Yep. Postmates pricing got real absurd, real fast. It almost felt like it happened, even if you had premium.
DoorDash, I should pay closer attention to. My wife usually orders, and she’s way too price insensitive for my taste at times. I at least insisted on one of the zero delivery fee restaurants last night, but don’t know what that actually means.
Looks like here in the SFBA it's "This 11% service fee helps us operate DoorDash" which they bundle with sales tax under the "Taxes and Fees" line item during checkout.
I find that practice to be paricularly objectionable, since it would be more honest to bundle it with the delivery fee, if the point were something like UI brevity. Instead, it feels deceptive, as if to imply that money they have to pay to the restaurant because the restaurant has to pay it the state is in some way related to their operating costs.
I could probably accept a variable fee of less than 3% under the assumption that their payment costs are higher than the restaurant due to card-not-present. I could even accept variable-by-my-location (i.e. distance-based) delivery pricing. However, both of these would need to be clear and up front. Seeing an inflated total only at checkout make me feel cheated, and I cancel the transaction.
In my suburban setting, a restaurant far enough away is maybe $3 in incremental driving costs plus 30 minutes of my time. In a dense, urban setting, presumably everything is much closer [1]. The time savings could be worth it, but the benefits of going myself are a much higher incentive to make sure my order is correct and a much lower latency (i.e. higher freshness).
[1] And places like Manhattan have had delivery services, sometimes done by individual establishments themselves, for ages.
DoorDash, I should pay closer attention to. My wife usually orders, and she’s way too price insensitive for my taste at times. I at least insisted on one of the zero delivery fee restaurants last night, but don’t know what that actually means.