Organized Doordash Drivers #declinenow Strategy Is Driving Up Their Pay

Lee points out that #DeclineNow factors in the IRS standard deduction of 57.5 cents per mile when setting rates, but not everyone has the same fuel and maintenance costs. One part involves a relatively simple Android-only application called Drivers Utility Helper created by Middleton Technologies that helps automate some of the mental calculations and guesses necessary to make a call on whether some order is worth accepting or not. Another part involves the DoorDash platform itself, and cheap Android phones. Doordash isn’t exactly subtle about its plan to attain profitability by destroying its suppliers. When all the restaurants have been driven to extinction, it plans to replace them with “ghost kitchens.” There are, however, those who take issue with elements of the #DeclineNow strategy.

• An analysis by gig worker Amy Lee, who runs a blog named Pavement Grinders, collects and summarizes the major concerns with the #DeclineNow strategy, centering mainly on whether it is as universal as it claims.
• Then, they can use the home screen app widget to access a screen that reveals the full order total, including any hidden tips.
• DoorDash guarantees to pay at least half of an order total if a driver shows up and it’s cancelled, but it doesn’t actually show the full total in order to avoid paying more in the event of a cancellation.
• To see this “hidden tip” before accepting a delivery, drivers use an old version of the DoorDash app on Android and their main phone’s internet hotspot.
• According to Lee, these concerns aside, selectively declining orders simply works.
• DoorDash delivery drivers in a Facebook group with more than 26,000 members are working together to decline low-paying orders, a move they say is significantly driving up their average pay per order.

With the information provided through this method, #DeclineNow drivers say they are in a better position to selectively accept orders and ensure they earn the most amount of money while reducing the number of expenses they’re responsible for thanks to misclassification (e.g. vehicle maintenance, taxes, healthcare). “Gig economy” is a polite https://xcritical.com/ term for “worker misclassification” – a way to violate labor law by pretending that your employees are actually independent contractors. DoorDash guarantees to pay at least half of an order total if a driver shows up and it’s cancelled, but it doesn’t actually show the full total in order to avoid paying more in the event of a cancellation.

Organized Doordash Drivers #declinenow Strategy Is Driving Up Their Pay

As a result, there’s often what drivers refer to as a “hidden tip” where you may accept an order for $13, for example, but upon completion see you were paid $20 with a note reading “Total is higher than the $13 shown on acceptance.” “The fundamental principles of the official #DECLINENOW movement rely upon all drivers in the movement to exercise their right to use the decline button to decline lowball offers for higher, more feasible ones,” reads a pinned post on the main Facebook group. There are few enough drivers in their home area of Lehigh Valley, PA that they say they’ve been able to effectively raise wages for ALL drivers, and the #DeclineNow forum they run has 40,000 members.

The #DeclineNow strategy is aimed at pushing base pay for drivers up by collectively gaming the DoorDash app’s algorithm by exercising their right to choose which deliveries to accept on the platform. Over the past few years, DoorDash drivers have adopted a wide variety of strategies to earn a living on the platform. Some drivers simply accept every order while others evaluate strictly on a per-mile basis.

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Once a driver obtains an old version of the app and loads it onto their phone, they must go through a complex sequence every time they use the app. First, they must disable Google Play, open the app and sign in, and re-enable Google Play. Then, they can use the home screen app widget to access a screen that reveals the full order total, including any hidden tips. As Brody Ford writes for @bloomberg, the two have founded a driver solidarity movement called #DeclineNow, which calls on drivers to reject jobs that offer rates so low that drivers could actually lose money on them.

One group may refuse to take trips with no tip, while others hew to strategies that refuse orders below a certain minimum, trips that can’t satisfy a certain level of expenses, or pursue a combination of multiple selective criteria to increase pay themselves. The squirming awkwardness of the company’s spokesdroid is delicious, as Doordash insists on the fiction that drivers are contractors who can take jobs or not, while simultaneously detailing all the ways the app punishes drivers who don’t take these money-losing jobs. In her blog, she shares results from an experiment carried out by a Facebook page of drivers where one group selectively declined orders while another accepted every order offered by DoorDash. DoorDash delivery drivers in a Facebook group with more than 26,000 members are working together to decline low-paying orders, a move they say is significantly driving up their average pay per order. To opt-in for investor email alerts, please enter your email address in the field below and select at least one alert option. After submitting your request, you will receive an activation email to the requested email address.

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Two of those drivers were Dave Levy and Nikos Kanelopoulos, who met when they were both Uber drivers and made the jump to Doordash together. Now that Doordash is slashing their wages, they’re determined to fight back, using the lessons they learned in the Uberpocalypse. They’re betting that a pile of shit this big MUST have declinenow doordash a pony under it somewhere. Specifically, they’re betting that Doordash can squeeze its workers and other suppliers so hard that they begin to turn a profit. The grimly hilarious part is that Doordash ALSO lost money – billions! Small wonder we cheered whenever a viral story of a restaurateur turning the tables went viral.

Interested parties may register for and access the live webcast of the call at the DoorDash Investor Relations website at ir.doordash.com. By colluding with Google, Doordash was able to interopose itself between restaurants and diners, making it nearly impossible for us to transact together without giving Doordash a cut that exceeded the restaurant’s margin, making every order a money-loser. According to Lee, these concerns aside, selectively declining orders simply works.

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This tension between DoorDash’s need for profit at any cost and DoorDash’s drivers as workers who are consistently underpaid is not going anywhere. The gig economy’s fundamental business model is incompatible with adequately providing for workers who are viewed as a labor cost that must be minimized on the path to profitability, leaving drivers to fend for themselves and craft strategies to put food on the table. To see this “hidden tip” before accepting a delivery, drivers use an old version of the DoorDash app on Android and their main phone’s internet hotspot.

Organized Doordash Drivers #declinenow Strategy Is Driving Up Their Pay

An analysis by gig worker Amy Lee, who runs a blog named Pavement Grinders, collects and summarizes the major concerns with the #DeclineNow strategy, centering mainly on whether it is as universal as it claims. On the Clock is Motherboard’s reporting on the organized labor movement, gig work, automation, and the future of work. Using a loophole in an old Android version of DoorDash, more than 26,000 DoorDash drivers are collectively declining cheap orders to make more money on the platform. By providing your email address below, you are providing consent to DoorDash to send you the requested Investor Email Alert updates.

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You must click the activation link in order to complete your subscription. Then, as its suppliers become dependent on the company, it tightens the screws. Hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers discovered this the hard way when their wages were suddenly, unaccountably slashed, as Uber slashed the investor subsidy that lured them behind the wheel. Lee has advocated in an open letter to DoorDash her own suggestions and remedies for making delivery work more livable and sustainable for herself and other drivers. Since rolling out its new pay model in 2019, drivers have pointed out that selectively choosing orders was how they survived and named these changes as clear attempts to undermine selective choosing of orders.