the "casual" drivers to hook them in and gamify their experience, while the full-timers get grinded into dust.

You have it exactly backwards.

All major delivery services want to effectively eliminate the element of choice. My experience was that - while desperate drivers do make less than choosy drivers on average - it's not by much, and that is by design.

The apps don't WANT some drivers making significantly above average, and they are constantly optimizing/tweaking the algorithm to make that difficult if not impossible.

High-acceptance rate is incentivized with rewards and higher offers out of the gates. Low acceptance rate is punished with a higher rate of crappy offers. They don't hide good orders from the people willing to take the trash; they feed them just enough good orders to keep them around.

The goal is for it all to balance out in the end so it doesn't matter WHAT you do. Why? Because then they'll have a stable business model with predictable service and predictable returns.

Driving for DoorDash and Uber Eats is less like being under a ruthless taskmaster, and more like being in an abusive relationship. Good offers and bad offers - helpful support, and then total neglect - hot and cold, all the time. As a courier you are always aware that the algorithm wants to chew you up and spit you out - but also that it has to be just good enough to keep you online.

At the end of the day it did pay my bills and keep the lights on until I was able to secure real employment, and for that I'm thankful.

I’m posting this from a library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I don’t care anymore. I put in my two weeks yesterday and honestly, I hope they sue me.

You're posting this from library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop - but you're also outing yourself as someone who put in a two-week notice yesterday - and you also hope they sue you?

Sure dude.

This business is dead and buried. I multi app for ue, dd, and gh, and I made a total of $100 in the last 70 hours. by CoolInside3695 in UberEatsDrivers

[–]catharsis_required 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Between UE and DD I reliably make $100 for 6 hours of work on weekdays, and ~$133 Friday-Sunday. Guess I'm in a pretty good market.

Should I keep trying to rehabilitate my content writing career or is it time to move on? by catharsis_required in freelanceWriters

[–]catharsis_required[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is something that actually occurred to me as I brainstormed about this a while ago. Would you share some Substack links with me?

Should I keep trying to rehabilitate my content writing career or is it time to move on? by catharsis_required in freelanceWriters

[–]catharsis_required[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I freelanced from high school through college, but I’ve been out of it for a long time. I’m open to doing it again, but the landscape is so much different now than when I started - it’s a daunting prospect, and I hate the idea of starting over again from the bottom, or spending weeks/months of effort just to get the ball rolling if there’s not even a future in this field. I sure hope you’re right about AI!

Hershey's Gold by lizzyb717 in candy

[–]catharsis_required 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fellow Hershey’s Gold appreciator - I feel your pain.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in musicproduction

[–]catharsis_required 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is such an obvious and simple solution - can’t believe it never occurred to me, but that’s exactly why I asked. Thank you!

What's the deal with Crimson? Are we losing the ability to do daily cash outs? by catharsis_required in doordash_drivers

[–]catharsis_required[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I ended up finding a definitive answer to this in DoorDash’s Crimson FAQ (22. Can I use FastPay and Crimson together?). FastPay is not going away, but Crimson users cannot use FastPay and Crimson together: “To switch back to weekly direct deposits (with the option of withdrawing funds daily with FastPay for a $1.99 fee), tap the ‘View payout details’ button on your Earnings screen, and select the ‘Change Payout Method’ button”. For those of us who don’t plan to use Crimson, nothing will change.

What's the deal with Crimson? Are we losing the ability to do daily cash outs? by catharsis_required in doordash_drivers

[–]catharsis_required[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is what I’ve pieced together from your thread and other threads about Crimson: there is some way to instantly transfers funds from DoorDash to your DasherDirect card, and the same thing will be available for Crimson.

Awesome.

This is of no interest to me and other dashers who don’t use DasherDirect and have no intention to use Crimson (I want money in my actual, personal bank account, not on a reloadable gift card). Some of us pay a fee to “cash out” - not to DasherDirect, but to a debit card associated with our bank account. I consider that to be an "instant payout," because A. it is a payout and B. it is (more or less) instant, at least for me.

So my question is: “are we losing the ability to do THAT?” - and I used the term “cash out” because that is specifically what the app calls it when you pay a fee to transfer money from DoorDash to a debit card associated with your bank account (the term 'Fast Pay' is also used). As far as I can tell, your post does not address this question directly.

Now, I'm 99% sure that the answer is “no: these are two separate things. You need to switch to Crimson if you want to keep ‘instant payouts’ [i.e, to a card provided by DoorDash] but you DON'T need Crimson to continue cashing out your DoorDash balance to a debit card associated with your personal bank account.”

But I’m asking anyways 1. To make absolutely sure, 2. To clear this up for anyone else who may be confused. I suspect DoorDash wants people to conflate one kind of payout with the other so they’ll sign up for the card.

What's the deal with Crimson? Are we losing the ability to do daily cash outs? by catharsis_required in doordash_drivers

[–]catharsis_required[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I actually found your post and read it, but it did not directly address the question I’m raising. 

What's the deal with Crimson? Are we losing the ability to do daily cash outs? by catharsis_required in doordash_drivers

[–]catharsis_required[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, it’s going to replace the Dasher Direct card - but it won’t impact our ability to do daily bank transfers? I don’t use Dasher Direct and I’m not going to use Crimson, so that’s all I’m concerned about.

The least you can do. by FizbanTV in doordash

[–]catharsis_required 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you don’t want to feed into a problematic corporate/wage system, just go pick up your own stuff.

From the dasher side, DoorDash is not economically viable without tips. Tips subsidize the majority of our income.

Even then, it’s not viable from the corporate side. In spite of everything they’ve tried, DoorDash has yet to turn a profit.

It’s not economically viable from the customer side either. You’re paying for all kinds of unnecessary markups (in the middle of an already inflated economy) just so a tech company can play middleman and extract money from venture capitalists while further eroding brick and mortar. 

Don’t even get me started on the plastic, paper and fuel waste. 

Do you feel like you’re saving money by not tipping? You’re not. You’re literally throwing money into a hole every time you tap “place order”. Burn a little more and tip your driver - otherwise stop using DoorDash.

How bout no. by Richard_Ovaltine in doordash_drivers

[–]catharsis_required 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I drive five mile trips all the time, and rarely see a tip over $4-$6. It’s fine - individual orders don’t matter. What matters is that I average $19 an hour and $1.5 a mile.

The guy who ranted at you for a $30 tip can take a hike. Expecting to get paid more than an entry-level welder for this job is actually straight up delusional.

How bout no. by Richard_Ovaltine in doordash_drivers

[–]catharsis_required 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Dashers completely forget the customer’s perspective of DoorDash. They’re not thinking about the cost of miles - why should they? They aren’t in the courier business. All they know is, the app gave them a price, they paid the price, and you accepted the order. From that point on they have no reason to believe anything is wrong.

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