https://seattle.eater.com/2024/2/21/24079162/tony-delivers-seattle-delivery-app-fees-downtown
Tony Illes was working as an Uber Eats delivery person when an ordinance passed last year by the Seattle City Council came into effect in mid-January. The new rule required app companies to pay workers like Illes a minimum wage based on the miles they travel and the minutes they spend on the job. The apps say that this amounts to around $26 an hour, and both Uber Eats and DoorDash responded by adding $5 fees to every order (even when the customer is outside Seattle city limits) while calling for the law to be repealed. According to a recent DoorDash blog post, the ordinance has resulted in an “unprecedented drop in order volume,” a drop that Illes felt personally. He told Geekwire that “demand is dead” and told local TV station KIRO 7, “I didn’t get an order for like six hours and I was done.”
So Illes had an idea: Who needs these apps, anyway? He printed up signs with QR codes directing people to a bare-bones website with his phone number, promising that he would deliver food by bike in Uptown, South Lake Union, Belltown, and a chunk of the downtown core for $5 a pop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. All you had to do was order the food and send him the screenshot. He called himself “Tony Delivers.”
I stopped using food delivery apps last year. The prices were just absurd. If I want takeout, I go get it myself. This all started when I tipped a dasher and the service was awful. The guy stopped somewhere with my food for 15 mins and then delivered it cold and was rude when I asked why he stopped at a location for 15 mins. Tips are for good service, not shitty late-delivered, cold, food!
Last night, I looked on Grubhub for a restaurant, figured out what I wanted and the total was $34 (not including tip). I called the restaurant and went and got it myself, $25. That’s a 36% upcharge for the app alone! Not including any tip!
I can honestly say I’ve never used one. I looked at the prices, realised they were all jacked up before the delivery fees were added, and then just got it myself.
My local Chinese takeaway employs their own guy. I really don’t know why we had to farm this problem out to silicon valley shysters.
Yeah me neither.
Slower. More expensive. Exploitative.
Nah.
My dad has been that guy! We sure ate a lottt of Silver Wok during that time 😋
This is how it worked when I drove pizza in high school and college. We were directly employed by the restaurant and got minimum wage plus tips. When GrubHub first started it was through that system. Eventually it expanded so that our drivers would take order for a few different GH restaurants, and then they started pushing the independent contractor thing.
World: decent wage
USSA: tip, tip, tip, tip
USAUS & CanadaDoesn’t fit the narrative.
Same. Last straw for me was when I got a pizza that was transported vertically, so it had folded over and the toppings were everywhere. I bought a pizza bag and a rear carrier for my bike and just go get my food every time now.
You can opt to get paid by the hour which is from the time of pickup to delivery. Maybe that’s why he just parked somewhere to add time to the delivery.
The only good thing about delivery apps is that my 80 year-old parents need a job and can’t get a job doing anything else at their age.
Everything else about them, from the cost, the cold food, to the wait for something from a shop five minutes away… is just crap.
You may know this, but my understanding is that they randomly stop either to do another delivery on a different app, or to get gas/etc. (edit: I don’t think this justifies it to the customer, hence why I’ve stopped using these apps. I do have some sympathy for the driver, I have heard that the companies incentivize them to maintain a streak and take fewer breaks between drives, and somehow it seems like long unnecessary pauses aren’t penalized (perhaps because they’re hard to distinguish from traffic))
I haven’t used delivery apps in a while due to cold food and outrageous prices.