• That’s your takeaway? It’s like Walmart moving into a town and undercutting indie business prices until the indie businesses close, then raising prices.

    What doordash is doing is scraping restaurants’ websites for prices, taking a temporary loss, then going to the restaurants saying, “We got all these orders, it’s a win for both of us!” to sell the contact, then raising prices and tacking on extra fees, making money off the restaurants and the customers

    https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/27/doordash-pricing/

    • I’m not sure the comparison is quite apt, I’m not familiar with any independent food delivery services beyond just asking your buddy to grab some snacks on the way over for a hangout or something.

      But I am vaguely familiar with the idea of loss-leading and think its despicable. If no regulation is ever going stand in the way of practices, then knowing they’re being exploited by folks like pizza dude makes me feel a bit better, at least.

      • In some ways, loss leading can be done in more or less ethical ways. For instance, a small mom n pop hardware loss leading on lumbar or hammers and taking a reasonable profit on ten penny nails. Or something, maybe a better example is the Costco 1.50 all beef foot-long dog and soda but their memberships are reasonable profit for those who would go often enough and buy enough to make it worth it. It’s late and I’m tired, I hope you get the general gist. But yes, doordash is just double-dipping on the sleazy. And maybe loss leading isn’t ever acceptable, but I’m simply unaware/haven’t thought of reasons that make it so. I’m willing to hear any argument against any of it, though.

      • Especially at the prices the bill comes out to be. I had a day years ago where my car was in the shop, so I used one of them to get lunch. A $10 sandwich ended up costing me $30, and some people do this every day. Fuck avocado toast (which is delicious), this is why people are broke.

        • Price is surely fucked but alright, fuck it, i got the cash and i need this food NOW

          then I find out that “independent contractor” barely breaks even on the transaction.

          THAT’S A HELL FUCKING NOW… i aint feeding corpo trash with my hard earned money. fuk 'em