Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Don't leave your Doordash Driver a Tip on the App

For those of you that keep up with the recent on-demand food delivery company news, you'll surely know that Doordash is in a bit of trouble right now for their confusing tipping policy. There is a class action lawsuit against Doordash right now, and although we don't know what the outcome will be, most who truly understand the way things work with Doordash are hoping that Doordash will be forced to change the way they handle the customer tips to drivers. Most people say that Doordash is stealing tips, but this will ultimately be for the courts to decide.

This article is aimed at Doordash customers. As a Doordash driver, I am not happy at all with the way Doordash handles tips, but customers that find out the way Doordash handles the tips that they leave on the app have even more of a right to be angry. No customer is going to be in a good mood when they find out that the tip that they left for their driver is used to pay the Doordash driver's guaranteed pay. The driver will not receive anything extra. Finding out that there really is no reason to tip because the dasher won't receive it will anger any customer. What makes matters worse is that Doordash lies and says that the dasher will receive 100 percent of customer tips. This is of course a wise play with words.





While delivering food yesterday, I was asked by a Doordash customer if I received their tip. This is a topic that I usually shy away from with a customer and will never bring up or discuss. This customer seemed insistent though, and I didn't know what to say. Without saying a word, the customer asked "You didn't did you?" It seemed like she really suspected that something was up. She told me how she had tipped $5 on the Doordash app. I then told her that I can't currently see the tip. She then asked how much I got paid to make her delivery, and I told her $8. She then stated that I should receive $13 for her order. When she said that, I couldn't hold my tongue back. This lady was really friendly and curious about how the tips work on the Doordash app. I then explained to her how even though she tipped $5, I would still only receive $8 for her order.





This customer couldn't believe it! She asked me why I was not getting her $5 tip. I then went on to explain to her how her $5 tip is applied to the Doordash guaranteed pay. In other words, she was saving Doordash $5 by giving that tip amount. She couldn't believe it. She told me that she had been ordering Doordash a couple of times a week for the last year and always left a tip for the driver assuming that they received all of her tip money. She also told me that the whole reason she brought this up with me was because she had starting suspecting that the drivers were not getting her tip money. It is a sad fact, but it took this customer many hundreds of dollars of tip money until she finally fully realized what was gong on.





Do not tip on the Doordash app


If you are a Doorash customer that has been normally tipping on the Doordash app, all of this is probably surprising news to you. I mean, really, Doordash has their customers believing that the driver receives 100 percent of their tip when in reality they don't. If all of this makes your blood boil, you are not alone. It's normal for customers to feel a bit angered and deceived by Doordash when they find out how the tipping on the Doordash app really works.

As I have mentioned in another post, Doordash uses trickery with words to fool not only Doordash customers, but also Doordash drivers. When Doordash explains that drivers receive 100 percent of the customer tip, they are not lying even though they actually are lying. Talk about being deceitful!






It has been a known fact by many that Doordash is stealing tips. Some drivers understand this, even though I believe that a large percentage of driver are still ignorant to it. When drivers find out the gimmick that is going on, they have a reason to be angry. With that said, I believe that Doordash customers should be even more angry. As a customer, when I am leaving a generosity tip to the driver, I have a belief that he or she will receive 100 percent of the tip that I am leaving on the app, and to find out that Doordash just applies my tip to the guaranteed pay that the driver was going to receive anyways would just tick me off. Why did I even leave a tip for the driver then? It makes absolutely no sense. If Doordash guarantees a certain pay to the driver to make my delivery, my tip should be on top of that. It is not disclosed anywhere by Doordash that if I tip, then Doordash will pay the driver less money and apply my tip money to make up his or her guaranteed pay amount.

I will say it one more time. Do not tip on the Doordash app! The driver will not receive your tip. I have heard from some people that when they order from Doordash, they are forced to leave a certain tip amount. That is not necessarily true. During checkout, you will see different tip options that you can choose from. With those options, you will see "Other." By clicking on "Other," you will be able to manually type in your tip amount. To not tip anything. All you have to do is put in $0.00.



 

Do not think that the way Doordash handles tips is an accident. On both the driver side and the customer side of the app, Doordash makes it loud and clear that drivers will receive 100 percent of the customer tip. In reality, what it should say is "Drivers will receive 100 percent of the customer tip, but please note, the more you tip, the less we will pay the driver." Naturally, Doordash will not do this because then most customers would not tip. They want customers to assume that the tip is on top of what they are paying the driver.




Leave your Doordash driver a cash tip


As a Doordash driver, I would advise any Doordash customers to leave their driver a cash tip or no tip at all. This may sound strange coming from a Doordash driver as you would expect me to say that a tip on the app is better than no tip at all, but it is not. When you leave a tip on the Doordash app, you are just basically paying Doordash expenses that the company should be paying themselves.

If you are a person that does not believe in tipping, or you are just short on cash, that is not a problem. Do not tip on the app or tip any cash. To each their own. I understand that most people, like me, understand the generosity that comes with service, but for those that never tip and don't believe in it, so be it. Just remember, you reap what you sow.


For the majority of you out there that want to leave your Doordash driver a tip, cash is always best. The Dordash driver will receive the guaranteed pay that they were promised from Doordash and receive your cash tip. The way it actually supposed to be! I know some customers may feel weird when they don't have much cash on hand and don't want the Doordash driver looking at them like they are a cheapskate. Do not ever worry about this. Doordash drivers are used of not receiving any cash when they make the delivery. I would estimate that currently only about 2 or 3 percent of customers tip cash at the door. The rest of the Doordash customers are tipping on the app thinking that the drivers are getting their tips.

If you are short on cash, a Doordash driver will always appreciate a buck or two. It is something that they would otherwise not receive. When you think about it, if a dasher were to complete 20 dashes during the day, and every customer tipped them $2, they would receive $40 of tips for the day. Add that to their regular earnings for the day and it would make a huge difference in their income. Dashers would be very happy and customers would be more happy because happy dashers would most likely work a bit faster for them. It has been disclosed by Doordash in the past that about 80 percent of their customers leave a tip for the driver. Can you imagine how much tip money that Doordash is stealing every single day!



The only time a Doordash driver will see a tip on the app from you is if you tip very large


When I sit and think about how Doordash steals our tips, it really messes with my mind. In other words, it pisses me off! This is a very terrible business strategy by Doordash. I don't know why they would do this when they have such an advantage of many aspects over their competitors. I honestly believe that Doordash can give its competitors a real run for their money, but when it comes to the way they handle tips, they are the worst and it may take them down.

There are times when a dasher will see a so-called tip from a delivery. In order for this to happen, the customer has to leave a very large tip. The tip amount that the customer leaves has to be larger than the amount of money that the Doordash driver was guaranteed for the delivery.

Recently, I received an order with a $5.50 guaranteed pay amount. I was one block from the restaurant when I received the call, and the customer was two miles away. Even with the low guaranteed pay, I figured that I could knock out this order in 20 minutes so I took it. After delivering the food to the customer and sliding the order as delivered, I seen that I earned $10.38 for this order. This customer left me a big tip amount. The price of their food was $50. So I received the $5.50 guaranteed pay and an extra $4.88 that Doordash calls "over guaranteed".

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So how much of a tip did this customer really leave me? Well, since Doordash has to pay at least $1, they did so. It's all they paid out of their pocket with this order since this customer tipped me so well. There was no pay boost from Dordash because they did not have to boost any pay since the customer left a tip amount much greater than the $5.50 I was guaranteed. This customer tipped me $9.38 and Doordash paid me $1.00. My total pay for this order was $10.38. Of course I don't see that on the Doordash app. All I see on the Doordash app is that I earned $4.88 over guaranteed. The $5.50 guarantee plus the $4.48 over guaranteed makes $10.38. A lot of dashers would think that this customer only tipped them $4.48. That is simply not the case though. This customer tipped me $9.38! Shouldn't I have received my $5.50 guarantee and my $9.38 tip for a total amount of $14.88 for this order? Not in the Doordash world! Doordash loves customers like this because it is how they as a company make the most money. Their only expense here was the $1.00 that they were required to pay me for delivering this order.


Cash is king when it comes to tipping. Drivers make more money, and customers are satisfied knowing that the person providing service to them receives their tip money. As far as Doordash is concerned, I am not here to put them down or anything. I just feel that they are a bit manipulative in their business practices. Doordash is a great company, and I wish them success in the future, but fooling people to believe things that are not true is not a smart long term plan. All customers will find out the truth one day about how Doordash is handling the tips. Sure, the percentage is small right now, but that percentage will rise and rise, and Doordash will eventually need to come up with a new business strategy. For their sake, hopefully some customers will still have faith in them because I guarantee you that many customers will not use Doordash anymore and will instead use competitor companies that never stole their tips. People do not forget!



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