Why do Doordash Customers Always Blame the Doordash Driver when Something goes Wrong?

As a Doordash driver, you are often blamed for everything when something goes wrong with a customer's order. If you make the delivery late, items are missing, or the customer's food is not as hot as they would like it, the Doordash driver will get the blame. It is not fair, but that is the way it is in the Doordash world. The customer has to blame somebody, and who is there better to blame than the Doordash driver?

I am not trying to question the brain capacity of some Doordash customers, but sometimes I wonder if the Doordash customer understands that there are times when the Doordash driver is not at fault. When a United States Postal Service mail carrier delivers a package, do they get blamed when the customer receives the incorrect item? Does the mail carrier get blamed when the item does not arrive by the estimated date and time? Most people do not blame the mail carrier at all. The thought does not even enter their brain. Instead, they will go after the company that sent them the item, or the third party company that they placed their order with.

For example, if a person were to place an order on eBay, and the expected delivery date is three days from the time they place their order, and the order does not arrive until the fifth day, who does the customer blame? They will contact the seller of the item, or they will contact eBay and complain. They may even leave a bad feedback for the seller. They would never put the blame on the U.S.P.S. mail carrier because their item arrived late. The same applies when the wrong item is sent or arrives broken. The carrier is the last person on their mind to blame.

Why is it any different with the Doordash driver? There is no difference between a postal worker and a Doordash driver. The job of both of them is to deliver the items. Nothing more and nothing less. Unfortunately, Doordash customer's will always blame the Doordash driver when things do not meet their expectations. They never contemplate that the problem could be with Doordash or the restaurant. Instead, they will go after the easy prey, which is the Doordash driver. The result will be a bad rating for the driver. Listed below are some common occurrences when a Doordash driver gets blamed when they should not.

 Food is Delivered Late

1. Restaurant takes long to prepare the food

There are times when a restaurant takes a very long time to prepare food, and the Doordash driver has to sit around the restaurant waiting. Trust me when I say that this is not an enjoyable wait for the driver. No Doordash driver likes sitting around a restaurant waiting for food for half an hour. It is time wasted that they could be making other deliveries and making money. Sometimes, the Doordash driver will even find themselves sitting around the restaurant at the estimated delivery time. The best thing to do in this scenario is to text the customer and let them know what is going on.

In this situation, even though the food is delivered late, the customer will receive their food nice and hot. How could anybody blame the driver for an order like this being late. There is nothing the Doordash driver can do to expedite the food preparation. Customers who are angry at the driver, and who will most likely leave a bad rating on the driver, need to put their thinking cap on and figure out that it is the restaurant's fault that their order is delivered late. Unfortunately, most customers will not realize this.

2. Technical issues

There are times when a technical issue causes a customer's order to be late. I have arrived at restaurants before, and they had not even received the order yet. These are usually partnered merchants, and the reason that they did not receive the order is because of technical issues with their tablet. Through their tablet is how they receive Doordash orders. Once I arrive, and everything is figured out, they will have to start preparing the food. This is a major stall, and the Doordash driver will have a long wait that usually ends up being a late customer delivery. The customer will of course blame the driver that their food is late. Who is to blame in a situation like this? The driver? Doordash? The restaurant?

3. Doordash driver accepts an order that is already late

Then there are Doordash assignments that a driver does not have the slightest chance of getting to the customer on time. Many Dashers will not even accept these orders and will instead decline them so that they do not risk getting a bad rating. When a ping is received for an order like this, the delivery time may be only a few minutes from the time the dasher accepts the order. There are even times when it is already late. The Doordash driver will be late with the customer's order no matter how fast they are. I have accepted orders like this before, and just a few minutes later, while on my way to the restaurant, the customer will text me inquiring about their order. I will explain the situation to them, and most customers seem like they understand, but there are those that seem kind of rude and of course blame you for their late delilvery.

Why does this happen though? Why would a Doordash driver receive an order so close to the delivery time. Many times, another Doordash driver will have the order, and for whatever reason, that driver will drop the order. Doordash then has to find another driver to complete the order, and that Doordash driver is the sucker that the Doorash customer will blame for the late delivery. The customer will not even think twice about blaming Doordash, but oh well, that's life as a dasher.

 

4. Stacked orders

This is when a Doordash driver has multiple orders to pick up and drop off. Many times, the restaurants and the customer's delivery points will be in complete opposite directions. By taking too many orders at once, there is a very good chance that a customer's order may be late. In this case, I can agree that someone could make a point that it is the Doordash driver's fault that a customer's order is delivered late. Remember, a driver does not have to accept all orders that they get a ping for, but to be honest, it is money to be made and most drivers are not going to pass up on an order when it is offered to them. There have been times when I have had five orders stacked at once, and I know that at least a few of them are going to be late, but I am out dashing to make money, and if a customer's order is delivered 15 minutes late, I still get paid, so I am going to do the order.

To be honest, stacked orders do not happen as often as they used to, and this may be due to too many drivers on the road now, but it does happen occasionally. Even though I mentioned that I could agree that it is the Doordash driver's fault that these orders are late, I have to wonder why Doordash is sending a particular dasher so many orders. Doordash knows that a driver cannot deliver all of these orders on time. When too many stacked orders come in, you can be sure that Doordash is short on drivers for that particular region. Can we blame Doordash for these late deliveries? Maybe we could tell them to make sure that they have enough drivers out on the road to complete all of your Doordash orders. Again though, if a dasher already has a couple of orders stacked and does not want to risk being late, they can always decline a new order.

Food is Cold

Even when an order is delivered on time, there may be times when the customer's food is delivered not as hot as they expected. The doordash driver will pick up the food from the restaurant, put it in their hot bag and make their way to the customer to deliver the food. The job has been completed. There are times when a customer will be mad because the food is cold.

As a dasher, all we can do is pick up the food from the restaurant. We have no control over the temperature of the food when we pick it up. Sure, a dasher can put the food in their hot bag so the food can stay as warm as possible, but who is to say how hot the food was when picked up from the restaurant.

Generally, the food is nice and hot when picked up from a restaurant, but every once in a while it may not be. Most of the time, this is due to food that was prepared and that has been sitting around for a while. The restaurant prepared the food and expected a dasher to pick it up much sooner than when the driver arrives. When this happens, it is usually because another dasher dropped the order which sets up the new dasher delivering cold food that is also late. This is not the dasher's fault, but who will the customer blame? The Dasher of course!

Missing or Wrong Items

Doordash drivers pick up orders from partnered restaurants and non-partnered restaurants, and the way orders are picked up differ a bit. At partnered merchants, the dasher does not place the order themselves. The dasher has a list of the items that the customer ordered on their Doordash app, but the restaurant will receive the order on their tablet. When the food is ready, they will hand over the bags of food to the dasher. A dasher cannot see what is in these bags of food and cannot put their hands in the bags of food to make sure everything is correct. This is because dashers are not certified food handlers. The best thing to do is to just go over the order with the restaurant to make sure everything is there. Sometimes, this will not work though as there may be a lazy restaurant worker who just says what the dasher wants to hear. When the customer receives their order and an item or two is missing, it is definitely the restaurants fault, but the Doordash driver will get the blame.

I would like to add that there are some partnered merchants that do a very good job at making sure everything is correct. A good example of this is the B.J.s restaurant in my area. They will place all the food on a table in front of you, and name off the items as you check them off on your app. They are of very few restaurants that do this though as most will just hand over the bags of food to you.

At many fast food restaurants, a dasher places the order themselves. The dasher will have to make sure that they do not make a mistake when placing the order, or the customer may not be happy. There are times when a dasher may mess up on the order, but often the dasher will place the order correctly only to have the fast food joint mess up on the order. Again, the dasher is not allowed to stick their hands in the bags of food and inspect. When the customer receives missing or wrong items, they will blame the dasher and likely leave a bad rating when the problem here was the fault of the restaurant. Small orders are usually easy to spot, but when it is a very large order restaurants are more prone to make mistakes.

This post is not to try and say that dashers are never to blame. I'm sure that there are times when a customer receives cold food or has their food delivered late because of an irresponsible dasher who may be taking their sweet time or clowning around. My point here is that the dasher will always receive the blame when something goes wrong with the order. If Doordash make a mistake, the blame will be on the Doordash driver. If the restaurant makes a mistake, the blame will be on the Doordash driver. There is just no way out of this, and that's the way it is. It is unfair, but as a Doordash driver, you will have to accept this fact.