Wait Time Pay on doordash - EVERYTHING You MUST Know!!

So Doordash has been implementing a wait time pay in some markets and while I haven’t heard of this myself, one of my subscribers decided to reach out to me about it. While I think this can be a good thing for gig workers, Doordash has earned a particular reputation around something like this. 

So in this video, We are talking about:

• EVERYTHING You MUST Know about Doordash Wait Time Pay

• What Doordash tells you vs How it ACTUALLY is

• Everything in between!

Disclaimer: The content of this video does not contain and is never intended to be legal, business, financial, tax, or health advice of any kind, This video is for entertainment purposes only. It is advised that you conduct your own research and consult with qualified professionals before applying anything you find online. 

I also want to be clear that everything we are going to go over is very market dependent, and what applies to me and my market may not apply to you.

DrivenWyld/YouTube

From My Subscriber

So we learned about this from one of my subscribers, TkAK Kearney thank you so much for emailing me about this and making this video possible!

Hello Joe, got this twice on my delivery shift today. This is the first I have seen in my market location. Have you seen this update as well?

Have an awesome weekend!

First of all, I have seen it on the apps of drivers that have been on Doordash, but I have been more active on UberEats as of late, so I haven’t seen it personally. 

Not to mention after checking out the website, information is unavailable on the Doordash website. 

Second, let’s take a look at these screenshots you sent over:

After waiting for about 10 minutes you decide to hit the “Order has long wait time” button to potentially get a “worry-free unassign”, in which you see that you now have two options. 

• Continue Waiting for an additional $2.00

• Unassign with no pay

Ultimately, you decided to stick it out and receive that pay once it has completed. 

This is cool and all, and has been the only valid argument surrounding Earn by time based drivers, that they can wait indefinitely and be paid more per order in base rate, whereas drivers who use Earn Per Offer to be punished for waiting and this solves that issue, even in a small way.  

That said, I really wish Doordash had a help page for this. It isn’t uncommon for pilot programs to not have help pages but with how technical these apps can be with how apps work. However, they are becoming more and more necessary to have laid out terms.

That said, in order to find more information, we had to scour the holy grail of clearly reliable information, Reddit. 

Merchant Tactics

This is from a post we found on Reddit on this subject:

McDonald’s has been lying about orders being ready on the tablet.

DoorDash has started offering $2 merchant delay pay to drivers who are waiting more than 10 minutes past to pick up time. McDonald’s has been covering themselves by pressing the “order is ready for pickup” button on the tablet right when the driver arrives, so they don’t have to pay the $2 delay pay. They’re covering themselves, while screwing over the driver.

Typical of Doordash to implement a new system like this and it immediately gets gamified. That said, this seems to be exposing a more underlying issue with the gig economy and that is how restaurants are claiming orders are done almost immediately, even though that isn’t the case. 

McDonald’s franchisees have already found ways to gamify areas of the business that don’t even have to do with delivery such as Drive-Thru window times being manipulated by sticking a car door out the drive thru window. 

Not to mention how lying to gig workers and outright discriminating against them has become common practice especially from McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants, from TikTok memes to referring to them as “those people” and ignoring them entirely. 

I remember going into a McDonalds and specifically asking them about how long an order was going to be and the new worker there went up to her manager to ask and she say’s “oh honey, you don’t answer that question, you ignore those people.” literally training her staff to discriminate against gig workers. 

So it isn’t surprising that the franchise that duplicated their system globally is now teaching their teams to gamify the system by claiming it is done on the tablet,  when in reality,  it is not. 

When to Unassign or Take it

This Redditor brings up an interesting point:

wow, I've been asking them for compensation for time wasted for a long time now, they almost never pay anything. That being said, I'm worth more than 2 dollars per 10 minutes. Make it 5 and we'll take. And that is cheap.

Which is fair, an extra $2 may seem fair from the perspective of the total order but it still devalues the amount of time and energy committed to the order itself, especially since you had already given 10 minutes for free and are expected to give more. 

That said, there is another factor that has yet to be addressed and is another great reason to why there needs to be help pages:

Think about it, you've already waited 10+ minutes and will get an extra $2.00. In a few more minutes, there's no guarantee you'll get a decent offer after the fact, in my opinion.

From the perspective of waiting for Doordash to send you another order, sure, you already used your gas and mileage during that order, and there isn’t a guarantee Doordash will send you another quickly enough to justify wasting the amount of time and energy on that kind of wait time regardless. 

That said, it only amplifies the importance of multi-apping and having more opportunities to receive orders so while you wait, you can potentially take an order from a restaurant that isn’t having these issues at the moment.

The reverse is also true though, because you can take an order from a restaurant who is also having these issues, or worse ALWAYS has these issues and from an app that may not provide you the extra $2. 

At the moment of publishing this article, UberEats doesn’t provide wait time pay, and neither does Grubhub, just Doordash. 

My perspective is to always take an order that is worth the wait time if it is necessary, because otherwise it may bite you in the butt. 

The other part of this that has yet to be mentioned is does wait time pay stack for increased time waiting for an order? Honestly, I doubt it. 

So basically, you have to decide if the extra $2 justifies not only waiting longer than the 10 minutes you waited, but the time you are still going to have to wait for.

So if you have to wait for 5 more minutes, that might be fine, but waiting an extra half an hour from a restaurant that already discriminates against gig workers or puts delivery orders on the back burner even if they aren’t busy enough to justify the delays they are currently having, is irresponsible.

Not to mention that it signals to the merchant that their actions do not have consequences and they can treat you however they want without recourse. Which in my opinion justifies more than just Yelp and Google reviews but more on that a different day. 

Potential Fraud Based Deactivations Incoming

This Redditor brings up an interesting problem:

Has anybody else been abusing the merchant delay pay?

I did it 3 times last night all after I left the merchant and was driving to the customer. I just waited till 10 minutes went by then got the option for an extra 2 dollars. No way this lasts that long and am little scared of getting into trouble for abusing it already. Anybody else abusing it?

Which true, this does seem like a system that will be abused and probably shouldn’t have said that online. Like you end up waiting 8 and a half minutes, and someone gets spiteful enough or opportunistic enough to take their time while going back to their car, going to the bathroom for an extra few minutes to ask for it then. 

I have actively seen many drivers on TikTok boast about how they will literally take an order for $4 going 9 miles and they won’t have any intention on delivering it, just to have it worry-free unassigned and intentionally delay the progress of that order. 

And from how drivers have been deactivated for less, it would stand to reason that this can lead to a contract violation or some kind of fraud based deactivation or platform abuse based deactivation. 

Which can also have good drivers caught up in wrongful deactivations. Which only builds up the point that we cannot allow restaurants to play stupid games either.

Merchants Delay Pay Doesn’t Justify Bad Behavior

That said, not only is it going to be weaponized by bad drivers, it will have good drivers be deactivated as well. The merchant decides to ignore you for 10 minutes after trying to get their attention, and that starts to signal to the platform that you are the problem.

Merchants can also intentionally leave your order on the back burner as well, focusing on only orders within the restaurant and ignoring a customer that had already paid.

Regardless, this is something that I think needs to be accounted for and will need to be heavily evaluated as well from the platform and only makes it much more important to develop your own paper trails in the event something goes wrong and you get blamed for others' bad acting. 

While we have something in the works that can help with that, you can also make notes of this in your MileIQ app or whatever mileage app you use to make it clear that you were forced to wait for an order more than you should. 

Take a bit of video, screenshot the order itself, make a Yelp review to make it clear that poor behavior is not tolerated, do what you need to do man but don’t let bad behavior slide. It is one thing if the one time issue leads to order volume issues, it is another if the bad review leads to exposure of the poor integrity of the restaurant being exposed. 

Keep Your Standards High

One of the best things I can offer to you now is don’t accept orders that are not worth your time. Don’t take the $4 order going one mile just because the extra $2 wait can make it worth it, it doesn’t and we shouldn’t be teaching customers or merchants that poor behavior is okay.

Maintain the #NoTipNoTrip standard and keep your business profitable. The wait time pay is to give drivers a reason to stay, not a reason to justify longer wait times. 

That said, it is easier to have that abundance mindset and keep good orders coming in when you have more pay coming in, and you keep more pay coming in by having a diversified gig portfolio, and developing exit strategies that make sense. 

So make sure you have other apps to earn money from and a means to make money outside of simply gig work, so you aren’t tempted to fall for their games and you can stay in a position of abundance as well.

If there is another angle on this subject or any subject you would like me to go over, feel free to email me at drivenwyld@gmail.com, and who knows, maybe you can get a shout out in a video as well!