# Door dash disruption
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** food-cooking
**Created:** [September 20, 2022, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915 "2022-09-20T13:48:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/1 "2022-09-20T13:48:54Z")
I’ve been reading online about DoorDash drivers refusing to deliver meals without tips. My factual questions are: Do restaurants provide refunds, since meals were not delivered? replacement meals does not seem viable since driver that didn’t deliver first meal will not deliver second meal. Also, does DoorDash have any financial responsibility in this? Debatable question is why restaurants continue to use unreliable/dysfunctional DoorDash when they are losing money and unhappy customers, rather than dependable UberEats/GrubHub?
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### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/2 "2022-09-20T14:05:33Z")
> [@fedman1](#):
>
> Also, does DoorDash have any financial responsibility in this?
I’ve never used DD, what does your credit card bill say? If the money was sent to Door Dash, then yes, they do. If you don’t get your food, you’d be able to dispute the charge and get the money returned to you. That would leave DD out that money, especially if they already paid the restaurant.
> [@fedman1](#):
>
> Debatable question is why restaurants continue to use unreliable/dysfunctional DoorDash when they are losing money and unhappy customers, rather than dependable UberEats/GrubHub?
Often, because they don’t have a choice in the matter.
Some of these companies have been posting (usually entirely fictional) menus for restaurants they don’t work with. Doing a shitty job delivering the food (when you get it, it’s 3 hours late, cold, covered in pet fur etc) and when you complain, they tell you to take it up with the restaurant, not them.
Some restaurants have found that the only thing they can do to stop the bad reviews is to work with them so at least the menus are correct.
Imagine owning sit-down restaurant and having someone show up, out of the blue, to pick up a big order, that you don’t know anything about, for food you don’t even sell. When you turn them away because you don’t know what they’re talking about, you end up getting a negative review.
An acquaintance of mine that owns a restaurant had this issue with GrubHub, and it’s not uncommon, there’s cease and desist form letters online for _exactly_ this issue.
> **[Grubhub is faking which restaurants it actually partners with](https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/29/21113876/grubhub-seamless-fake-restaurant-listings-no-permission-postmates-doordash)**
>
> Grubhub’s new growth hack is listing restaurants that didn’t agree to be listed.
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### Author:  [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/3 "2022-09-20T16:57:14Z")
Joey\_P’s experience matches mine. The person taking your order, the person making your order, and the person delivering your order are usually 3 different people who have never met. Door Dash was the worst offender, they will use restaurants with out their consent, so it looks like it’s the restaurant screwing up when they recieve several massive orders, with no warning, at lunchtime, and the guy delivering it may be late also. For that reason the restaurant where I work doesnt accept orders through any of those services anymore
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### Author:  [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/4 "2022-09-20T17:10:19Z")
I actually ordered pickup from Grubhub once through the app and then got a phone call a few minutes later from a restaurant “We don’t have any of this on the menu.” Apparently the restaurant I ordered from had closed and was never taken off the GH site–a new restaurant opened in the same location and for some reason continues to get sent the orders for the defunct restaurant.
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### Author:  [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/5 "2022-09-20T17:49:53Z")
Yeah, I’ve used DoorDash a lot, especially since Covid, and I’ve had only a couple of problems. All cleared up quickly with no problem. It’s GrubHub that I tried and had issues with, so I stopped using them completely after a few orders and all of them were wrong or screwed up.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/6 "2022-09-20T18:02:19Z")
> [@fedman1](#):
>
> I’ve been reading online about DoorDash drivers refusing to deliver meals without tips.
I’m curious about that, since AFAIK, drivers don’t see how much they get tipped until after they complete the delivery. I suppose they could run back and grab the food off the porch.
We’ve also had way better experiences with DoorDash than GrubHub. We stopped using the latter entirely because they kept screwing up our orders then dicking us around over refunding our money. DoorDash has been great - other than an occasional missing drink, we’ve had almost zero problems with them.
Never tried UberEats, under a general, “Fuck Uber” policy that predates them getting into food delivery.
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/7 "2022-09-20T18:13:44Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> We’ve also had way better experiences with DoorDash than GrubHub.
Same here. We mainly use GrubHub when the food we want isn’t available via DoorDash for whatever reason.
We’ve only had one major problem with DoorDash, a driver ended up on the wrong street and – unbeknownst to me until much later – my phone had somehow entered Airplane Mode. The driver couldn’t contact me so they simply left the food where they were. DoorDash quickly gave us a refund and I reordered via GrubHub.
> [@Miller](#):
>
> Never tried UberEats, under a general, “Fuck Uber” policy that predates them getting into food delivery.
We only use UberEats for one particular restaurant which has a malfunctioning DoorDash menu. They want us to make a choice of sides but the DoorDash UI won’t let any choice go through.
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2022, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/8 "2022-09-20T18:34:14Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> I suppose they could run back and grab the food off the porch.
Or simply not release the food at all.
> **[Delivery driver takes away customer’s food after discovering he had given an...](https://www.indy100.com/viral/delivery-driver-takes-away-food-tip-viral)**
>
> A delivery driver who made a 40 minute trip to deliver food for a customer refused to give the customer his order after discovering that he had tipped her just $8 dollars (£6) for the 12-and-a-half mile trip.In viral footage captured by the...
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### Author:  [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2022, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/9 "2022-09-21T04:22:10Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> I’m curious about that, since AFAIK, drivers don’t see how much they get tipped until after they complete the delivery. I suppose they could run back and grab the food off the porch.
This article states that if you tip when you checkout, the driver can see the total they will make from the delivery (pay + tip). Although sometimes DD hides the full tip amount. They also link a video which says the app has changed, but the comments from drivers disagree.
> **[Do DoorDash Drivers See Tips? Yes, They Do | Ridester](https://www.ridester.com/do-doordash-drivers-see-tip/)**
>
> Do you order your lunch or dinner through the DoorDash app? Ever wondered: do DoorDash drivers see tip? Read on to learn about this process.
As a bonus this is a funny pandemic-era article about a pizza place getting added to DD’s menu unbeknownst to them. DD scanned the menu incorrectly and got the price of a pizza wrong. They were charging their customers $16, but paying the pizza place $24. The owner would order pizzas to his friend’s house to make a little dough.
> **[Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage](https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage)**
>
> There is such a thing as a free lunch
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2022, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/10 "2022-09-21T04:39:27Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> I’m curious about that, since AFAIK, drivers don’t see how much they get tipped until after they complete the delivery.
Drivers see the details of the order, including the amount they’ll be paid. They don’t know what the tip is, but since these companies pay jack shit to their drivers (far under minimum wage when factoring in the cost of driving) they’re pretty much working for tips. A typical order on these services with no tip is something that’s going to take you 30 minutes to do, drive a few miles, and will pay you about $3. It’s obvious why no tip orders are often undelivered. Really, it’s as much a bid as it is a tip.
Eventually once the order is rejected enough they’ll eventually add some money onto the offer until it gets taken, but sometimes this can take 2 or 3 hours which is an absurd wait for food that was already made.
Doordash does hide tips over a certain amount, depending on market. So you usually end up seeing up to about $4 on the tip, after that you don’t know what you’re getting paid until after you made a delivery. There’s some market maximum that they’ll show you - usually between $6-8, and you have no idea if that order is the $6.50 that’s shown or actually $12 because someone tipped nicely. This is really sketchy - it’s obviously an attempt to manipulate drivers, but it also punishes people who tip well. Often people who tip well get better service, but there’s no way to know someone tipped well if DD is hiding it from you. They also pair good tippers with no/low tip orders to get those orders delivered (big tip + no tip averages out to okay tip but you have to take both orders at once), so the experience is actually _worse_ for good tippers on DD - they often get bundled with other orders, which makes it take longer to get you your food.
The way these companies put restaurants on their service without some agreement with the restaurant is super unethical for the reasons people are listing in this thread and should be illegal.
I did some part time work for them from 2018-2020ish and it was pretty alright for a while, but like all gig jobs, they just made it worse and worse for the drivers. Less pay, more manipulation and less transparency, more control, oversaturating the markets with drivers so no one got enough orders to be worth it. It’s a race to the bottom where all the gig companies are trying to figure out how shitty they can be and how badly they can pay while still getting desperate or stupid people to try it. And, really, since the pay is not very good right now and you can go work at pretty much any job for $15+, there’s no good reason to work for these services.
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### Author:  [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2022, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/11 "2022-09-21T14:01:10Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> The way these companies put restaurants on their service without some agreement with the restaurant is super unethical for the reasons people are listing in this thread and should be illegal.
For what my opinion is worth, I think it is illegal but restaurants either don’t realize it or can’t afford to fight it. What these delivery services are doing in the absence of an agreement with the restaurant is colorably trademark infringement. DoorDash, UberEats, GrubHub or whatever scrapes a restaurant’s website and then pretends to offer service on behalf of the restaurant by using the restaurant’s trademark. An enterprising class action lawyer who wanted to collect big could sue all the companies that use a local restaurant’s name to offer food delivery services in the restaurant’s name. I would love to see restaurants win.
There are legal issues with this theory. Many restaurants won’t have federally-registered trademarks and might have different claims under state law than restaurants with registered trademarks have under federal law. Different state laws will have different protections, so the class is not perfectly uniform across the country. The delivery companies will argue that (1) delivery services are different than restaurant services so the restaurant’s name isn’t being used on the same goods, which might sort of be true if the restaurant doesn’t actually offer delivery services, (2) customers know they are dealing with the delivery company and aren’t confused about the use of the restaurant’s trademark, and (3) the delivery companies are reselling the restaurant’s food and can use the restaurant’s trademark the same way that I can use “iRobot Roomba” if I am reselling authentic goods. These aren’t the worst arguments but I don’t think they would win in court when the facts hit the ground. Worse yet, in many cases, the restaurants at one time or another might have signed up to finally use the services, with the idea that they would at least have some control over the relationship. I am betting that those agreements, even if the restaurants later cancel them, will waive the restaurants’ rights to sue. The class action could likely only represent plaintiffs who never signed an agreement with a particular delivery company.
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### Author:  [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2022, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/12 "2022-09-21T14:16:02Z")
I might just live a charmed life but I’ve been ordering from the three major services (Door Dash, Uber Eats, Grub Hub) for the past couple of years and never had a major issue. Certainly nothing like waiting three hours for delivery or pet hair on my food. I’ve probably submitted less than five complaints in the past three years for a missing item or cold food and was quickly refunded each time. I always tip although not as generously as some – usually 15% of the food cost with a minimum of five bucks. At least one of them (don’t recall which ) tries to get you to tip on the total order including their vague “fees” that can make up an additional 20% but screw that.
Aside from a restaurant not being carried by one, I’ve never noticed a significant difference between them for service. I usually pick based on price; I have a GH+ account via Amazon Prime but Uber Eats regularly sends me 15% off coupons so they tend to win. From what I can tell, none of them are stellar in the employee/restaurant treatment arena so that doesn’t really factor.
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### Author:  [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2022, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/13 "2022-09-21T16:04:04Z")
sorry, I’m old, and confused–when I place an order thru Dd/GH/UE, am I seeing actual(?) menu from restaurant? am I paying restaurant directly or thru DD et al . If restaurant is not using DD et al, the how are they getting menu, and how is restaurant getting order
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### Author:  [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2022, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/14 "2022-09-22T01:25:41Z")
Sometimes. Sometimes not. The services do not really have any system to make sure orders are followed to the letter. You are calling a guy, who then contacts the restaurant and the driver. Those 3 people have never met. Lots of good info in here, from others
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2022, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/15 "2022-09-22T04:03:27Z")
Doordash and Grubhub have partner restaurants where the restaurant has a tablet or some other way directly to receive orders from those services. The restaurant gives them an official menu (often with increased prices, because DD/GH charge them something like 25-30% of the gross on their sales) and can make the order without human intervention.
However, Doordash started a scummy practice where they would pretend to be in business with a restaurant - there was no way for the customer to tell that they weren’t - and just scrape menus off the internet which could be false or outdated. When a customer made an order, DD had someone in a call center call in the order as if they were a regular customer and not a doordash employee. They would either pay the bill remotely, or the DD driver was tasked with paying for the order with their DD credit card when they arrived. GH didn’t used to do that, but around 2019 they were losing market share to DD and started doing it themselves. I don’t know how UE operates.
The latter method creates a whole lot of problems with the restaurants are often gets them a bad rating for something that’s DD/GH’s fault. It’s super sketchy at best. Some restaurants pair with one of the services just to stop them from doing that and making it official, but that’s almost coercive, like protection money. Some restaurants are struggling because they either don’t partner with the services, and have all sorts of problems because of it, or do pair with them and get a whole lot of their money taken as fees.
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### Author:  [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2022, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/16 "2022-09-22T05:01:00Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> However, Doordash started a scummy practice where they would pretend to be in business with a restaurant - there was no way for the customer to tell that they weren’t - and just scrape menus off the internet which could be false or outdated…
Are you sure it was Doordash? I thought Postmates was the one that did that (before they got bought be Uber Eats).
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2022, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/17 "2022-09-22T05:21:33Z")
Not sure - I forgot postmates was a thing. I just remember when it was a bad practice DD did that GH unfortunately adopted.
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### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2022, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/18 "2022-09-22T12:06:25Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Not sure - I forgot postmates was a thing.
Postmates was apparently the one that I was thinking about earlier in the thread when I mentioned some of the not even using the correct menu.
> [@Postmates, what's the endgame here?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/postmates-whats-the-endgame-here/849159):
>
> A buddy of mine owns a bar. Over the past few weeks he’s had postmates drivers and regular customers that ordered on postmates stopping in for the order only to be met by a very confused staff that have no idea what they’re talking about. Some digging showed that postmates has a menu for his restaurant on their website. A menu, but not his menu, or at least not entirely his. He recently put a big notice on his facebook page stating that his restaurant doesn’t work with postmates/grubhub/doorda…
Here’s an article that was linked to in that thread:
> **[The Postmates Problem: Why Some Restaurants Are Forced to Fight the Delivery App](https://www.eater.com/2015/7/31/9074491/postmates-delivery-problems)**
>
> The independent delivery service is ruffling feathers among restaurateurs.
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2022, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/19 "2022-09-22T15:08:34Z")
We refuse to have anything to do with Postmates.
We ordered pizza delivery directly from a restaurant, which became so overwhelmed by delivery orders – this was on a New Year’s Eve, IIRC – that they contracted with Postmates to help out. We found this out upon contacting the restaurant when our food never arrived. Postmates somehow lost a bunch of orders but the restaurant stepped up – not only fulfilling our original order but also tossing in a free appetizer and a coupon for our next delivery.
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### Author:  [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2022, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/door-dash-disruption/971915/20 "2022-09-23T23:38:43Z")
Door Dash does that. Or, they did it to my restaurant anyway.
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