It’s a telenovela today for DoorDash. The newly-elected mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim and a Democrat, is accusing DoorDash of stealing drivers’ earnings amounting $550 million by requiring customers to leave gratuities upon checkout.
DoorDash strongly denies this. Plus, a DoorDash driver takes to social network, saying the company steals tips intended for drivers.
Mayor Mamdani’s accusations
The Mamdani administration, who is the first Muslim mayor of New York City, has alleged that DoorDash and Uber Eats are preventing delivery workers from earning over $550 million in tips by requiring their customers to leave gratuities upon checkout.
This tipping policy was launched in December 2023, but is being accused to have resulted in approximately $5,800 yearly loss in tips per worker, as per the New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
They are claiming that in just a week after the new tipping policy was rolled out, the requirement rose to 93 cents from $3.66 per delivery.
The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection Commissioner Samuel Levine stated how this “blows the whistle on a massive scheme by Uber and DoorDash to drive down worker pay.”
DoorDash’s head of North America public policy, John Horton, stated that those claims “are flat wrong.”
DoorDash also released an official press statement vehemently denying the allegations.
Not true
In a recent report on DoorDash’s newsroom official titled “Myth vs. Fact: Debunking the False Claims Coming out of NYC,” the food delivery app stated “the report gets a long wrong.”
DoorDash stated four points. First, DoorDash isn’t hiding the option to tip, but customers can tip after delivery.
“Consumers are free to make their own choices about how much to tip, especially given they know workers earn a guaranteed $21.44 per hour and have seen earnings rise by over $1 billion dollars,” the app stated.
Second, the accusation that lower tips means lower earnings is far from reality. In fact, workers were earning over a billion more after the new ruling.
“It is true that consumers in New York have decided to tip less than they used to. It is also true, per the DCWP’s own report, that delivery workers earned $1.2 billion more than they otherwise would have under the city’s new minimum pay law. In fact, Dashers earn almost $30 per hour while on delivery, BEFORE tips - more than many first responders in the city,” DoorDash added.
Third, there isn’t any whistleblowing or something of that sort, since DoorDash publicly made the policy available, the news release stated further. Lastly, the allegations that the new tipping law gives customers “user-friendly options” were denied.
“Consumers can tip after delivery. Dashers always keep 100 percent of tips placed on DoorDash, and the tipping option still exists in NYC,” DoorDash further noted.
However…
But, this DoorDash worker still disagrees. On TikTok, he released a video claiming that the company steals tips from drivers.
He said, “So I have not personally ordered from DoorDash before. I was very curious to take a look around to see what it said about the driver tips. Clearly here it says 100 percent goes to the driver, so, no problem there. So how do they take our tips? They gotta come up with another way to do it. Here’s how.”
Then, he showed screenshots of how he was led to that conclusion.
“Now, here’s where DoorDash gets cute. Over here, you can see the $4.50 tip was included. So that’s fine, it wasn’t touched. But here’s what they do. When this is higher, the customer tip this base pay is gonna be lower,” he said.
He added that DoorDash is “not gonna give you the same pay that they would have initially given you if there was no tip.”
“So this is the game they play. The more that the customer pays, the less they’re gonna give you,” the DoorDash worker noted.
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