Saturday, May 11, 2019

Does Doordash Pay Wait Time?

If you are new working in the ever growing on-demand food delivery business, something that you will learn real quick is the value of your time. It does not matter if you work for Doordash, Postmates, Uber Eats or any of the other on-demand food delivery companies. Every company out there has their own way in which business is handled, but in the article I am focusing on Doordash.

When picking up an order for Doordash, I am always hoping that the customer's order has already been placed and that payment has been made. In other words, I don't want to arrive at the restaurant and have to place the order myself while also having to pay with my red card. It's not that I am incapable of placing orders myself or paying for the orders myself, but I would rather not waste my time doing this. Sure, it happens sometimes, and it is no big deal. This is especially true if I have to place an order by driving through a restaurant such as Jack-in-the-Box for example and paying with my red card. This is usually not too time consuming. The problem is when I have to walk into a more upscale restaurant and sit there and wait 20 or 30 minutes for an order. To make matters worse, sometimes I am not even placing the order myself. The merchant is just running way behind and will have me waiting forever like I have nothing better to do.





Does Doordash pay wait time?


If you take a look at the official Doordash website, it states the following about a driver's guaranteed pay:

The guaranteed amount is based on a variety of factors including the size of the order, whether you have to place the order in person, and the projected driving distance, traffic, parking, and wait time at the store.

Notice that wait time at the store is included here. What you really should notice is the word "Projected." Other words that could have been used instead of projected are expected, estimated, predicted, etc. In other words, Doordash is guessing how long you will have to wait at the restaurant, and they supposedly apply that on to their algorithm to figure out your guaranteed pay. All of this is to me is a bunch of crap. Doordash knows if we have to place the order ourselves and they know the driving distances, but they are only guessing about traffic, parking and wait time. They have no idea what that is going to be for us. Doordash likes to say that they project all of this information from past visits by dashers. This is what they have actually told me multiple times in the past. They are full of crap though and just lie too damn much!

With all of that said, does Doordash really pay us wait time? I have called up Doordash about this very issue a few times when I found myself sitting at a merchant for long periods of time. They like to state that they do pay wait time. Again, anytime you talk to Doordash they will tell you how the wait time is already calculated in to the guaranteed pay. This is all a scripted answer that the Doordash reps have been trained to say.







Doordash does not pay dashers wait time


The real answer here is "NO." Doordash does not pay dashers any wait time while waiting at a restaurant. I just love how Doordash always tries to sugar coat things and make things seems as they are not. Do not tell me that you are guessing how long I will wait and that you are paying me based on your guessing. I go by reality and want to get paid what my real wait time is at a merchant.

I must admit here that Doordash is not obligated to pay anybody any wait time. If a dasher does not like it, they can decide if they want to drive and deliver for Doordash or not. What I do not like is Doordash trying to make believe that we dashers are getting paid any wait time. We are not, and I would appreciate it if Doordash would just admit it and say that dashers do not get paid any wait time. Instead, when you contact them, they will lie and quote from the scripts that they have been given.




Why doesn't Doordash pay any wait time?


It's all about the money. Why would they want to pay you more money? There are other companies that do pay you for wait time. Postmates is the one that comes to my mind right away. When you get paid for a delivery, they break down how much you earned from your wait time at each merchant. The time clock starts right when you arrive at the restaurant and ends when you leave.



 

Uber Eats is another company that pays their drivers wait time. I have literally sat in a long drive-thru late at night for 40 minutes at McDonalds for Uber Eats before. I didn't like the long wait, but at least when it was all said and done, I had earned $18 for the order. I must admit that there was a good boost going on, but even with the high boost, the orders usually don't pay that much. My point is that if this order that I'm talking about was a Doordash order, I would not get anything more than my guaranteed pay. An order that takes 5 minutes, ten minutes, a half hour or even an hour would all pay the same, and that would really suck if it was a low $5.50 order.

Doordash really should come up with a system that allows dashers to get paid for their official wait time. I'm sure that they have thought of this, but apparently they have decided that it would not be in their best interest. It is issues like this that drive many Doordash drivers to other companies to deliver for. I mean Doordash has a lot of things right, but what seems to them like small issues and no big thing are huge issues to drivers.

Recently, I spent two hours on one order because the merchant and Doordash were having problems with payment issues. It was a partnered merchant so it was not a red card issue. Anyways, by the time the delivery was made, it took two hours of my time. The customer waited three hours from the time they ordered because of Doordash and this merchant disputing with one another.



 

When I was finally on my way to deliver the food to the customer, I asked the Doordash rep if I could get a couple of extra dollars for this call due to so much waiting. I mean, come on, this call was paying me $6.10, and from beginning to end I will have spent two hours on this order. The rep informed me that Doordash no longer does this. He told me that they cannot add any additional pay any more due to a situation that arises and causes a longer than expected wait time. I have more on this story, and if you want to read about it please do so here. The moral of the story here is to not ever think that you are getting paid any wait time by Doordash. Do not be fooled by any lies that they tell you. If you want to really get paid for your wait time, you are going to have to register with Postmates or Uber Eats which both pay you for your actual wait time. Happy dashing!


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