DoorDash promises to change controversial tipping policy after public outcry



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The DoorDash food delivery company said it was rebadessing how it pays workers after the outcry sparked by the company's policy of using the advice of customers to subsidize the salary basic.

In a series of tweets, Tony Xu, CEO of DoorDash, said that it had become "clear, in light of recent comments," that the company's policies were not popular. In the current DoorDash system, tips left by customers through the company's application are used to offset the minimum payment promised by DoorDash to its employees. Many clients felt cheated by the policy and badumed that tips were directed directly to the workers – and not for the benefit of DoorDash.

Xu said that in the near future, the company will change this practice. "[T]The new model will ensure that [workers’] the revenues will increase by the exact amount specified by a customer on each order, "said Xu. "We will have specific details in the coming days."

2 / But recent comments clearly show that we have not found the right balance. We thought we were making the right choice by simplifying Dashers' task when a customer left no tip. What we missed was that some guests who have tipped have the impression that their tip does not matter.

– Tony Xu (@t_xu) July 24, 2019

4 / In the future, we are changing our model – the new model will ensure that Dashers revenue will increase by the exact amount specified by the customer for each order. We will have specific details in the coming days.

– Tony Xu (@t_xu) July 24, 2019

The cautious wording of the CEO in this tweet suggests that any new system introduced by the company will have to be scrutinized. Promising that "earnings will increase by the exact amount of a customer's tips" sounds good, but it's not quite the same as just saying "we'll pay the drivers at a minimum rate and all the tips of customers will go beyond that. "

The issue of DoorDash's policy has attracted public attention after a series of stories this year, from NBC News in February and then The New York Times the last weekend.

Other delivery companies, such as Instacart, have already adopted this practice, but have since changed their policies. Instacart, Postmates and Uber Eats say that tips from customers do not subsidize workers' base wages, while Grubhub and Seamless (from the same company) say "drivers keep 100% of their tips and the incomes are determined independently and separately from the tips they receive ".


How does DoorDash's existing failover policy work?
Credit: DoorDash

Amazon Flex is a service where the strategy is not clear. The company said Slate that deliverymen "earn between $ 18 and $ 25 an hour, including 100% of tips", but it is unclear whether or not these tips are used to subsidize wages. Earlier this year, the LA Times said that Amazon uses the advice of its customers for this purpose, which the company has not denied.

Of course, the use of tips to subsidize wages is not new. In the United States, this salary is called "minimal wage" and often affects workers such as servers, waiters and bartenders. But extending this deceptive and unfair practice to the world of technology is not inevitable.

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