Is doordash down? or going down?
Is DoorDash Down? Well it has been down a lot recently but the big question to ask is DoorDash going down? The company has had its share of downtime recently resulting in unhappy drivers and unhappy customers. There have also been reports of lost wages, incorrect rating numbers and so much more.
DoorDash stocks are dropping, drivers are declining orders and dashers are becoming more and more disgruntled. Is this combination a good thing when it comes to your food delivery? Probably not because unhappy drivers have a tendency not to care about how well your food is handled.
One DoorDash driver in Elizabethtown KY said he is rejecting 9 out of 10 orders per day. That means customers are having a harder time getting their food delivered. When the customer does get the delivery accepted its most often accepted by someone who is unhappy with their pay which results in poor customer service.
Karissa Jacobs of Bloomington Indiana simply stopped working for DoorDash and now delivers for a locally owned delivery service. Jacobs said that an order of $2-$4 dollars was simply not worth it while most of them were taking 20 minutes to complete. That pay rate balances out to around $12 per hour but when you take out fuel expenses it drops off sharp.
In Long Island New York merchants are having to throw away food because DoorDash drivers simply won’t pick them up. DoorDash has the food made prior to dispatching a driver. This means if the rate is too low then your food is going to sit there for an undetermined amount of time.
In Oak Ridge TN one merchant said that an order sat for over an hour and no one still had not picked it up. Would you want your burger sitting for an hour waiting to be picked up?
In recent weeks DoorDash has encountered a massive series of app failures for both drivers and customers alike. One outage lasted for an entire day and hit nearly every city in the United States. It remains unclear if this was just a technology failure or if DoorDash was the target of a cyber attack. One person was seen on Downdetector taunting DoorDash with the words “Got you again, you are so easy to take down”
Either way it spells big trouble for DooDash. With fuel prices soaring and DoorDash not making any changes to its pay model, the service is experiencing major upsets with drivers. Customers are experiencing poor service and DoorDash has seen an average stock price drop of 49.26 percent over the year with the biggest drop being 59.83 percent.
So let’s get to the meat and bones of why this is happening. The number one reason is the reluctance to pay drivers better. DoorDash hikes up the food price, charges the merchant 15-30 percent of total order cost, then charges a platform use fee.
The customer is charged a nice looking low base rate but is then hit with platform use fees and in some markets they are charged 6-10 percent of the total order cost. The driver only gets that very low base rate plus tips. In some cases DoorDash even keeps 1-2 dollars of that tip.
Now from a customer standpoint, you have to expect rising food costs and rising delivery costs. That is just the way things operate. The problem is that customers simply do not tip and the drivers will not deliver for such a low base rate offered by DoorDash. The days of cheap delivery are for now a thing of the past.
Customers need to expect on average at least $1 per mile for delivery and an average of $1.50 to $2 for the ordering platform fees. Otherwise the driver and the delivery service can not stay in business. This also means that ordering small meals may not be worth the price so order with friends, family etc to make the price structure worth it. In some cases orders can be bundled so that the pricing is a bit less and the driver still earns a decent rate.
The added benefits of using a local delivery service is that you always have people you can reach in the event of problems. DoorDash has outsourced their customer support to India. Local services screen their drivers and they KNOW their drivers. Anyone can drive for DoorDash. Do you trust just anyone to deliver your food?
With the rising fuel costs, disgruntled drivers and orders left sitting for extended periods of time, its definitely worth a few extra dollars to have a locally owned service deliver your food with happy, customer oriented drivers.
Interested in having a local delivery service to work with? If you are in the Oneida, Oak Ridge, CLinton or Lenoir City regions then we want to work with you. Learn more about partnering with Grub Runner
