Does Doordash pay Dashers Wait Time?

There is nothing worse for a driver than when they have to sit around a restaurant waiting a long time for a customer's order. A short wait is not a problem and is usually understood, but when a dasher has to wait 20 minutes or a half hour, all dashers would agree that it is unacceptable. With this in mind, those that are thinking about becoming dashers may wonder if Doordash pays dashers for their wait time at a restaurant.

Does Doordash pay a dasher for wait time at a restaurant?

The simple and straight-forward answer to that is a big NO. It would be terrific if they did, but unfortunately they don't. This has got to be one of the biggest problems working for this on-demand food delivery company. Postmates, a Doordash competitor, pays their drivers wait time, and it would seem to make sense for Doordash to do the same thing. I am not an advocator for Postmates because they have their own problems, but I just wanted to point that out.

When a dasher is sitting around a restaurant doing nothing but waiting, he is losing money that he could be earning by completing other dashes. A restaurant that makes a dasher wait a long time is minimizing a dasher's earnings potential. If a dasher has to wait a half hour for the food, he will most likely only complete one delivery for the hour. When a dasher is only completing one delivery per hour it is never a good thing.

No dasher ever likes waiting for an extended period of time at a restaurant

Will Doordash ever start paying dashers wait time?

I have never heard anything about any plans of Doordash offering their drivers wait time pay. With that said, I would like to share comments that I have received from Doordash customer support before. I do not want to pick on the Doordash customer support reps as I know that they are trained on how to answer certain questions and inquiries that a dasher may ask them. Usually, the responses that the reps give are nothing but cut and paste responses.

Back to the subject at hand though, and if Doordash pays its drivers any wait time. I have had long waits before and have contacted Doordash support and asked them for extra pay due to my long wait. The cut and paste answers that they give me are nothing but information that you can find on the Doordash website. They have told me that the pay that I receive for an order is based on the size of the order, if I have to place the order myself or not, the traffic in the area, how the parking is, the driving distance and wait time.

I do believe that this is a bunch of nonsense. I mean, how can you offer me a certain pay for an order if you do not know how long I will be waiting for the food. Doordash cannot possibly know how long I will be waiting at the restaurant. Sure, they can say what the expected wait time is, but in the real world things happen, and the expected wait time rarely matches up with the realistic wait time.

As I have mentioned earlier, Postmates pays their drivers for wait time by the minute. Each market pays different, but it is usually around ten cents a minute. If a restaurant has some delays with the order, and you are sitting around, it is nice to know that you are getting paid. I mean, if you are sitting around a restaurant for 20 minutes waiting for the food, at least you will receive $2 extra for that order. Again, I have not heard about any future Doordash plans dealing with wait time. If I ever do hear anything, I will be sure to share the information.

What should a dasher do when they have a long wait at a restaurant?

Every situation will be different, and it will be up to you to make a choice based upon your circumstances. Would  it be worth it for you to wait? Sometimes it will be. For example, if you are at a restaurant for a $300 order, there is a good chance that you will receive a good tip. This one order may pay you much more than if you completed three or four small orders. So even though you will do a lot of sitting around, you may be rewarded for it. As any dasher knows, this is no guarantee though, and your long wait may end up being nothing but a waste of your time if the customer does not leave a good tip.

When talking about this subject, there is one personal incident that comes to my mind. When I received the ping for this particular merchant, I actually took my time getting there. Why? Because this merchant is always slow with their orders, and I always end up waiting at least 20 minutes for the food. Instead of going straight to the merchant after accepting the order, I went to do some personal business and arrived at the restaurant a half hour after receiving the original ping.

When I arrived at the restaurant, I told them the order that I was there to pick up and the customer's name. The manager told me that they have never received this order. I contacted Doordash, and it was learned that the restaurants tablet wasn't working. This is the reason that the merchant never received the order. Doordash told me to place the order myself to the manager, and I did so. I asked the manager how long he thinks the order will take. He told me about a half hour. Wait a minute! It took me 30 minutes to get to the restaurant from the time I received the original ping. I have been in this restaurant trying to figure things out for a half hour and relaying messages from Doordash to the restaurant for another 30 minutes, and now you want me to wait another 30 minutes!



At this point I had it. I contacted Doordash and told them to unassigned me from this order. The rep told me what they always tell you. They said "You do understand that this will affect your ratings?" I told them what I always tell them when I unassigned an order "I don't care, just reassign this order to somebody else." Don't get me wrong, I rarely unassigned an order, and my completion rating will attest to that, but the reps seem to always want to remind you of your ratings.

This rep even told me that there is no guarantee that after reassigning that I would receive more orders because my area was not too busy. I must say that it was peek time as it was around noon time. I kind of wanted to do a test here and see if Doordash had some kind of magic button that will penalize a driver and not issue him any orders. I figured that if I did not receive any orders after letting this order go this one, I was the victim of that magic button. It didn't happen though. After this order was gone from my app, I received order after order throughout the rest of the day.

 

The only person that I felt sorry for in this situation was the customer. They had to wait a very long time to receive their order due to all of the nonsense that was going on. Sure, I could have helped by completing the order, but as I told Doordash, I do not like being taken advantage of. In all honesty, I do not even know if this customer ever received their order. I know that if I were the customer, I would have canceled the order. I mean my time dealing with this order, which I did not earn a cent from was one hour and half. Who knows how long the replacement dasher took to arrive at the restaurant and deliver the order.

All of this would not have happened if Doordash paid wait time to their drivers. I would not have been so mad if I knew that I was getting compensated for my time. We all know the general rule in life that time is money, and this is especially true with dashers as we do not get paid by the hour like most people. Instead, we get paid per delivery. We do not have the free time to just be sitting around a restaurant for free. My advice to Doordash is to make future plans of paying your dashers for wait time. They will do a better job knowing that they are appreciated and compensated for their time.

My recent Doordash wait time problem

Just a few days ago, I received an order for a certain merchant that is usually pretty good with having the orders ready for you upon arrival. Unfortunately, this particular evening they did not have the customer's order ready for me. It was no big deal to me though as I would sit and wait for a bit. After about 15 minutes, a guy comes out with the order. As he is handing me the bags, he asks me "The total was $120 - right?" I look on the Doordash app and see that the customer's total was $50. He then says that it is the wrong order and that he will be back. He goes to the back, and 15 more minutes go by. Now I'm getting angry. I tell the lady in the front if she can check on the order. She does and tells me it will be coming up soon. About 10 minutes later, the guy finally comes back out with the correct order, and I get in my car. After looking at the time, I realize that I had been sitting in that restaurant for 40 minutes.

 

 

I contact Doordash support and tell them that I want extra compensation for this order since I had to wait 40 minutes for it. Of course the copy and paste responses came, and I told the rep to please stop sending me those useless responses. They mention to me about how wait time pay is included with the original guaranteed pay and that nothing can be done about it. I questioned the rep and asked them how they know the time frame that I am going to wait at the restaurant. I told them that I was there at the pick-up time, and that time is the expected time that Doordash does its payment calculations from, but I had to wait 40 extra minutes. The rep puts me on hold and tells me that a supervisor will have to give the okay for extra payment. After about 5 minutes on hold, I get a response stating that they will grant me an extra $2 for this order. It was better than nothing, and I did feel that I deserved it. For your information, even though the reps will act like they cannot adjust your pay for an order, they actually have the ability to do so.