What exactly is Doordash Pay Boost?

Doordash "Pay Boost" was part of the Doordash pay model that ran from the middle of 2017 until September of 2019. This Pay Boost seemed like a really attractive part of the what was at the time, new pay model. In the middle of 2017, there was a lot of excitement from dashers as they believed that they were going to start earning more money that ever. It seemed like a real improvement from the previous pay model. Unfortunately, the Doordash pay model that included the Pay Boost feature was a disaster as most dashers and customers eventually felt that Doordash was stealing their tip money.

It took a while for dashers and customers to catch on to how Pay Boost and the pay model really worked, but eventually everything was unveiled. Doordash always defended their practice up to the very end of it, but thanks to some big media outlets exposing the way the pay model worked, Doordash eventually gave in and changed their pay model in September of 2019. Under the current pay model, Doordash drivers actually receive all of the tip money that Doordash customers leave for them.

The article below was written in January of 2018 while the controversial pay model was going on. I will leave it here for those that may be interest in what Doordash Pay Boost was and how that Doordash pay model worked. I'll be the first to say that the Pay Boost pay model baffled a lot of people, but thankfully it is gone.

The article below is the original article here that was written in January of 2018

What did Doordash say about pay boost

Below you will find a snippet of the exact wording that Doordash uses to explain pay boost.

 




If the snippet is unclear or too small for you to read, let me explain what it says there. It basically states that Doordash guarantees the dasher that they will always get paid at least $1 for a delivery. It also states that the dasher will always receive 100 percent of the customer tip. When that $1 and the customer tip is less than what you were guaranteed for the delivery, Doordash will add a pay boost so that you are paid the guaranteed amount. When the sum of the $1 Doordash has to pay you, and the customer tip is greater than what was guaranteed, you will pocket the difference.




When Doordash first explained how the pay boost worked, they explained it as their best estimate for the complexity of an order. They explained that they will always pay dashers a $1 base pay, plus pay boost and 100 percent of the customer tip. They also stated that factors such as the size of an order, the wait time, driving distance, traffic and whether you had to place the order yourself would determine the amount of the pay boost. It was soon learned that none of that really impacted what the pay boost for an order was. In reality, the pay boost that a dasher earned for a delivery was dependent on the amount that a customer tipped. The smaller the customer tip was, the more the boost pay amount was.

Why was pay boost confusing to some dashers?

I like to say that Doordash are experts at using trickery with words. During this time, I spoke to many dashers that did not understand how their pay worked. They especially did not know how pay boost worked. Instead of calling Doordash pay boost by the name it was given, I always called it "Doordash Forced Pay." Confused? Read on to learn exactly how boost pay worked.

How Doordash Pay Boost really worked

When explaining how pay boost worked, I always liked to give an example order so that it can easily be understood. In this case, I am going to use a customer named Jane. Jane is placing a $30 order from her favorite restaurant. She has placed her order, and a dasher by the name of Bill has received the ping to make Jane's delivery. Bill sees that he is guaranteed $7 to complete the order. Bill accepts the order and takes the steps to complete the order. I am going to give three different scenarios in which pay boost will either come in to play or not. As you will learn, the determination of any boost pay being payed out to the driver is dependent on the customer tip. Read on to fully understand.

Scenario #1 - Jane does not tip


During checkout, if Jane does not tip the Doordash driver, Bill is naturally not going to receive any tip. Upon completion of the order, Bill will receive his guaranteed $7. The question here is where did the money come from that was applied to Bill's payment. You have to remember that Doordash is always required to pay the driver $1 for completing the delivery. That takes care of a buck, but Bill still needs to be paid another $6 to give him his guaranteed $7.

Doordash will first take a look at the customer tip. It is in their best interest when a customer tips because if there is a customer tip, that tip money will go toward the guaranteed pay that they promised Bill. In this scenario, there is no customer tip. What Doordash has to do now is offer the driver pay boost so that they can reach the $7 guaranteed pay. Doordash will have to give this driver a $6 pay boost. No worries though, as Doordash most likely charged Jane a delivery fee and processing fee for her order that will most likely cover this expense.

Scenario #2 - Jane leaves a small tip


In this scenario, Jane is gong to leave her Doordash driver a $5 tip. This sounds great! Bill, the Doordash driver should receive a larger payment amount for his delivery right? Unfortunately, when all is said and done, Bill is going to receive the same $7 guaranteed payment that he would receive had Jane not decided to tip. The reason for this is that the $5 tip that the customer left will be applied to the guaranteed amount.

Sound a bit confusing still? Let me simplify. Remember, Bill the Doordash driver is guaranteed $7 for his delivery. Doordash is required to pay Bill $1 for his delivery. That takes care of one dollar. Now, Doordash has to figure out how they are going to pay the rest of the $6. They will see that Jane left Bill a $5 tip. They will apply that $5 tip to Bill's guaranteed pay. So, now there is the $1 that Doordash had to pay and $5 from the customer tip. This brings the total up to $6. To get to $7, Doordash will have to apply a $1 pay boost.

 

Did you really think that Bill would receive his $7 guaranteed pay and the $5 tip? If that were the case, Bill would have made $12 for this delivery. I am not going to press my opinion too much in this post about how I feel about business practices like this, but I am pretty sure as a Doordash driver you feel the same way I do. In my observation of Doordash as a company, I have noticed that they purposely and strategically use a lot of trickery with their words to not clearly explain certain issues. Either that or they have a real idiot there writing for them.

Looking at this from a customer's point of view cannot be a positive thing. If I were a customer and left a $5 tip to my dasher, I would expect that money to go to the dasher. I would not expect a company to use my money to replace what should be their business expense. I would not like the idea that pretty much says "If you leave the dasher a tip, we will personally pay him less and apply your tip money to what we would have paid him." A sad part about all of this is that Doordash customers are not even aware of business practices like this. To a normal person, the thinking is that when they leave a tip, the person that they are leaving the tip for will receive the money. As for the driver, they will not even know that a customer left them a tip because they were paid the guaranteed amount.

 

Let me give an example of the trickery with words that I am talking about. Doordash states that a dasher will always receive 100 percent of a customer tip. By reading this, a normal minded and well rounded individual will put two and two together and come to the conclusion that they will receive any money that a customer leaves as a tip. There does not seem to be, and should not be anything complicated about this.

Unfortunately, Doordash does not explain well enough to dashers how the customer's tip will go to the guaranteed pay and how they will save money in the process. When Doordash makes the statement that dashers will receive 100 percent of the customer tip, they are using a trickery of words so that they can always say that they are not lying. The customer tip is always applied to the dashers payment, so how can they be lying? They are just saving themselves some money in the process.

This business practice is the reason that you will hear a lot of dashers say that Doordash is stealing their tips. If you agree with his, you can see that it is done in a very sneaky way. With all of that said, you may be wondering if you will ever see a customer tip on the Doordash app after making a delivery. The answer to that is a definite yes, and you will learn about that in our next scenario.




Scenario #3 - Jane leaves a large tip


For this scenario, we are going to say that Jane left a large tip during her Doordash checkout. She left a $10 tip for her dasher. As with the other scenarios, Bill receives the ping for this delivery, accepts and is guaranteed $7. The $1 that Doordash is required to pay will be applied toward the dasher's payment, and the $10 tip that Jane left will be applied to the dashers payment. In this case, the $1 base pay from Doordash, and the $10 tip from the customer exceeds the $7 guaranteed pay. A different formula will have to be used to figure out the dasher's pay for this delivery.

Since Bill was guaranteed $7 for this delivery, that $7 will come from the cusotmer's tip. When we add in the $1 base pay that Doordash is required to pay, we have a total of $8 so far. Let's not forget that there is $3 still leftover from Jane's tip. The total payout for this delivery will be $11. Yes, Bill will receive $11 for this delivery even though he was guaranteed only $7.

 

Is this a reason to celebrate? Maybe so. A dasher is always excited when they earn more for a delivery than what was guaranteed, but many dashers who understand how the Doordash pay system works have mixed feelings as they feel that they deserve more. They want the guaranteed amount and the customer's tip. In this scenario, Doordash did not have to pay out anything to them except for the $1 base pay. There was absolutely no reason at all for Doordash to include any pay boost as the customer tip exceeded the guaranteed pay. These are the types of orders when Doordash profits the most.

Upon sliding that a delivery like this was completed, and to make things a bit exciting for a dasher, the Doordash app will display a dollar bill image with a certain dollar amount that says "Over guaranteed." In our example here, the dasher would see "$4 over guaranteed" under the dollar image. As I said, a dasher is always happy when something like this happens, but most dashers will think that the customer tipped them $4 when in reality the customer tipped them $10.

Conclusion:

I hope that I have clearly explained how Doordash pay boost works, and why it was invented. It always seemed strange to me how customers on Doordash tipped during checkout and not after service was provided. I mean, really, that is how we all grew up thinking. You tipped a person based on how well they provided you with a service.

 

I could just see the day when the Doordash executives had a meeting and came up with what I have to admit a brilliant plan. Doordash knew that a good portion of their customers would tip during checkout, and with their business plan of how they would handle dasher payment configurations, that would mean more profitability for them. They also knew that some of their customers would not tip anything, and to find a solution to this they had to create pay boost, or as I like to call it "Doordash Forced Pay."