A lot of places have, yeah. They viewed the delivery staff as a fixed cost, and thought the services would mean they only paid a fee per delivery, making it a net savings.
Hard to blame them, since that's what they were told, and it sounds reasonable on the surface.

[–] FierroGamer@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, that's interesting.

Elaborating further, small businesses here usually contract a delivery business instead of hiring delivery personnel, I think they just arrange the cost of the delivery instead of a fixed cost, so it's basically no impact to the cost of the business.

Not a perfect system, but at least small places can do cheap delivery without jacking up the prices.

To be clear, I live in a corner of Argentina, even if that sounds good, we have other problems lmao.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, what ended up happening is that the services increase the cost of the items the customer buys by a percentage, and keeps that cost. Then they add a delivery fee that they keep, a service fee, and a tip that goes to the driver. Then they pay the driver a small portion of the fee and markup. Overall they take about 30% of the total cost of the order.

Then they treat the restaurant like a subsidiary and make them use their pickup app, and sometimes advertise a menu that the restaurant doesn't actually offer.
They also make it difficult to give feedback on the delivery itself, since they take any negative feedback and forward it to the restaurant.

I got a credit for $50 from one of the delivery service, which got me a a normal lunch plate from one of my favorite places (usually $15), and a ~20% tip. Driver tossed the food onto my porch, making most of it spill in the bag, and their system had no way to say "the driver did a bad job", "give me back the tip", or anything like that. All I could do was say the restaurant messed up, which they didn't.

Needless to say, I don't use them even if it's free anymore.

[–] ManOMorphos@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As someone who used to be a Doordash driver, I had the opposite experience. I got angry texts because the food I delivered was cold (I received it at nearly room temperature and immediately put it in a quality thermal bag). It's not too uncommon to be banned as a driver for reasons beyond your control.

One time I got a deactivation warning for attempting to complete an order in a flooded area. It was already an hour late because everyone else was accepting and dropping the order. I got punished for actually trying.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Maybe it's just GrubHub then, or their UI and customer service is garbage.

Doesn't surprise me that it's shitty on all ends, since I think the only people it benefits are "people who see marginally reduced delivery staff costs".