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Voting with your wallet doesn’t work when there aren’t any alternatives. If all the services are bilking people, then there’s no choice but to stop using an entire type of service. There’s a similar argument in American tipping culture: you can just vote with your wallet by not going out to eat.
But that’s austerity measures and those have been shown definitively to NOT work. People won’t give up most of life’s pleasures and conveniences unless they have to. No one wants to deprive themselves of most of society’s benefits. And they shouldn’t have to. There should be laws regulating how companies charge and introduce fees and what they can charge for to prevent abuse and industry-wide abuse.
Yes there is an alternative, you don’t use delivery services. It is just a big dumb waste of money.
I pick up all my own food, have never used any of the 3rd party food delivery ripoffs
Tbf, not everyone has a car. I mean, cooking ramen at home and saving up for a car would be a better use of your money, but then people like whoever replies to this that are ideologically opposed to cars would rather have someone else with a car deliver it so they can disconnect themselves from that reality.
Fwiw I also always pick up, I was a delivery driver for 10yr, I can take one more run (to myself).
I’ve been grocery shopping on a bicycle.
My round trip was 24 miles.
Holy fuck I’m glad I have a car now.
If you’re buying ramen you’re wasting your money. Cook food at home with actual food.
I don’t have a car and I cook just fine at home.Edit. If your only options for food is ordering or ramen… Idk what to tell you. You’re in for a rough life ahead of you.
“Ramen” while being a specific food is also colloquially used to refer to “inexpensive food” as a package of ramen is about 10 cents. The above comment was not an advertisement for “Maruchan® Brand Instant Ramen Noodles available in many delicious flavours.”
And bananas are $10.
Ramen hasn’t been 10 cents in decades.Maruchan Ramen Chicken, Pack of 24, for $7.36 on Amazon. That’s literally $0.30/pack (or $0.10/oz). https://a.co/d/gr4Ft9F
Just throwing out there that ramen is indeed dirt cheap still.
I’ll check when I get to the store today, but “decades” is definitely wrong, unless you mean the 8packs (I was talking about singles). Or you’re getting the yakisobas or cup noods that cost more than the packs, or sapporo ichiban which I have to go to a special store for as it is an import and that is about $1.50 a pack (but that chow mein is worth it, that shit is so good.) Bananas are cool too.
Wait, did I put a gun to your head and force you to eat ramen and I missed it? Tf are we doing here lmao this is the dumbest “debate” I’ve ever had. I’ll say again “the ramen was a metaphor my dude, it ain’t that deep.”
They’re around 30 cents. Specific amounts don’t really matter.
That’s great. My time is worth less than theses crazy prices and I work better if I get something to eat and this is faster than getting the very limited and terrible food at work. Do I feel like the prices are insane? Yep. But it’s a value call and since there isn’t another option that allows for good quality food quickly, they get my money. This didn’t used to exist and that sucked, so maybe we are just undervaluing how great this is. Would be greater not paying $60 for lunch though, so yeah, I’m gonna keep paying and grumbling about it at the same time. I really hope drone services take off soon and have better pricing.
Using drones would be cheaper, but the delivery companies won’t be passing those savings on to you. They’ve already shown that people are willing to pay the prices they charge now. They’ll just absorb the savings for themselves.
How much do you weight sir
What does how much they weigh have to do with literally anything
I’ve never met a skinny person using these delivery craps.
Nobody ever died if they had to wait a bit until their next meal
Chances are if you aren’t in college anymore most people you meet are overweight.
😂 The drones carry the food to the people, not the other way around.
And you think restaurant staff is not exploited?
Good for you?
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People not ordering food en masse would hurt small businesses the most. Plus there’s a huge benefit to using an app to order food, which is why they’re so popular. If the system were controlled by the restaurants and interoperable via an open API, we’d at least see some transparency.
The problem is exactly what OP stated: These things are owned by a small number of players, who can exercises control of the market from all sides. They’ve created a chokepoint where they can extract rents without needing to provide value in return.
But you can vote with your wallet and not use the third party delivery app. Order from the place directly or call and order for pickup depending on the venue. Almost any resteraunt will let you call and order for pickup (that’s already what Uber/GrubHub/etc. do then charge you the fee for the convenience), and they’ll prefer that over the app because they get 100% of the money you pay for that meal
I get that boycotts don’t work, but who the fuck is still paying double/triple instead of picking it up themselves on their way home or just driving out to get it - I haven’t ordered third party delivery since the pandemic since there’s no way I can justify the stupid high cost.
I recently started delivering with DoorDash to add some cushion to my budget and this week I had someone buy a single two pound bag of spaghetti noodles from Safeway.
I got laid $6.75 for the delivery after tip (DoorDash paid me $4.75 and the customer gave me a $2 tip). The noodles cost 3.84 at Safeway, and $4.18 on the app, and Safeway is a zero dollar delivery fee shopping experience.
As far as I can tell, it cost DoorDash a dollar or two for me to make that delivery, and/or the customer paid a lot more than $6.75 for the noodles for it to make sense for DoorDash to take.
It was a sort of surreal experience.
“Voting with your wallet doesn’t work when there aren’t any alternatives.”
Just cook your own food.
Yep, and that’s why my family do not go out to eat anymore. Getting costly.
I’m my area the Uber eats prices are higher than if you order in person. An order at my fave dumpling place is 11$ pick up and listed at 14$ on Uber. Add service fee and tip it’s +20$. Paying almost 10$ extra for a meal to take 45 minutes to get to my house cold is not a good deal.
Why would it be a “deal”. It is a luxury service for those who can afford it. Mostly paying for someone else’s labor which isn’t cheap.
It’s not really luxury though - the orders are often wrong, the food is cold, and it is one of the slowest ways of getting food to eat.
Works totally fine here.
Given how delivery drivers are paid I think it’s safe to say most of the cost is not going toward paying for labor.
“But I’m too lazy to cook…”
“Why don’t I have any savings!?”
I would eat out the most when I was pulling 14-16 hour days, and I cook at home the most when I work 8 hour days.
I dont think laziness enters into it
I used to cook literally every day of the week, but then I started clinical rotations and now I’m working 14-16 hour days 6-7 days a week. I’ve entirely stopped cooking for myself, even though it was previously my favorite hobby, because there’s no fucking way I can fit it into my schedule anymore. Anyone who wants to call me lazy can go fuck themselves, and doubly so for anyone who argues it’s my fault for paying exorbitant prices for delivery “because there are alternatives”. I don’t have the luxury of voting with my wallet and it honestly makes me made whenever I complain about unregulated prices and am told I should just not use the service and instead do X, Y, or Z option that isn’t even close to practical for me.
Your situation is all too common.
You shouldn’t need to work that much to survive. I used to do it too, but I’ve taken a step back the past few years so I can work less and do the things I enjoy. Sure, I make less money now, but I have time to do things for myself like cook, grow a garden, and walk or bike places instead of driving, which all save me money. I’m much happier these days.
I 100% agree that there are far too many people working the hours I work out of necessity. I also agree that I shouldn’t have to work the hours that I do, but I’m also in a less common situation where I’m working these hours out of (to an extent) my own free will. I’m in my clinical year of vet school right now so I fully knowingly signed up for this ahead of time. I absolutely could get another job somewhere else, that would probably pay just as well with better work life balance, but honestly I love what I do too much.
None of that is to say that the medical field isn’t horribly exploitative and in desperate need of an overhaul. But also I’m not going to be the one to push for that change, or at least not until I’m firmly established in my field. Unfortunately I’ve gotta just go along with it for now if I want to be able to keep doing what I love.
It does for many people. I know some who work part time and still don’t make food at home. Most notably two of my roommates.
Uber eats etc pulled all the money out of the community. No longer does the restaurant make money and pay a little bit to the driver, who back in the day might have been the owner or the owners kids. No, now the restaurant margins are impossibly thin and so the food is shit, and the driver isn’t an employee and spends it all on gas and oil changes.
Uber eats takes all the money and sends it to investors.
Uber and all the other Ubers for X no longer provide a service. They made an app that helps deliver goods and services, but now what? If we nationalized these companies and made them owned by the people, or the people in that industry, we could actually keep the money in your own city.
Instead we have $80 pizzas and poor, disaffected workers.
I stopped using uber eats after like 2-3 times. I was sick of the bait and switch pricing.
Restaurant promotion near you! Two pizzas for 20 $!
Ok I guess I’ll get that, delivery gotta be like 5$ no big deal…
Meanwhile the total is somehow 37.85…
Ugh…ok I guess everyone has to make money and at least everyone is compensated, and it’s convenient…
click next
Would you like to tip the driver? It’s only fair he gets some too! 15%?18%?20%?
Fuck off wtf was the deliver charge then? Wtf were all the fucking charges.
App uninstalled.
In theory, the delivery charge should have been the money that goes to Uber to cover their costs. It’s expensive to develop quality web apps, manage drivers, do customer support, etc. But in practice, Uber double dips. There’s the delivery fee and restaurant paid fees (often resulting in higher menu prices).
Sure, but on a per delivery basis that should be like $1.00? And yes, they need to make a profit, so the fee should be $1.10?
This makes me curious, now. I ordered pizza this weekend and there’s the $5 delivery charge. Plus we tip, of course. But I do order through the app. So if that $5 is going toward app maintenance or whatnot, I wonder if calling them directly to place a delivery order will eliminate that extra $5 fee. Somehow I doubt it.
I purposely avoid delivery apps and will frequently simply call ahead to order for pickup. It varies by business but usually you pay exactly the same ordering ahead by calling them as you would rolling right up and ordering to go in person
What costs…
Often? Is there any case where it’s not, apart from promotions/coupons/etc?
It’s always hard to tell because there often isn’t an easy way to check. But for some fast food, I’ve definitely seen the prices as identical.
And for their grocery shopping service, some stores specifically advertise having in-store prices.
I agree with you until you said to nationalize Uber eats lol. Just stop using it.
Yeah, we can just go back to the restaurant hiring their own delivery people.
Except almost none of them did. You’re suggesting going back to having next to zero food delivery options in a world that continues to see COVID spikes and could have future localized lockdowns. I also think this overlooks how much of a QoL increase these services are for people with limited transportation options or mobility problems or other health issues making it hard for them to get out of the house. These services are more than just conveniences to them. They are massive upgrades to their lives.
Maybe it’s different where you live, but over here many restaurants did have their own delivery service before Just Eat etc. entered the market. In the beginning, they made things cheaper and easier for the restaurants. But recently, I read a lot about how they increased the fees for the restaurants, who would encourage customers to go back to using their own website instead. Enshittification as always.
Definitely different in the US. The restaurant has to carry a special type of insurance that is ridiculously expensive if they employ delivery drivers. There’s an even more expensive insurance that no restaurant will get that would allow them to own the vehicles.
It’s a useful (though non-essential) service that leans toward a natural monopoly. Nationalisation or heavy regulation are the solutions to this.
Under regulation, profits flow to shareholders. Under nationalisation, they flow to treasury. Practicality of nationalisation in the current climate aside, I know which I’d prefer.
No, just let it die. Please don’t force the rest of us to pay for this.
It’s a profitable service, like the post office was before they were sabotaged with pension requirements. Users would still be the ones paying, but a greater portion of the profits could go to the workers, and the remainder would go to public projects and other government expenses. That would be preferable to the services being used to continue drawing wealth and power from the working classes to the already wealthy and powerful. The only time it might end up subsidized is if it had to be commandeered for a public use purpose like delivery of food and living essentials during a disease outbreak.
If they nationalize Uber before Amtrak, I’ll blow a gasket
I certainly can’t disagree with that.
In what way is it a natural monopoly?
Economies of agglomeration, similar to Amazon. Having one app to order everything from is very convenient and the average person prefers that.
That doesn’t make something a natural monopoly. Nor does “I’m lazy.” And I say this as person who is VERY lazy about a lot of things.
I don’t doubt it’s convenient but that’s what you’re paying for. Anyone complaining about the prices at convenience stores?
Convenience isn’t the factor here - having a network of delivery drivers, many of whom can remain productive transporting people when they’d otherwise be idle, having established relationships with restaurants, the support infrastructure to work with them a, tech platform and a user base makes it difficult for new entrants.
…i could order from newdelivery with the 3 restaurants they’ve managed to sign, or I could use uber.
Why not both
Or the fast food places could employ a delivery driver or two, like they used to. Or still do, in the case of most of my local places.
I had an item in my Amazon cart yesterday morning. Wait until the end of the day to order, in case I wanted other stuff. When I came back, it notified me the price had risen from 30USD to 50USD.
I searched for the item again, checked it, and it was 30USD.
the fuck
Camelcamelcamel always
I prefer keepa. Browser extension puts a price history graph right on the Amazon page
Camelcamelcamel has an extension that does the same thing as well
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Because every item on Amazon can have many different sellers, some of them have the same product in the same Amazon warehouses. OP added the item to their cart using the default seller, it just so happens that the seller also raised their prices that day. So the price went up in OP’s cart.
Searching the product on Amazons store likely still said $30 because Amazon switched the default seller to the new cheapest one, which was no longer the seller that OP added to the cart.
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Do you want to round up to the nearest dollar for a donation so we can have a bigger tax write-off and gain profit rather than us just paying our
employeescontracted drivers better?I think they’ll round up to the next thousand dollars. They don’t seem like they figured that math thing out yet.
Yay, another person who doesn’t know how donations or write off work.
The fuck I don’t.
Large donations to charities are absolutely written off. Roughly 40%
I pay the company to make a large contribution for them to write off. It wasn’t their money. It’s profit now.
They absolutely write it off. They just don’t make money off it. They say they made a dollar and then donated that dollar so they are asking not to be traced on it. It’s no different than if you sent the charity your $0.57 directly. You can even still write off what you donated. The only notable difference is that the company can say they donated to charity. And some do provide additional funds.
If they made money off of the donations then why wouldn’t every single company just ask you to donate to charity? Because they don’t and it costs money to take in donations. Often, companies that do it do it for the perceived goodwill. Good PR.
It wasn’t their money that they’re writing off of taxes they owe.
That’s profit.
If I make $100 selling stuff, you give me $1 to donate, and I donate that dollar. I’d tell the IRS I made $101 and donated $1 to charity. Getting that $1 written off. Effectively telling them I made $100 in profit. If I didn’t get any donations I’d say, hey I made $100 in profit. Where is the part where they profit off the dollar? They can’t donate to themselves.
This is why you can also tell the IRS that you donated money, because you did.
I don’t have the disposable income for ordering or even takeaway anymore and the fees only get worse from here. Learn how to cook. Impress your visitors. Get nice things in life with the savings.
Unfortunate but this is the truth. Too many of us have been accustomed to small luxuries like “affording takeout”, but we unfortunately have been priced out of being able to afford stuff like this.
It’s a tough pill to swallow if you’ve been doing it your whole life and think that a functioning adult with a full-time job should be able to afford some takeout every now and again. We are not the generation that gets to enjoy that privilege, it seems.
Also you reset your taste buds and come to realise how greasy and sugary everything is that you don’t make yourself or eat out at a nice place.
My 3rd Date Dessert: New York Style Cheesecake Stuffed, Chocolate Covered/Sealed, Graham Cracker rolled, Strawberries.
You can’t buy these things anywhere, and I have yet to meet the woman that isn’t immediately impressed when I whip those out.
Delivery fee and a tip?! lmao get the fuck out of here
That’s been a staple of restaurants for decades. The restaurant would charge the delivery fee on the bill, but you were still expected to tip the driver directly. People who didn’t became well known to drivers. It was a good idea to just tip the driver…
Oh yeah, we for sure remember our regular stiffers. Wonder why your pizza is always cold and your drink has been steadily shaken since I left the store? Maybe if you threw me one dollar in tips you’d see some improvements on this, but the last 20 times I came out here you didn’t break me off shit.
Maybe you should focus your anger towards your boss who isn’t paying you enough and not on the customer who is unfairly being expected to subsidize your salary.
Boss paid me better than any other drivers in my area, he was the owner operator of a small local spot who refused to raise his prices, to the degree where at one point we were taking a loss on wings during that chicken shortage. He was still putting his three kids through college and I was the only employee who wasn’t the owner, his wife, or his daughter, had he hired another I would have had to lose days and therefore money. Sure he could have paid me a little more, but I’m not mad at him, he paid me fair for what I did and I was unfirable. We’re actually still friends and I was sad when I had to move on, as was he. He’s a good man, a hardworking immigrant who deserves everything he has, he had nothing when he came here and worked his ass off.
You’re not just talking shit about my previous employer, you’re talking shit about the only one I’ve ever had I call a friend. You can eat that shit you’re talking, buddy.
You don’t seem like a well adjusted person
Tell my chiropractor.
I don’t take kindly when people attempt to insult me or my friends, no. Do you?
I don’t take kindly when people attempt to insult me or my friends
They weren’t doing that lol.
I quit using is forever ago. All the fees on top of markup cost would often double the price, and the food was always delivered cold and soggy.
Dealer markups.
don’t pay them for failing infancy
It’s that The Doctor?
