Doordash Stalling the New Pay Model

It's been nearly two months since Doordash announced that they would change their controversial pay model. On July 23, Doordash CEO, Tony Xu, announced that Doordash would be implementing a new pay model. With this new pay model, dashers would actually receive the tips that Doordash customer's left for them. Fast forward to August 22, and Doordash shared the details of their new pay model with everybody. Here we are with a little over a week left in September, and most of us dashers still don't have the new pay model.

Why would it take Doordash so long to change the pay model?

I promise you that Doordash is not in any rush to change their pay model. If they could continue to steal tips the way that they have been doing the past couple of years they would. Honestly, they had a pretty good run and actually ran this tip stealing scheme much longer than what I anticipated. Do you have any idea how much Doordash has earned in additional revenue by stealing tips these past couple of years? We are talking big money here! It at the very least earned them some extra cash to purchase competing company "Caviar" for 410 million.

I guarantee you that if Doordash wanted to have their pay model changed within 24 hours they could have it done, but my take on it is since the announcement they may have figured why not milk another couple of months of customer tips. Trust me when I say that we are not talking about chump-change here. A couple of months of stealing tips is worth many millions of dollars. With all of that said, it basically comes down to earning as much as they could for as long as they could by stealing tips.

Is Doordash purposely stalling the new pay model?

In all seriousness would this really surprise anybody? At the beginning of the year when all of this tip stealing was getting a lot of publicity, Doordash didn't budge and defended their pay model. Yes, they had the nerve to defend their pay model even though it became widely known that they were pocketing the tip money that Doordash customers intended to go to their dasher.

To explain it real quick again, Doordash pays dashers a guarantee for each order. When a customer tips through the app, that tip money does not go to the driver. Instead, that tip money goes toward the guarantee instead of being tacked on top.

Going back to the beginning of the year though, it was not only Doordash that was getting the bad publicity. Instacart was also facing a lot of heat. Instacart though, unlike Doordash, quickly heard and respected their customer's wishes and stopped stealing tip money. Yes, Instacart quickly changed their pay model. It did not take them months to do so. So what is taking Doordash so long?

Isn't it true that some dashers are already under the new pay model?

It has been reported by some dashers that they are already under the new pay model. Dashers in a few cities have reported being under the new pay model. There has also been some dashers that have reported being under the new pay model in their city while other dashers in that same very city are under the old pay model. It seems to be a bit confusing for everybody, but I would estimate that as of this moment at least 95 percent of the nations dashers have not been upgraded to the new pay model.

It has also been reported that Doordash is testing their new pay model which sounds kind of ridiculous to me. Why? Because the new pay model details have already been shared. Doordash can't go back on their word now can they? A lot of people think that Doordash is trying to see how low they can go with dashers. Doordash wants to see how many $2 or $3 orders dashers will do. Whether this is true or not, it just seems ridiculous to me to be testing something that you have already announced is going to be the new pay model.

  

 

Shouldn't all dashers be under the new pay model by September?

To be fair to Doordash, they did say that during September we would all be converted over to the new pay model. They didn't specify which part of September, but knowing Doordash it will be the very last day of September. Yes, I expect all dashers to be under the new pay model by September 30, 2019. Can I guarantee that? Of course not, but it would really be something if that were not the case wouldn't it?

So we continue to dash everyday and wait for the new pay model. We wait for that call when our base pay says anything besides $1 and doesn't show "Doordash additional pay." Instead the only breakdown we see will be a base pay of $2 to $10 plus the customer tip. When this happens, we will know that we are finally under the new pay model.