Major Backlash Prompts DoorDash to Change its Tipping Policy

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It was over the weekend that the New York Times published a story about a reporter’s time delivering food with online delivery platforms Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Postmates in New York City.

The story read, “DoorDash offers a guaranteed minimum for each job. For my first order, the guarantee was $6.85 and the customer, a woman in Boerum Hill who answered the door in a colorful bathrobe, tipped $3 via the app. But I still received only $6.85.”

It continued, “Here’s how it works: If the woman in the bathrobe had tipped zero, DoorDash would have paid me the whole $6.85. Because she tipped $3, DoorDash kicked in only $3.85. She was saving DoorDash $3, not tipping me.”

Financial writer Felix Salmon took to Twitter and wrote, “It’s like they go out of their way to be dastardly.”
Times reporter Mike Isaac stated, “DoorDash’s CEO, Tony Xu, is the biggest proponent of this tipping policy and aggressively defends the math behind it.”

The tweets were retweeted and a Twitter storm broke out over the company’s tipping controversy.
After all of the backlash, Xu said on Tuesday via Twitter that DoorDash would change its model.

He tweeted, “It’s clear from recent feedback that we didn’t strike the right balance. We thought we were doing the right thing by making Dashers whole when a customer left no tip. What we missed was that some customers who *did* tip would feel like their tip did not matter..”

Xu added that DoorDash would use a pay model that “will ensure that Dashers’ earnings will increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order.”

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