DoorDash and Amazon Customers Find a Tipping Loophole: Give Cash
Facing backlash, DoorDash will abandon a policy counting tips toward base pay. The saga offers lessons for Amazon, which uses a similar system.
Drivers load Amazon Inc. packages into vehicles to deliver to customers in San Francisco, California.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergKeeping money in a jar isn’t much of an innovation, but as the online delivery boom leaves some couriers feeling shortchanged, customers are re-learning the value of cash. Alanna Prince, a 28-year-old graduate student, relies on apps for nourishment between her academic work, but she doesn’t trust them to distribute her tips to drivers. “I keep a bunch of ones and fives in a jar to tip them all,” Prince said. “I tipped in the app a few times until it came out that those tips are essentially, like, stolen.”
Prince’s suspicions were well-founded. DoorDash Inc., which makes the most popular food delivery app in the U.S., said last week that it would change the way it accounts for tips. Currently, the company guarantees a base pay for drivers that includes gratuity, meaning if customers tip more, the company pays drivers less of its own money to hit the minimum. DoorDash said it’ll revise the policy and pay drivers the entire amount of the tip for each order on top of their pay for the work, though it has yet to offer details.