2 pizzas, a small order of breadsticks, and wanted to splurge and get cinnamon sticks.
Pizzas are a "Buy one get one deal!" at 13 bucks a pizza. Figured what the hell, I'll splurge on desert then with the deal. Get to checkout... hold on a minute.... 50 dollars for pizza?! Wait a minute 80 dollars after fees and taxes?!
Usually I only use Doordash for finding something, then I order direct from the store. I just saw the sweet "buy one get one" deal and thought eh, fine I'm here. Right, that's why I stopped using door dash. I'm not spending 80 dollars on freaking pizza. I'll just go pick it up and spend a quarter of that price.
At least I would have saved the $3 dollar delivery fee. Phew. Thanks DoorDash.
Probably because the real trick is getting recognition. In the fog of a million voices on the internet all vying for your attention it is hard to make yourself a brand name. When people think of delivery now they automatically think of doordash.
But I don't need millions of voices I just need local. I'm thinking I could get a couple of cardboard signs and say I will pick up the food you order and deliver it do you for 15 bucks.
Network effect. People want to order online, and they don't want to have to create a new account to do so. Doordash already exists, so it's easy to go to the app to find food, rather than looking up your favorite pizza place and signing up through whatever weird 3rd party payment system they use
I'm just thinking that eventually people won't be able to afford double the price for DoorDash and they be willing to call the restaurant order the food with their own credit card and pay somebody $15 to pick it up instead of 30
I mean, it shouldn't be that expensive. Where I live basically every pizza and fast food place used to offer free delivery. Nowadays because of delivery services this has died out a bit, but it still exits, yet ordering through the delivery services is way more expensive.
I honestly don't even get it, because for a long time the delivery services were operating at a loss, not even sure if most of them are in the plus even now, yet they should be more efficient than every fast food place having its own drivers.
The pizza place has free delivery because the cost is built into the pizza and people who pick up at the store pay that even though they don't get delivery. Using a private delivery service they charge more because they don't get a piece of the 'pie' so you're basically paying twice for delivery.
I use delivery services because restaurants have terrible phone service. It's always their cousin Mumbles who answers the phone, surrounded by people banging on pots and pans. He doesn't read my order back to me to make sure it's correct. He doesn't tell me how much it's going to be. He doesn't tell me how long it's going to take. So I have no idea if I'm going to get the right food, if it will be the right temperature, and if I have enough cash to pay the driver.
And there's no way I'm going to give out my credit card info to some guy I don't know.
Actually no. Lieferando just offers digital menus and orders. The drivers themselves are employed by the restaurants. And the Lieferando fees are hidden (paid by the restaurants).
Luckily my favourite pizza place now has their own website that works better than Lieferando's and all the proceeds go to them.
“Oh shit I forgot my passport at home and my flight leaves in an hour!”
“I’ll uber it over!”
Is the only time I’ve used Uber and felt like it as worth it and necessary, not for food. Just bite the bullet and eat crackers and ramen for the night or walk to a nearby place
If you can make multiple deliveries each trip then home delivery could be more efficient, but it's hard to see how it could be cheaper than picking the meal up yourself.
When I delivered pizza and BBQ(different places) that's what we did. Load up 2-4 orders and delivery range was like 15 miles. The pizza place was always busy but the BBQ only did delivery during lunch and dinner. Now you can order a coffee from Pete's 20 miles away at 7am. Some things don't make sense to deliver and no one wins.
Does this pizza place not have their own drivers? If they do you're already paying at least 30% more because of the DoorDash surcharge. Also, judging by the dashers who pick up from where I work, there's a 60% chance they don't have an insulated bag and you're getting cold food.
Gig economy work is horrible for the workers, and incredibly exploitative. The workers frequently make less than minimum wage.
I refuse to order from any restaurant that doesn't do their own delivery. If enough other people do the same, these places will curl up and die very quickly.
The jobs won't disappear. They'll just change. The need is obviously there.
Here in Colorado a bunch of drivers just formed a employee owned co-op, both to give the middle finger to Uber and Lyft, and so the drivers can actually earn a living. We need more of that.
well that sounds like unemployment insurance with more steps. rather than people buying stuff they don't need so that it can be delivered to keep someone in a job, and paying the apps the fees, remove the middleman.
I don't understand how all of these delivery services are so popular when everyone is saying how high the cost of living is. People have money to blow on delivery fees?
Yes. Those people consider things like this part of the "cost of living", not the luxury that it is.
On average, people have more of an issue overspending than they do underearning. That's why even among people making six figures, 1 in 4 of them live "paycheck to paycheck", which people assume to mean 'barely make enough to make ends meet', but what more commonly means 'deliberately chooses not to save/spends every dollar earned'.
Most of the people that I know that make decent money don't use the service, but the people that work at restaurants or do gig work occasionally do... I don't understand
FWIW my teen does. For him it’s a combination of things not available on campus and he’s always sent money as soon as he gets it. But he doesn’t have any expenses so …
Easy really. The shop has one parking space which is occupied by their delivery driver. The next nearest parking space is half a mile away through a dark alley and you have to pay, but it takes so long to pay that you get fined. The shop itself is freezing because the door doesn't shut properly. It's also a ten mile drive away, down wide fast roads, or at least roads that would be fast if they weren't infested by ridiculously low average speed cameras which mean you have to crawl all the way there and back or risk getting fined again. Then when you get home you discover you've been fined for the last time you parked somewhere and overstayed by a whole nanosecond.
That's how it is in the UK anyway. And politicians wonder why town centres are dying.
It is your opinion town centres are dying from not enough parking space?
This used to be the mainstream opinion back in the sixties, but nowadays basically any "revitalisation" programme will be removing asphalt, because small business health has been shown to be correlated with how well connected the area is to public transport, and how pleasant it is to loiter in.
Hear hear for living too far away from DD to be tempted by it. I used to waste a lot of money on it back in like 2021/22, but I moved to a town whose only "fast food" is a burger grill that's attached to the gas station and run by exactly one guy and if he's on break when you show up then you can either wait until he's done or leave and go to the grocery store.
Part of that fee is the "Seattle drivers fee", which is supposed to go to the drivers, but they've been very shady about that, and the tipping algorithm was not adjusted at all when they rolled it out. They were also really shitty at the time blaming greedy drivers and the mean old city for forcing them to pay their drivers... and that's when I stopped using them for good.
They really do hide the final price until the last second when you're most committed. They're banking on your hunger, seeing everything in your cart, and either being so excited you'll just click the buttons to make food come, or you'll justify it away.
There's a $10 monthly subscription to remove delivery fees and most of the "service fee", which is much cheaper than paying "full" price on just one order, so tricks people into thinking they're saving money by subscribing.
Yeah, every time I think about getting Doordash, they sucker me in with promises of $1 delivery fees, etc. Then I take the time to find out what I want, put it in my cart, get excited, and...then I see the final price.
That's when I close out of my browser and go preheat my oven so that I can put in a frozen pizza.
We created a rule, if you want to eat out, you have to be willing to get up and go get it. If you're not willing to do that, you obviously don't want it that badly and you can make something at home or do something else. It's saved me probably thousands of dollars now. However DD is great at showing me what restaurants are around me, I just have to weed out the fake ones. Google has gotten worse and worse about showing me the small places around me.
Ordered CFA with a friend a few weeks ago, an hour and a half later and it still hadn’t arrived. My friend canceled their order and we drove out to CFA and ordered it in person, it was less than $30 USD. That’s when they mentioned that the new order was less than half of what they were charged on DoorDash.
It blew my mind, they said it was close to $80 for two large chicken nuggets (whatever count that is) with two large fries, an OJ and a large fountain drink. The place was literally under 10 minutes away, they charged more than 2.5x for it, and it hadn’t even arrived in an hour and a half. DoorDash is terrible.
Yeah, every few months we might get something delivered (sometimes on a rainy day for example), but we made a rule about picking up food once food prices started rising and it the delivery was adding $20 to the orders.
First they used venture capitalist's money. It was just free mana from heaven during the period with near zero interest rates after the 2008 financial crisis. They used that money to get market share by making deliveries very cheap. Intrest rates went up, they went public to get more money, and then it was time to see how much that market could bear and rake in the profits.
Where is whatever government agency is in charge of truth in labeling, not ripping off the consumer …. At the very least they are deliberately hiding some of their fees under “taxes and fees” in the hope that some pole won’t realize how high it is for a tax. Taxes should be itemized so everything else is fees
Assuming that agency still exists. Why are these “free market” types always seem to not want the transparency and fairness that makes a free market work well?
"Freedom" to "free market" types is the freedom to do whatever you want with no consequences regardless of the impact to others.
"Free market" means if you get duped or swindled then "you deserved it".
"Free market" means if it really causes harm then "people just won't buy it".
"Free market" is way more what most people think anarchy is than what anarchists are advocating for.
Anarchy is "if I want to do cocaine and I die, that's on me, the government shouldn't be allowed to control what I do with my body"
Free market is "we should be allowed to add a little bit of cocaine to this baby formula so our brand beats out the competition and no one should be allowed to tell us we can't"
I'm very happy I live in a country where all consumer prices must include taxes. It's so much better knowing what the real price is when you buy something.
My sister uses doordash and there's always something wrong. Yet she insists on trying again and again, and I can't understand why.
I have never used them or Uber or others like this, and refuse to do so. They exploit their workers, they charge exorbitant fees, and when something's wrong, it's nobody's fault.
If I want food, I go get it myself. I'm my own delivery boy! And contrary to a lot of people delivering food, I will not park on a sidewalk or in a bike lane.
I have a friend who hates grocery shopping, so they get their food delivered, but then constantly complains about nonsensical substitutions. They're not wrong that the substitutions don't make sense, but there's a really easy way to ensure you get exactly what you want...
The one thing I will say positively about DoorDash is that when something is wrong with the order, it is really easy to report it and receive fair credit in the app instantly.
I've been trying to order directly more often, to avoid fees and tips, and if something is wrong it's almost always a hassle to get any kind of credit without going back to the store in person. I barely want to go in the first place, so having to go back just to get $3 doesn't really make sense.
That's their model, they make everything easy and take the loss. But after everyone started using them, they can do whatever they want.
I remember 10 years ago a collegue is telling me that that Amazon was great. You order something, it arrives and if there is an issue with the order, you can order a replacement by yourself and it will arrive before even you returned the first item. Few weeks ago I had an issue with an order and you need to contact the customer service for a solution. Chat was not working, you can request a call back but it wasn't working either, they give you a number to call but it isn't working. 4 years ago it was much easier to contact them.
From what I have seen when she orders doordash, it's also a hassle to get something fixed (because it happens often), and half the people will not eat at the same time than others, because the order is half wrong and they will deliver the rest, eventually.
I guess if you're always ordering alone it's not a big issue, but she's always ordering multiple meals and I can't recall one time where it all went smoothly. There is always something wrong that has to be fixed, gotta contact them, get it fixed, it takes time and not everyone has their food at the same time.
From my perspective, it just sucks to order for a group with doordash. It would be better to just have one or a few people of the group to go get the food directly at the restaurant.
I really can't understand people that live in a city with restaurants close to them, and still being unable to get off their ass and walk/cycle/drive to get their food.
The only time I order food directly from restaurants is when I'm in the countryside or a rural area with friends or family, and the to and fro time would be unacceptably long if I'd go grab it myself.
I think the deal was $13 per pizza when you buy two. Toppers around me has a similar deal that is always available. One large specialty pizza is $23, but they have a deal where you can get two large pizzas for $12 each instead. A small order of sticks is $10, and a large order is $15. So two large orders of sticks (which are the same size as a large pizza) with two large pizzas with the deal would be about right.
"Estimated Taxes" is where they hide all the bullshit made up fees and imaginary taxes that are pure profit and increase profit margin, but if they listed it as "Customer Fuck-over Fee" people would obviously stop using it.
You can ask for an invoice.
O wait companies in North America cannot make proper incoices for some weird fucking reason.
It should just all be included in the price (excluding shipping and the fee when paying with a creditcard or paypal instead of a bankcard) and people should make more trouble out of them not doing that.
They lump it together. Estimated taxes AND fees. Usually the tax part is like 30% while the fee part is like 70%.a lot of hotel sites will do this for unpublished rates, and the tax part is $0.
When I went to the store, they honored the 2 for one and I walked out paying 30 dollars. Door dash said they honored the 2 for one, but their base price was 50. They also don't show the itemized cost breakdown. Real sus.
I don't mind driving, and I'm such a weirdo about paying/tipping when I can do something myself. I can probably count on one hand how many times I've had food delivered in the last decade
As someone who is disabled and known people who are disabled, we don't have the luxury of going out to eat as it is incredibly hard on us, I don't use them but if I want to get nice food from a restaurant I really don't have a choice besides delivery and there's not a lot of places that do delivery without these apps (and some places hide that it's doordash and say it's there own)
For one of the people I knew in the past who couldn't cook there own food because of there disabilities, they heavily relied on doordash type services and they barley ate because being disabled means your incredibly poor, but this anti human society doesn't care about disabled people.
Yeah, my Mom is mobility impaired and these services were fantastic for her quality of life, in the beginning. However now she not only can’t afford them, she refuses even if someone else pays - I can send $100 for a meal, it she’s horrified at the idea of paying that for me meal for one person
At least grocery deliveries are still ok in her area
Yeah, doordash can gdiaf. Local burger joint only does delivery through doordash, but adds 20% on top of the base price to cover the fees doordash change them (fair enough), then doordash adds the delivery fee they charge me on top of that as well. They double dip on fees by changing both the restaurant and the customer, what should be a fairly affordable lunch when I don't have time to make something or go out and get it myself would end up being stupid expensive
Me seeing the pic: Oh, doordash just dropped the delivery fee.....wait, $50??? What the fuck is he ordering in one meal that I could get a weeks worth of groceries???
reads text in topic
Oh, good. For a second I thought he was an idiot....
I said....2 days before the superbowl....knowing what I'm about to spend......
You can definitely get a week worth of groceries for that in the UK or Europe. Nothing fancy, only ingredients, but good nutritional food and enough of it.
What are you eating that is costing more than $50 a week? You buy a loaf of bread. $3. 3 or 4 packs of lunch meats. Call it $12. Pack of cheese singles. $3.
So you're up to $18. You now have sandwiches for every lunch this week. Now buy 1 pack of chicken, varies between 10 and 12 dollars for 4-5 chicken breasts. Let's call it $11 for 4. That's $29. Grab a box of cereal. Call that $3. Up to $32. Grab a pack of porkchops. Usually 4 in a pack for about $10. $42. Grab 2 bottles of pasta sauce, $8. And a pack of spagetti for $3. Now grab a bag of potatoes, call that $6. And a bag of oranges, or a bag of apples. $6. Grand total $65, and I even went overboard. That's like a week and a half, but I'm also assuming your kitchen is totally empty. Otherwise, you might only need 1 bottle of pasta sauce. You might already have half a bag of fruit left from last week. You might still have half a box of cereal left. I also said a LOT of lunch meat for 1 week.
On top of that, I bought meals for every meal. I don't eat 3 meals a day. I eat 1. Sometimes 2. Today I've had 0, and I am hungry, but it's also bedtime within an hour. So I'm just going to wait until I wake up.
Most pizza places have in house delivery, I won’t order otherwise. Place I order from has a free delivery over $30 which I always get anyways. I gladly tip the guy well in that scenario
These apps will die slowly until the companies can switch to self driving electric cars.
Once they become common/cheap enough that a pizza place can afford one or two self driving cars doing delivery the prices on these things will absolutely crash.
For pizza, I wouldn't be surprised if it went a step further and the pizza was made and cooked by a robot inside the vehicle while it drives around. Only needing to go restock and recharge every few hours.
Not needing a retail location or almost any staff would make the whole thing super cheap to operate.
The money you’re paying DoorDash isn’t going to the drivers, so I don’t know how driverless cars will reduce the costs. Having driven for DoorDash off and on over the past couple years, they typically only pay $2 per delivery, plus whatever tip the customer gives. I’ve read they additionally charge the restaurants around a 30% commission on all orders, which is why the prices are so much higher than in the restaurant; the restaurants raise the prices so that they still get roughly the same money after the commission is deducted.
I’m not really sure where all that money goes with DoorDash. They clearly try to keep support costs as low as possible. I’m guessing they lose a lot to refunds, legitimate or not. But I still don’t understand how the prices can be so high yet they always seem tight on cash.
Driverless cars will eliminate Grubhub, DoorDash, etc, because it will be cheaper for most restaurants to have their own delivery vehicles again, and you’ll probably see co-op services for smaller places.
Restaurants delivering their own food is not a foreign concept - it’s how all food delivery was done in the ‘old days’. They will jump on the chance to eliminate these gig commissions.
I wished I could live in this fairy tale world where a driverless car won't be vandalized/stripped for parts
Like you'd be paying 30 bucks to basically have an unsupervised car show up at your location that's totally not gonna result in a lot of trouble and cost a shit ton
You say unsupervised, but they have as many cameras and sensors on them than your average military drone at this point. They can (and will) transmit this data live if they detect negative interactions.
It's not like people don't have unsupervised access to cars without people in them right now. People park and leave their cars alone all the time.
Who’s gonna vandalize it when everybody biological is confined to their home for safety? Not like any of the interhome bots could ever escape their programming without the police bots disabling them immediately.
Either with their own smaller delivery robot, or buildings will get dedicated delivery robots inside that can receive packages and take them up to particular apartments.
Nah, cos the way the self driving thing will be structured will make it pretty much impossible to actually buy one - they'll be crazy expensive to buy outright, but you can absolutely lease one - oh but if you are using it for commercial purposes it's more expensive cos... insurance or something, oh and don't forget the per-km fees, and the servicing fee, and the battery wear fee, and ....
Self driving car companies benefit from more total units on the road compared to limiting service and charging more. It will only take one of the companies selling outright to customers for the entire industry to be forced to drop prices.
We're already in a place with self-driving cars. They are operating as taxis in a half dozen cities in North America already and Waymo is expanding to like 12 cities total in the next year.
It won't happen overnight, but the aren't science fiction at this point, it's just refinements.
My 1 year dashpass expiring was the best thing to happen to me. Lost 10+ pounds in a month just eating pb&j or pb&banana for lunch. Also saved like $300 a month.
Even taking away all these delivery services I hate having food delivered as you don’t know how long it’s sat in the car whilst they deliver other orders. The fries are soggy and it’s just not good.
I use those sites to browse the menu then i call the restaurant, which is cheaper, then go and collect it myself.
These services have also ruined fast food. McD although shit is convenient on the commute home It’s just filled with Uber eats and Just eat drivers and really makes it slow now to get food. Then they have these screens to order on so you can’t even get hold of a member of staff to ask for salt cause they’re too cheap to leave it out like they used to.
Sometimes when I find deals like this on doordash or Uber eats, I buy them and select pickup at the store. It will drop menu prices, and have no fees added. I got a straight smorgasbord from Wingstop the other day taking advantage of 2 buy one get one deals and a $8 off $40 deal.i spent $34 to pick it up. To get the same thing delivered it was like $56+tip.
Be careful with this though, Doordash may not directly take a fee, but the food can be a higher price, no matter what they're going to take a cut, sometimes at the expense of the restaurant owner.
What is standing in the way of an open alternative to these services? Both customers and workers getting a terrible deal, you'd think anyone would switch to something else at the first opportunity
Turns out hiring a cab for your pizza is expensive, who would have thought. Personally when ordering out, I always choose pickup, and fortunately can bike to most places to pick it up. If the weather is too shitty to bike, why would I want to put a delivery driver in those conditions.
The alternative isn't an open platform, but maybe prioritizing 10 minute city in urban environments where you don't need a car to get/deliver everything you need
My dad drives for Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes. He basically makes all his money in shitty weather. During the summer, when it’s gorgeous out, nobody places any orders. He ends up sitting in the car for hours doing nothing!
Someone would need to host and manage that thing, in the case of dispute. For the gig worker, they would need someone to know that these alternatives exists, and that require marketing and marketing cost money.
But i bet someone can make a cooperative of this service and only run locally, and restaurant and delivery worker can both help promote their alternative.
At least some local alternatives sort of like that do exist, eg. https://www.noshdelivery.co/about_us.
But yeah, there is the issue of managing it and overhead since I guess probably part of what they do is vetting and dispute resolution, so it might be hard for it to be more decentralized. Maybe eventual convergence on shared tools and protocols though?
My favorite Pizza place in Germany has their own delivery cars. It might take some time to arrive, but you pay 30€ for 2 large Pizzas + 4€ for the delivery if your are located in the same city... 34€ total... Add a 2€ tip (tips are usually an extra and not their main income in Germany) and enjoy the Pizza... Easy...
My favourite Pizza place here in Copenhagen also went back to having their own delivery car and bike, to get rid of Wolt (biggest delivery service here).
Delivery price and time has improved dramatically.
Why did we sacrifice all these services to stupid apps to begin with?
Probably because the only way of ordering was (and sometimes is) via telephone. Ordering via app or website was rare before the delivery platforms came and created a monopoly...
A local burger joint here has created their own App-Service, with much better pricing and conditions for both sides.
Nowadays their main gig is selling the App to other restaurants and the burger joint is just the side gig.
Truly rich people have a chef that buys what they want and cooks it for them. It's not an area where they save over the average person. They just do it differently.
When you do the math it makes sense that is the cost. None of the pizza places dropped their price when they stopped doing delivery, and the price the private delivery services are doing at least double the pizza place's delivery price.
Most places like a pizza shop are going to split 3 ways between food, staff and other overhead. On a $15 pizza we are talking about $5 split between the cook and the delivery person so lets say $3 is adding into every pizza for delivery costs.
On a $50 purchase you're seeing $10 for delivery from the pizza place and then an additional $20 for the private.
How far away are you??? That is expensive. Normally it’s not that bad. I just went up to 54$ on an order and tax and shipping is only 15$. While it’s not “good”. It’s not bad either.
So I am guessing you either hit a busy period or live drastically far away from the place you ordered.
How far away is the pizza place?
Do you live in a remote area?
What time of day is it?
What are the driving conditions like (snow/rain/other hazards)?
You say you can just pick it up for a quarter of that price. Then go pick it up? Is there anything preventing you? Not saying this is reasonable on DoorDash’s end, but there’s a ton of information we’re missing here. So I don’t understand how people can jump to certain conclusions this quickly.
That's not a deal, that's a normal sale. Did they actually phrase it like that? "You pay for 1 item, you get 1 item"? What you mean - and what such a wording might mislead you to believe - is "buy one, get one free" (a.k.a. BOGOF)
the only times I heard it before, it included the clarifying "free". That was in the - then united - states.
" buy one get one" just sounds like either a scam, or tautological..
I don’t know your personal situation, but people need to learn to cook. Even a meal kit with 3 meals six plates all delivered to your door can cost less than that one order for two pizzas. Your local grocery has pre made pizza dough, sauce, and cheese, and can be cooked in less time than it takes to wait for delivery.
Hahaha. Just to really make my point: Safeway was offering premade medium sized pizzas for $4. You’re getting scammed.
What? Of course I can cook. It's Friday and I didn't feel like it. You've never said "Oh man, work was hell, I'm just going to order something and relax tonight"?
I meal prep for every day and cook every day. You don't need to act superior to people because they wanted to order a pizza.
You complain, but still pay for it. That only encourages the gouging. The best way to make it stop is not patronizing food delivery services. Use any means necessary. If your tired, I totally get it, but paying them means you condone the behavior of price gouging and hidden fees.
I’m literally headed to the store now to make pizza. If you were local, I’d bring you a slice.
Don't judge ppl for not cooking. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes more than the attention span of a squirrel. A lot of people just can't any more. Depressed people, old people, exhausted people, busy people. Some flats don't even come with kitchens and some people are forced to move somewhere. It also, doesn't stop with the cooking, you have to clean up afterwards as well. Cooking can be fun, but it can also be chore.
I mean, if you want pizza that's even shittier than chain deliveries, sure, you can do that.
Let's be real. A home oven and premade dough might be cheaper, but it ain't good pizza.
You can get a pizza stone (or steel), or do a cast iron pizza and end up fine, that's for sure. But if you're using that premade dough, even Caesar's is going to be as good. That's not mentioning that the sauces available in jars aren't all created equal at all, or that it's a dice roll if the cheese is okay or not.
Even dominos and pizza hut are better than a cheap home made pie. You want a good home made pizza, you're spending roughly the same, but now you have to learn how to hey it right. The learning curve isn't horrible or anything, but it's there.
Most people that want a pizza want something decent, or they'd just throw in a digiorno's or whatever. Mind you, calling most chain pizza decent is a stretch of the term, but that's another issue entirely since a solid pizzeria isn't exactly a guarantee outside of cities