Doordash pays half pay for restaurants that are closed

This post has been updated for 2023. If you dash long enough, it is sure to happen to you. You accept a call, arrive at the restaurant and find that they are closed. This can be very annoying after driving all the way to the restaurant only to find out that they cannot complete the order. When this happens, you have to take care of the problem and hope that you will at least get some kind of pay for your time. 

Why would Doordash send a dasher to a merchant that is already closed?

No dasher likes when this happens as they cannot complete the delivery. Who is to blame when this happens? Is it the driver's fault? Of course not. Is it the restaurant's fault? Nope. Is Doordash to blame? I guess you could say so, but let's face reality here. It would be almost impossible for Doordash to monitor all opening and closing times of all restaurants. I'm sure that they try their best, but even with all of their technology, it would be impossible to be 100 percent accurate. With that said, we have to give Doordash a little slack here (I think.)

What should a dasher do when a merchant is closed?

Instead of worrying about who's fault it is, we need to worry a bit more about what action we are to take. Doordash is certainly not going to pay you for an assignment that has not been completed. They will not be making any money off of the order as they are going to have to cancel the customer's order, but they do need to pay the dasher for driving out to the restaurant location. The pay that a dasher receives for closed merchants has improved over the past couple of years.

In the past, there used to be a "Merchant is closed" button to click on. I had somebody recently tell me that they still have this option on their app. As for me, it's just not there anymore. Anyways, all you had to do was click on "Merchant is closed" and you would be credited. In my case, I have to actually contact Doordash and let them know the merchant is closed. I'm pretty sure most dashers have to do the same thing unless you are luck enough to have that "Merchant is closed" button.

How much does Doordash pay for closed merchants?

Doordash will now pay a dasher half of what the offer was.

If a call paid $10, and the merchant was closed, the dasher would receive $5. If the call paid $8 and the merchant was closed, the dasher would receive $4. Yes, it is never a good thing when a restaurant is closed, but getting half pay for the closed merchant is certainly better than the way things used to be.

Back in 2016, Doordash would pay $2.50 for a closed merchant. Then things got worse in 2017, and they started paying only $2. Even though we would all rather complete a delivery, it was always a bad deal when Doordash paid $2 for your time and effort. It was a big waste of time. The further a restaurant was, the bigger the waste of time it was. This is life as a dasher though, and closed merchants are bound to happen every once in a while. This is especially true when dashing during the late night hours.

Even though closed merchants usually happen during the late night hours, it does sometimes happen in the day time on weekends. Believe it or not, there are some restaurants that are closed on the weekends. In my region, I pretty much know the restaurants that are closed. If I get a call from Doordash for one of these restaurants, I will decline them most of the time. The reason I say most of the time is because there have been times when I will be passing by the restaurant anyways for another reason so I might as well accept the call and collect the half pay since I am passing by.

One problem that a dasher may face when they arrive at a closed merchant is trying to contact Doordash during a problematic time. What I mean is when Doordash is having technical difficulties. You may try to contact Doordash only to be #300 on the wait list. Now a dasher will have to make a decision. Do they sit there and wait an hour for the half pay? Maybe it would be better to just cancel the order, take the loss and move on. This is a decision that will have to be made on the spot and a situation I have been in too many times.