So I live in DC and I don't have a car. Pick-up is not an option unless I want to factor in 20 dollars of Uber, Covid risk, or could pick up within about a mile of my home. I used to travel weekly and would use these apps 2-3 times a day, in multiple cities, eating out almost every meal pre-pandemic. Here are my opinions on the apps and tipping:
1) It's not the delivery fees that are an issue, it's the 'service fees.' I ordered so often I sucked it up and paid the 99 dollars/year for Postmates and Ubereats "Free Delivery" on every order. That worked well for awhile and made sense. What I have noticed now though, is enough people were probably using that, that the apps had to make it up somehow. So they absolutely JACKED the service fees. A typical breakdown before would be (100 dollar order) free delivery, 8 dollars in taxes, 3 dollars in fees. Now, on that same order it is free delivery, 8 dollars in taxes, 16 dollars in fees. That's ludicrous.
2) Mentally, when you jack up all those fees to the hilt, people are less likely to give a decent tip. I mean, they're charging 16 bucks just so you could order online, that's sufficient enough, right? But none of that is going to the drivers. It still feels insane to pay 30+ in delivery fees for an order. Personally, I don't cheat the drivers and do tip well, but these apps are getting away with highway robbery. They're charging both the restaurants and the customers exorbitant fees for the ability to use their platform.
3) I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I have observed that these fees have been creeping up since the pandemic. One of them, I forget which, looks like it was forced to put some type of disclaimer saying the restaurants are not getting a good bit of money from you for the privilege of using their platform.
4) I can't imagine a 15 mile delivery range. OP, you must not be driving around the DC area. I have rarely seen any options further than about 3-4 miles away and that is still rare. There are many, many restaurants in Arlington that wouldn't dream of delivering downtown.
5) Because of Covid and the risk the drivers are incurring, I tip more. I wouldn't say I tip by strict percentage though, that never made sense to me. I tip on distance and total "burden." I have a floor of about 8 bucks and a max of around 20. This is from home though when I am not socializing. Pre-Covid when I would order dinner for teams of 40+ people, it was different.
Basically, you need to blame the apps for this. People SHOULD be generous, but they have essentially rigged it to make that unpalatable.
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