A DoorDash driver and user on TikTok has sparked discussion after claiming they are no longer accepting cash orders from the app following an incident.
In a video with over 53,000 views, TikTok user Abby (@suziehomewrecker) recounts her experience doing a cash delivery.
According to Abby, she received a cash order for pizza from Papa John’s. The total came out to $59.94, and DoorDash offered to pay her “like $2 and some change” to deliver it.
When she arrived, she says she was handed $60, meaning that her total earnings for the order came in at just under $3.
“I knew there was a reason I didn’t ever want to take fucking cash orders,” Abby says.
@suziehomewrecker Did my first cash order on DoorDash the other night. #doordashchronicles #doordash #dasherstories #doordasher #doordashdeliverydriver #cashorder #doordashbelike ♬ original sound – Abby
In the comments section, many alleged DoorDash drivers claimed they had similar feelings about cash orders, with some citing specific delivery experiences.
“Got that beat. for a order that was like 45.99 she told me to keep the change and handed me $46 lol,” a user wrote. “that was worse [than] the zero tip.”
“My fear is the customer won’t have the money. The fact that you don’t know the tip in advance never occurred to me. So I still won’t be taking cash,” another added.
“When I got the notification for it, I clicked opt [out] of cash delivery,” a third offered. “I’d rather not deal with the hassle.”
In response to comments like these, Abby says her initial instinct was to not carry out cash orders. However, in this instance, she was simply “hoping that they would send something good.”
“…It’s always just pizza orders,” she continued. “I’ll probably be [opting] out from now on. The only plus is that when you decline it it doesn’t go against you or your percentage.”
That said, low payments for deliveries and lackluster tips seem to have made Abby rethink her relationship with DoorDash.
“DD has gotten progressively greedier & shadier [in my opinion],” she wrote in response to a comment about the risks associated with cash orders. “Lesson learned.”
We’ve reached out to Abby via TikTok comment and DoorDash via email.
Update 6:25am CT, Jan. 27, 2023: In a TikTok direct message exchange with the Daily Dot, Abby elaborated on how DoorDash’s system could be improved in regard to cash orders.
“To start with, they could let you see the size of the order before accepting it. And they should also pay you at least the same as they would on a regular order…They pay a set amount, like a minimum, for any order — whether the tip’s zero or not. And they know how much the tip is,” she detailed. “We don’t know how much it is until we complete the order. But they should do the same thing for cash orders. They should also let us see if the customer is tipping before we accept an order.”
She also detailed how DoorDash could be improved in general, criticizing their removal of the ‘rate the delivery’ survey where drivers could rate a rude customer. She also said dashers should be given longer wait times for nighttime deliveries.
“I think they also need to make it very public how they pay their Dashers, because I think a lot of customers are confused about where all of their money and fees go, which is why a lot of them don’t tip,” she continued. “And it’s insulting when DoorDash sends deliveries that are 5 miles, 8 miles, 10 miles, 15 miles, for $2 or $4 or $7. I got orders before that wanted me to drive 17 miles for $6. It’s insanity.”
Abby said it also doesn’t really seem to “make any sense why they pay you so much more money for certain deliveries than others.”
“I don’t think they have a very clear system about how they decide how much they will pay Dashers or not,” she stated. “I also think when customers do leave reviews, which is not very often, that DoorDash should prompt to find out why they’re leaving the review…because I think a lot of people rate their drivers based on how their food was, which has nothing to do with the driver or the delivery for the most part.”
She concluded, “They also need to make it more user-friendly for customers to go back and change their tip if they want to, to increase it. I don’t think they should be allowed to decrease it. What they initially tipped is what they initially tipped; if they want to increase it, though, because of excellent service or what have you, they should have the option to do so easily.”
