(2019-02-06) Instacart And Doordashs Tip Policies Are Delivering Outrage

Instacart and DoorDash’s Tip Policies Are Delivering Outrage. This week, Instacart and DoorDash — two giants of the app-based delivery industry, collectively valued by investors at more than $11 billion — are under fire from critics who are accusing the companies of taking advantage of their workers with deceptive tipping policies. Both companies have admitted to putting customer tips toward workers’ minimum pay guarantees, in effect using them to subsidize their own payouts.

The drama began last November, when Instacart put into effect a new method of paying its contract workers, who are known as shoppers.

DoorDash, whose minimum-pay guarantee varies based on order size, distance and other factors, has had a similar tipping policy in place for “dashers,” as its delivery workers are known, since 2017, although it mostly escaped scrutiny until last week.

shocking examples of low pay, like a receipt submitted by an Instacart shopper who was paid a total of $10.80 after a $10 tip.

In another example, two shoppers with identical Instacart batches were paid $10 — the guaranteed minimum — even though one received a $2 tip and the other a $6 tip

Customers deserve to know where their money is going. And no one should be getting 80 cents an hour.”

Representatives for Instacart and DoorDash — both of whom initially tried to cloud the issue by claiming, correctly but extraneously, that “workers receive 100 percent of their tips” — eventually admitted to counting tips toward workers’ guaranteed minimums after I repeatedly pressed them on it. But they denied that the policies were misleading or unfair.