Comment by ethbro
6 years ago
(IANAL) My gut says coordination would be be evidence of both (a) premeditated intent & (b) knowledge that actions constituted fraud.
One could place a personal order (or 100) innocently.
One looks substantially less innocent when coordinating with a third party to place orders and transfer money around.
While that speaks to the severity of the crime (if one were proven), as you noted, it doesn't in any way impact whether that behavior is a crime at all.
But who's defrauding who? If the doordash website says I can buy a dough pizza for $19, then doordash has to get me a dough pizza for $19 when I buy one. No fraud is happening, doordash is fulfilling the requirements of the contract they make with all their customers.
If anything, the one who's committing fraud is doordash, because they're putting in "takeout" orders with the restaurant and presenting them as "delivery" orders to the customer.
In the example from TFA, Doordash says you can buy a pizza for $16 and charges you $16. The restaurant menu price is $24, and Doordash pays $24 for the pizza. That's... the starting place. (As screwy as it is)
Now, if I order a dough pizza for $16, in coordination with the restaurant, and Doordash pays $24 to the restaurant, and the restaurant gives me a dough pizza, and then the restaurant makes it worth my while, what do we have?
Doordash has been paid $16, and spent $24 + (cost of delivery) = (-) SoftBank money
The restaurant has been paid $24 and spent ~$1 (cost of dough pizza [1]) = ~$23 profit (minus labor)
I paid $16 (let's ignore tip). The restaurant reimburses me for that (me: $0, restaurant: $7) to make it worth my while, and then splits profits with me (me: $3.50, restaurant: $3.50).
So at the end, Doordash: -$8 - delivery cost, restaurant: $3.50, me: $3.50.
It's the reimbursement of the customer that seems... suspect.
The way to ethically monetize this would be for restaurants to target Doordash misprices, and "sell" coupons (a food box, containing only a paper coupon), good for future food orders directly through the restaurants. Then encourage all their customers to buy as much as possible.
[1] We'll say we return and recycle the boxes, being environmentally conscious citizens
Getting something for cheaper because of marketing-driven pricing, wasting time dealing with empty shells you don't want, reimbursing the customer...
You have all those elements when backblaze was shucking drives en masse, but nobody would say that was fraud in any way. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/
If you intentionally sell a product for cheaper than you buy it to build market share (I think it's fair to call this intentional when they process the payment and don't bother changing the listed price), and you're willing to sell a whole lot of that product to someone, you can't cry foul when someone profits off that.
What you're describing isn't fraud, it's arbitrage: buying low, selling high. Just because Doordash are a bunch of idiots for selling stuff for way less than it's worth doesn't make it illegal for me to trade with them in good faith on their own terms and profit.
Nobody's lying to anybody, no price fixing is happening, or anything. Doordash agreed to sell a product at a price to any of their users, and they are fulfilling the promise they made, end of story.