Doordash reducing tips?
When I order on Doordash now, I see the tips it suggests are far lower than they used to be.
While I think tipping culture is way out of hand, I see Doordash tips going down to $2-3, or sometimes around 3-5% of the order and you have to manually adjust the tip upward from the default, beyond the given options.
Does anyone know what's going on there?
After some investigating, there seems to be a reasonable answer.
The local government here in Vancouver has enacted legislation giving delivery drivers a wage of ~$22 CAD an hour, which is a reasonable living wage, and they've mandated that this can't be made up with tips.
The previous practice of Doordash and Uber Eats was to pay a percentage of the delivery person's fee, but the rest would be made from tips This was because if the driver did not get a minimum tip, the company would pay the difference, thereby encouraging the company to promote large delivery driver tips.
Without that incentive to pay their staff, Doordash and UberEats have moved to being more "consumer friendly", and trying to reduce or eliminate tips.
I'm in favor of getting rid of tip culture by promoting living wage for staff, but the sudden changes strike me as somewhat cynical.