Doordash - What's Going on With All These $2 and $3 Orders?

Ever since the Doordash pay model change, dashers have been seeing something on their phones that was unheard of before. Under the now old pay model $5.50 was the minimum that would ever be offered to make a delivery. All of that has been changed. With the new and current pay model dashers are seeing offers come in that are offering them payments as low as $2.

Why do these Doordash delivery opportunities pay only $2, $3, $4?

It all comes down to the new Doordash pay model which works completely different from the now old pay model. When Doordash created our current new pay model, it gave dashers the opportunity to earn more money for their deliveries as tips would now be paid on top of the Doordash base pay. This has created Doordash calls that are paying drivers high amounts that they would have never seen under the old pay model. On the flip side of things though, it also created terrible paying calls that are $2, $3, $4 or $5. Under the old pay model dashers would never see offers this low. To show how these $2, $3, $4 and $5 offers have been created, I will briefly explain how the old pay model and the new pay model work for those that don't know.

 


Old Pay Model

Under the old pay model Doordash promised to pay their dashers $1 per delivery. That means that Doordash was committed to pay their drivers $1 base pay for each delivery. Doordash also noted to drivers that they would receive 100 percent of customer tips, but when the customer's tip did not exceed whatever Doordash guaranteed the driver for the delivery, that tip money would be subsidized into the drivers guaranteed earnings.

In other words, the tip that a customer left would not be on top of what Doordash had already guaranteed. Basically, the more a customer tipped the less Doordash would pay. Of course, Doordash never said that so clearly and most dashers didn't even understand the lingo Doordash was throwing at them when explaining this topic.

Doordash had to create a couple of things to make this old pay model work. They created something they called "Pay Boost" and another thing that they called "Over Guarantees." Pay Boost was Doordashs way of letting drivers know that the company had their back. In other words, when customers did not tip or did not tip very well, Doordash explained to dashers that they would apply pay boost to that particular order so that the dasher would receive an acceptable amount for the delivery. Over Guarantee was when a customer tipped more than what Doordash had guaranteed the driver. With these orders all of the earnings a driver earned was paid by the customer tip, and Doordash only had to pay the driver $1. These orders were not very common, but they did come around every once in a big while.

With the old pay model, dashers were offered a guarantee when an offer popped up on their phone. The offer would show the merchant, customer, locations, distance and the guaranteed amount that the dasher would receive for completing the delivery. This guaranteed amount was the result of Doordashs algorithm which figured out what the fair pay would be for the delivery.

So let's say that a dasher received a guarantee for $7. That dasher knew that no matter what that they would receive at least $7. Let's say that the customer for this particular order did not tip anything. That meant that Doordash would pay the $1 that they were committed to pay, and since the customer didn't tip anything Doordash would have to apply their pay boost. In this case, Doordash would have to apply a $6 pay boost. The $1 base pay and $6 pay boost equals out to $7. The dasher would be paid the $7 guarantee.

If the customer had left a small tip, Doordash would still apply pay boost when needed. For example, if the customer had left a $2 tip, Doordash would have to apply a $4 pay boost. This would be $1 base pay from Doordash, $2 tip from the customer and $4 pay boost from Doordash to equal $7. Another example here would be if the customer had tipped $5. This would look like this. A $1 base pay from Doordash, $5 customer tip and a $1 boost pay from Doordash to equal $7. As you can see Doordash would apply whatever pay boost they needed to in order to reach the guarantee promised to the dasher. The boost was based off of the tip amount from the customer.

When the customer tip went over the amount the dasher was guaranteed, that's when an over guaranteed came in to play. Again, this was rare, but it did happen once in a while. Dashers would be excited when this happened, and it would really make their day. The problem was that it did not happen very often.

 

Doordash had a minimum that they would pay for a delivery. Under no circumstances would Doordash pay a driver less than $5.50 to complete an order. Yes, even the non-tippers would not stop Doordash from paying at least $5.50 for their order. These non-tippers may have been few, actually 15 percent of Doordash customers leave no tip, but Doordash convinced dashers that by subsidizing tips, they were protecting dashers from the cheap and non-tippers.

Do not think for one moment that all the $5.50 orders were from non-tippers though. Actually, most $5.50 orders came with tips from Doordash customers. Of course, dashers never saw that tip money as it was factored into the $5.50 guarantee. The customer tips generally paid most of the $5.50 with Doordash paying a buck or two out of their pocket.

As most people know, Doordash would eventually be accused of stealing the tip money that customers were leaving for drivers. We have had many articles about this tip stealing for years here, and if you are still a little confused about things you may want to read the following articles to learn a bit more on how Doordash was stealing tips.

You must understand pay boost to understand how Doordash was stealing tips

Doordash does not pay tips - They only pay what they call "Over Guarantees"





New Pay Model

After much negative attention from the media, Doordash finally felt the pressure to have to change their tip stealing pay model. Personally, I always knew that the day would come, but I knew that Doordash would continue to steal tips as long as they could. It took giant media outlets such as the New York Times and NBC News to put enough pressure on them to finally make them feel the heat.

The giant media outlets were able to reach Doordash customers, and they were of course not happy when they found out that their tip money was being stolen. Doordash customers intended for their tips to go in the dasher's pockets. They rightfully assumed that their tip money would be on top of whatever the Doordash driver was already earning. If a dasher was earning $7 to make the delivery, they expected their $5 tip to be on top of that and assumed that the dasher would earn $13. Why wouldn't they assume that? On the Doordash app, from the customer side, it has always said that the dasher received 100 percent of the tip.

Doordash customers were not happy at all when they learned that their tips were being subsidized. They figured that their tips did not even matter so why even leave a tip. Their drivers would earn the same amount of money whether they tipped or not so there was no point. Doordashs answer to this was that the customer did receive the tip as it was applied to the guarantee. That of course did not fly with anybody, and everybody could see that Doordash was using trickery with words to steal tips.

Anyways, as we fast forward to our current time we find that we have a new pay model. With this new pay model, dashers receive the tip money from customers on top of whatever Doordash is paying them. The new Doordash pay model has satisfied most dashers, but there is still a small percentage of dashers that fell that they were better off under the old pay model.

Under the new pay model Doordash pays a base pay for each order. The amount of the base pay will be anywhere from $2 to $10. This amount is figured out by Doordashs algorithm. The dasher will also actually receive 100 percent of the customer's tip on top of the Doordash base pay. Also, when a dasher receives a call, they will see the amount that they will earn for the call which is based on Doordash base pay plus the customer tip. All of that is configured ahead of time, and the dasher sees all of this information before they decide to accept or reject a call.

This has created some very good paying calls. For example, a call may pay $5 base pay plus a $5 tip for a total of $10. Another call may pay $7 base pay and a $10 tip for a total of $17. There may be another call that is $4 base pay and $8 tip for a total of $12. Offers like this have become a normal thing and was rarely ever seen under the old pay model. Thanks to actually receiving customer tips these high paying calls come a lot. Also, I have to give Doordash credit for being fair with their base pay. At first I thought they would minimize their base pay as much as they could, but so far it seems like they have been very fair with everything. 

 

 

 

Now we get to the main subject of this article. What's going on with these $2, $3, $4 and $5 orders? Everybody has to understand that with the good always comes the bad. Since drivers are now receiving customer tips, that means that when a customer does not leave any tip there is of course no money for the dasher besides the Doordash base pay. Remember, the amount that a driver is going to get paid for an order is shown to a dasher before they accept the call or reject it. This amount is the Doordash base pay plus the customer tip. In some cases, there will also be promo earnings or some other kind of bonus if being offered in a dasher's area, but this is generally not the case, and we are not going to include any of that here.

When a customer does not leave any tip for the driver, most of the time dashers will receive low paying offer. For example, if a customer doesn't leave a tip for their driver, and the Doordash base pay for the order is $2, dashers are going to be offered only $2 to make the delivery. This is sad but true. A small tip may help, but sometimes even a very small tip from the customer could create a very small offer for dashers. For example, if a customer leaves a $2 tip and Doordash pays $2 base pay, the dashers will see a $4 offer.

 

Most dashers are declining these offers, and I don't blame that at all. After you figure out the price of gas, the wear and tear on your vehicle and other simple factors such as your time, these low paying offers are just not worth it. The $5.50 offers under the old pay model were pushing it, but these $2 and $3 offers have taken everything to a whole new level.

The ones that are going to suffer here more than anybody are the non-tipping customers, and I honestly hope they learn the reason that their food is cold when it arrives to them. Most of these orders are going to take forever to get delivered as most dashers will reject these offers. The good tippers are going to get service that is most likely better than they have ever received in the past. Dashers will receive very high paying offers and will jump the gun and accept these orders right away. Prompt service and fresh food will pretty much be guaranteed for these customers.

Should a dasher accept these low paying Doordash offers?

Everybody has their own strategy of doing things, but my personal opinion on this subject is don't do it. It just does not seem logical to me to do a $2 order. I'm out to make money for me and my family. Why would I waste my time with that. I have bills to pay. I can't be out fooling around with $2 or $3 orders.

It is a sad fact, but as I have already mentioned, customers are going to have to learn that if they want their food delivered they are going to have to pay. When you have a customer that will pay a nice tip to have their food delivered, and you have another customer does not tip, a dasher is naturally going to choose the customer that will pay for service.

With all that said, I was recently reading online, I believe it was from a Facebook group, where a dasher was bragging about all the small $2, $3 and $4 offers he was doing. He was talking about how he is moving non-stop, and earning good money. All I have to say is that may be his strategy, but to me that is just being a fool, but to each their own.

Will these low paying Doordash offers be around forever?

I don't see these low paying offers going anywhere. I'm sure Doordash spent a lot of time trying to figure out how they can get rid of these orders, and they did not come up with an answer. Don't blame Doordash though because surely none of us have an answer either. Nobody can make a customer tip. The way I see it is if you don't tip you get what you deserve. I know that sounds harsh. I mean, why should a person be punished just because they don't tip. They shouldn't, but again, it is just the way everything works.

I do believe that these very low paying offers will significantly decrease in time due to Doordash customers learning about how things work. Some customers will figure out that by tipping they get prompt service, and when they don't they will get terrible service. I believe a lot of this will have to be word of mouth though. Why? Because I think that good tippers have always been good tippers and will continue to be good tippers. They are used of getting good service. They don't give much thought thinking that they are getting this good service because of their good tips. It is just the way life works for them. They tip good, and they always expect great service. They will never receive poor service because they will never be a cheap tipper which would have their order circulating to 20 dashers before somebody accepts it.





As far as the poor tippers go, I believe that many of them will wonder why their food is taking so long to get to them, and they will become frustrated. Some of these customers will just plainly think that Doordash is crap, and honestly some of them will probably stop using Doordash. Trust me when I say that these customers are not a real loss to Doordash. These are the type of customers you don't want anyways. These customers will never give a thought and figure out that their food is not being delivered promptly because they are cheap.  Oh well. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Then there are those customers that will eventually figure out why they are not receiving their good as quickly as they would like. These are customers that Doordash should want to keep. These customers will figure out the game here and learn that they are pretty much in competition with other Doordash customers to get their food delivered. They will learn that by leaving a decent tip, such as $5 will guarantee that their food will be delivered promptly. There food will be hot and fresh, and life will be good.

Although a smaller tip can sometimes work out for a customer, I really do believe that a $5 tip pretty much guarantees a customer that a dasher will quickly pick up their order. The worst that can work out to is $2 Doordash base pay plus $5 customer tip to equal $7 for the dasher. Most dashers will take this order as the pay is acceptable. Honestly, my personal opinion is that 80 percent of dashers would take it. With a $5 tip though the pay will usually be much more for the dasher as the Doordash base pay will usually be more than $2. For example, if it is a $5 base pay plus $5 tip that will equate to a $10 order. This is a guarantee of quick service as dashers will jump on this.

Why don't Doordash customers tip more so that dashers can get paid fair?

Some of them would if they knew that their tip meant so much to a dasher;s overall pay for the delivery. A lot of these customers think that dashers are employees that earn an hourly wage. They think that when they tip it is just on top of their hourly wage. In other words, they think we are alright even without their tips.

As we have already talked about though, these customers are really going to start feeling the impact that their tip have. They are going to learn that if you don't tip, then your food will take forever to get delivered and will pretty much be guaranteed to be cold. Good tippers are going to be rewarded, and when we really sit down and think about it, isn't it right that these good tippers get what they pay for. Don't they deserve it? Of course they do!

The new Doordash pay model is the best thing that Doordash has ever done. I think it is great for dashers, for customers and even for Doordash. Sure, nothing is perfect as we know with these cheap $2, $3 and $4 orders, but the sacrifice is well worth it for Doordash, and it will benefit them greatly in the future and give them an edge over their competitors.