Uber Eats Tip Baiting
Many of you know that I started delivering for DoorDash a few months ago. I have shared my thoughts of the program after the first few days and then gave you a breakdown of how much I made per hour after 300 deliveries. After I hit my new driver bonus on DoorDash I switched my focus to Uber Eats. Mainly because of the juicy new driver bonus that was offered in partnership with Swagbucks. Between my wife and I we were able to rack up $450 after just 2 deliveries. The deal comes around a few times a year so if you missed it this time you should get another shot. Anyway, back to why DoorDash is better than Uber Eats for drivers. I could say I like the the DoorDash app and interface better, the orders are more frequent or the fact that the customer service is better. All of that is true, but nope, the issue I have is Uber Eats tip baiting.
What Is Tip Baiting?
Uber Eats, much like DoorDash, shows you an expected earn amount when you are assigned an order. It will also show you how far of a drive it is and then you can accept or deny it. But, with Uber Eats this is just an estimate based on the pay for the delivery plus the customer’s tip.
After making my first delivery I went to check to make sure the payment went through alright and to ensure everything was good for my Swagbucks new driver bonus. That is when I noticed the amount showing was well below what I had expected to see. When I accepted the order it was showing $11 but my pay was showing under $5. I wasn’t sure what was going on.
That is when I went to Google and did some searching. It appears that the amount you see when accepting is an estimate. You get the base pay for sure but the customer’s tip isn’t yours until an hour after delivery. They can adjust their amount during that time frame to anything they want, even down to zero. That is where tip baiting comes in.
By running the system this way you can run into Uber Eats tip baiting. That is where a customer puts in a large tip when placing the order. This ensures that the order will be accepted and delivered quickly. They can then adjust the tip to a lower or amount, or zero, for up to an hour after the delivery. By doing that they baited a driver with big tip and then dropped it down after they got their order.
Why This Is A Bad System For The Driver
There are other issues I have with this system that are beyond tip baiting too. I doubt many people would do full tip baiting, and it seems like a 1 in 200+ delivery issue on this reddit thread, but there are other reasons this works against the driver.
Let’s say there is an issue with the delivery that is out of the driver’s control but the customer feels like they should adjust the tip because of this. Examples could include:
- Poor quality food
- Missing items not filled by the restaurant
- Long wait for the food that cause a late delivery
- Bad traffic or poor directions that lead to a late delivery
Any of these issues are out of the driver’s control but it could negatively affect the driver’s pay. Nothing would upset me more than driving a long way, or waiting a while for an order, and then not getting the expected pay for the work. Because of that I wouldn’t deliver for Uber Eats full time.
How Does DoorDash Differ From Uber Eats
The DoorDash system works differently. They give you an expected amount before you accept or decline an order, much like Uber Eats, but that number is a guaranteed minimum. Your pay will never be less than that. It often times actually ends up being more than that, around 30%+ of the time for me personally.
I like knowing what I am going to get and I like that amount being guaranteed. If the customer has an issue with a delivery they can get a credit from DoorDash etc. and it doesn’t come out of the driver’s pay. If there is an issue with the driver they can leave a negative review and still get a credit from DoorDash.
Uber Eats Tip Baiting: Final Thoughts
All it took was one delivery with Uber Eats for me to see that DoorDash was a better fit for me. I will probably still use it from time to time whenever DoorDash is low on orders but I don’t plan on using it heavily. Having the chance of being tip baited is a risk I just don’t want to take. I prefer knowing what my minimum pay will be with DoorDash and having them often times exceed my expected pay.
Lower Spend - Chase Ink Business Preferred® 100K!
Chase Ink Business Preferred® is a powerful card that earns 3X Ultimate Rewards points in a broad range of business categories on the first $150K in spend per year. Right now earn 100K Chase Ultimate Rewards points after Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Interesting Mark and thanks for sharing. I don’t use delivery services very often as I don’t have any cards that give me a monthly credit. But on the rare occasion I do, usually when arriving late after a flight and the hotel offerings are lacking or done for the night, I’ll use such service.
Going forward I will use DoorDash for sure so that when I tip the driver knows that I’m not going to play games and change the amount. Sayonara UberEats!
I use Uber Eats for the Platinum Credits but that is about it.
In my area with Uber, unless you tip some ridiculous amount, you end up waiting an hour for a driver to accept the delivery. So as long as Uber wants to play that game for the customers, we will “tip bait”
First, what you’re doing is absolutely awful. You think you’re playing the ‘game’ back with Uber, but what you’re really doing is screwing over a driver and saying you don’t give a crap about the gas he spent, miles on his car and the normal 30-40 min time we spend. Normally, the reason why drivers don’t accept orders is because they’re little to no tip. You may think a 5-7 dollar tip is a ridiculous amount, but it’s not. How would you like to work only to find your employer takes a percentage away just because he didn’t like you or wanted free work out of you?
If you’re tip baiting or little to no tip, then why not get your lazy butt out and get the food yourself?
You shitty customers need to learn to show respect and be thankful. You guys have no issue tipping a waitress. It’s no different.
Understand… We DO NOT work for Uber/DD. We’re self employed contractors. We make around $2.50 per order from them. This is why tips are so important.
Again, if you’re too selfish to tip, get your order yourself. Ass.
You really should watch the uber series on showtime. It will show you want an awful company they are and how they absolutely have zero respect or care for their drivers. Ubers entire goal is self driving cars and to make drivers obsolete.
I’ll have to check it out. You can tell the difference from them and DoorDash though, how much better they treat the drivers.