Comment by NullifyNAN
2 days ago
You’re not paying for a service, you’re bidding in an open market. They don’t tell you this but it’s the reality.
Drivers can tell if you don’t tip and all of the experienced ones will decline your order.
Though these apps have done a lot of work to conceal the amount the driver actually gets until delivery is completed.
Hm. If it is an open market, the consumer should also be able to decline/filter drivers, that take tips. Maybe it is a market, but sadly not open.
You can already filter out drivers that don't take tips (so, filter to zero) by just not placing the order.
But that filter is at best inaccurate then isnt it? Surely there exists a driver which would accept a tipless delivery, but you cannot find them because all you can do is decline to do business.
Americans need to remove the idea of tipping. It's archaic, because it was originally there for an aristocratic/wealthy patron to show off their status to the lowly servants of an establishment.
Just charge a price, and have it include the full service fee required for providing the service.
1 reply →
> You’re not paying for a service, you’re bidding in an open market.
IMHO, this isn't a new phenomenon. Close to 18 years ago, I lived in a city with a popular pizza spot that was about a 10 minute walk away. Normally I'd walk, but having a newborn make that challenging, so I'd get delivery.
Typically, the delivery would take 60+ minutes on a busy night, but after a few consecutive Fridays of a decent tip for the order, the pizza would arrive "burn your fingers" in about 20 minutes.
> bidding in an open market.. they don't tell you... apps done a lot of work to conceal
Markets have prices.
Open markets have transparent pricing for efficient discovery.
Concealed prices in deniable auctions are closer to dark pools than open markets.
Surely most customers would benefit from knowing that they’re bidding for service? Don’t call it a tip, but a bid or priority fee.
You already are able to pay more for 5-20 minutes of "priority".
All that this does is ensure you don't get stacked with another order ahead of you (so the delivery is direct from the restaurant to the person who ordered) in theory.
It doesn't help with situations where drivers are multi-apping (accepting orders across multiple apps and juggling them). The drivers don't even know you have priority.
edit: and in the US where you can definitely see the tip up front, you will almost always find that the order will get picked up quicker if you increase the tip by the equivalent of the priority fee. But you may well get stuck with a delivery before yours.
In my experience, choosing the priority option is nearly a guarantee that I will get a driver who makes extra stops while delivering my order.
It's wild because this happens maybe 10-15% of the time for me when I don't choose priority, but it's around 80% when I do.
I ignore the option now and just bump the tip if I want a chance of better service.
Doesn’t affect anything in my country using the same apps. I’ve always gotten fast delivery, as does everyone I know and nobody tips. Tipping is for yanks.
this feels weird to me because i always thought i already paid for the service as part of my order. having to go into a open, blind bidding war with other customers to gett my order processed ...
With Wolt the rider can’t see tips until after delivery.
... Which they can still use against you