Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?
Using the current Android mobile app, you can't actually drill into and read reviews which makes assessing the actual quality of the restaurant difficult.
And I've found that restaurants will run their own "ghost kitchen" shadow restaurant out of their main (poorly rated) location. This delivery specific restaurant has good reviews on DD, but when you Google that restaurant name nothing comes up aside from listings on the app. And then the food arrives and it's terrible and you match up the physical address and realize it's a poorly rated Indian restaurant by a different name.
Or, you order from one of these weird ghost kitchen brands and the actual restaurant doesn't actually get your order (despite the app telling you they confirmed it) and your second driver finally tells you to cancel the order.
Is it asking too much to have a service that's transparent, functions well and have the end product taste good?
152 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 250 ms ] threadVery frustrating to “search” on UberEats. Fine if you know the restaurant you want to order from ahead of time.
I look up the address on Street View.
Functions well: How dutifully can one shop, and hand/machine-wash plates after eating?
End product tastes good: taste food while you're preparing it (and the food is safe to eat)
Home-cooking is a good start to OP's requirements
You can continue browsing a specific restaurant, and order a “discounted” item, your total price will be the sum of the discounted items. That is, up until you actually want to check out, suddenly your total jumps back to the sum of the original valued of the items. Because, apparently, that discount was only for “pro” users. It’s nowhere mentioned that is the case. And since I’m logged in, they already know I’m not a pro user.
This pissed me of so much, I documented and reported this to the local consumer council, but haven’t heard back yet.
Surely it would make more sense to advertise that customers can get a $5 discount, if they order for $30 or more. That way, if your order only adds up to $25, I would be inclined to order a side that gets me to $30 or more.
1. You want to convert people to "pro" users so you try to show them all the money they can save by doing so.
2. Because of a bug in the code somewhere, you end up showing the discounted price in the cart until checkout.
3. Because some number of people don't pay attention and don't realize the switcheroo happens at the end this bug actually increases conversion.
4. Someone eventually notices the bug (after customers like you complain about it!).
5. When they fix it the metrics are adversely impacted.
6. The bug is now a "feature".
This is of course all very shortsighted since you are essentially burning customer trust for a short-term gain in conversion so it's bad for the medium/long term business. But the team has to hit its KPIs, which are tracked on a daily/weekly basis!
1. You (as a product owner/manager) want to convert people to "pro" users so you try to show them all the money they can save by doing so.
2. You don't care about the the experience of the non-pro users, because that's not the metric you're optimizing, so you never specify to developers what should happen when lower-class users shop, except that at the end they have to pay the full price
3. Developers build something that works like the dark pattern described above (they are incentivized by keeping their sprint goals, not by making non-pro users happy).
But I can't comprehend how this is worth it to Foodpanda, I'm an already paying customer, ordering 3-4 times a week, me not being a "pro" user should be making them money, since I pay full price, and pay delivery fees. What they've done now, is not converted me to "pro", and lost me as a customer.
> I sold microwave meals on Deliveroo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k47u9tduwb8
Uninstall DoorDash and the problem goes away for you, and if enough people uninstall DoorDash the math changes and the problem goes away for everybody. As a bonus you'll save a fortune by not paying the higher food prices and fees and you'll stop giving up some personal information in the process.
This seems like the most likely case, considering the other ethical problems with doordash.
The latter. Of course, it drives users to uninstall. But it juices today’s returns. (Uber Eats does the same. Sometimes I report it to zero effect.)
Caviar used to be a high-quality service in New York; I uninstalled it after DoorDash bought them. There is an open niche for a real-restaurants-only delivery service. Also, support for legislation requiring restaurants use the name on their food license on apps. (Using fake names makes tracking down food poisoning difficult. I assume someone lying about their brand is more likely to be sloppy elsewhere.)
Call the restaurant or go out.
We had a window of honesty. But when purveyors lie about from where their food comes, and everyone from the delivery people to the restaurants and developers go along, the chain is morally bankrupt.
Just add some blocks.
... but not at a sustainable price for workers and consumers. The trajectory of this industry is birthing crazy illogical things like ghost kitchens, weird liminal areas of food service that's not quite restaurant, not quite food-delivery, shaping bad human behaviors and creating dark patterns due to excess capital and perverse incentives.
Food costs. Making it, serving it, cleaning up. It costs more than people are willing to pay, maybe there's a strata of the market for whom the value is worth it, but not for the majority. Pizza delivery within a radius is successful but not everything can scale.
Browsing for a restaurant - delivery time 20-30 minutes
Adding food to the cart - delivery time 25-35 minutes
Checkout - delivery time 30-40 minutes
Payment processed - delivery time 45-55 minutes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment
Seems established and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising#Regulation_a...
May be a case for this imo ianal
“Let’s use UberEats instead, DoorDash doesn’t have reviews”.
If you don’t know what it is, either go by car or don’t order it.
(My crunchy friends still criticise them for being an oligopoly that squeezes restaurants though, which may well be true.)
But the idea that one should give up purchasing stuff from super market altogether just because there are companies out there who don't really care about stating the truth about their product is ludicrous. Same goes with takeout. If you advertise your pizza to be "gluten-free" like Dominos used to do with a specific pizza in Australia, I expect to at least find some small letters at the bottom saying something similar to "not really gluten free".
"Please don't sneer"
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
But at least they tell you how much you paid for the service. The worst for price transparency is “same day” costco delivery by Instacart. They markup the prices but never tell you how much more you’re paying for their service, it’s completely hidden unless the shopper/driver accidentally leaves you with the costco warehouse receipt. Once I saw the 35% markup on a nominal $300 order, I never used same-day costco again. I knew I was paying some markup for the service (they tell you on the website that prices are higher than in the warehouse), but I could not justify that much.
It’s a total joke, the whole point of wholesale is to save money.
I’m far too lazy to do the math, but I think I save more money Instacart shopping Aldi than Costco
They scrub most evidence of this being a white label service but it’s the same ui/ux and even the favicon is the Instacart carrot as of the time of this comment. Last time I compared my households ~$300 bill on the white labeled site was ~$450 on the main Instacart site
I'd rather know upfront what the total will be, instead of meaningless itemised receipts with added fees that I have no choice but to pay.
Then again, there are countries that dont include sales tax on price labels, so people must prefer the hidden fees approach.
The most annoying thing for me is constantly getting notifications for "discount codes" that don't actually work. When I've contacted support they tell me "they're expired" or "it was a bug in the app" and they offer me a much worse version of the coupon.
If it's a bug, they've had it for months, and it conveniently is very beneficial to their engagement numbers (you enter the app, make an order, and settle for a tiny discount when the deal doesn't work).
https://i.imgur.com/7jwBlFG.png
Some of the name variations are pretty funny though.
There are thousands of options which are barely undistinguishable from one another - like those cheap Chinese brands that flood many product categories on Amazon. You'll occasionally find a name that stands out, like the ones you've posted, along the lines of "Thunderfuck Porn Burgers". But they don't entice me to order, since whatever the brand values being transmitted are, they are not what I'm looking for in a restaurant.
The result is that you end up ordering from the same few oldies but goodies. Occasionally, once upon a moon, a friend will tell you about a new restaurant to expand your horizons. Some of these, while good, might not stand out in this sea of shit and end up closing, so you revert back to the oldies but goodies. And so it goes.
The corollary is that this a shit business.
Customer: "I would like a burger. What burger restaurants are delivering to me?"
App: "Here's a Mexican restaurant."
Customer: "I said, "HAMBURGER RESTAURANT", not Mexican"
App: "Don't be a wimp. You know you want tacos."
One restaurant which serves burgers, tacos and pizza. None of it particularly great but nice if you're feeling lazy. Problem is they split across three brands on Glovo for each food category even though it all comes from the same place.
If one of us feels like burger and the other fancies tacos you gotta pay two deliveries. That is unless you pay for a subscription of course. Someone mentioned elsewhere in this thread that Doordash officially endorses these "virtual restaurants". I wouldn't be surprised if they like the idea that it might push people to premium subscriptions to access free delivery so they get a diversity of food options.
As far as I can tell, the point of a delivery platform is to provide delivery services in a market where they traditionally didn't exist.
There's no claim they will improve the discovery experience. In fact, by obfuscating where you're actually ordering from-- making it less obvious "Oh, that's the place on Sixth where we all got food poisoning, let's not go back", they can further pollute it.
I could see saying "use the service, I want to order from Golden Lucky Dragon Palace, but can't be bothered to drive there myself", but saying "let's browse and hope to get lucky" is no better than opening the Yellow Pages to the restaurant section and selecting at random.
These are the same fake names that the deli a block from me in Brooklyn NYC uses. Literally exactly the same.
That’s sort of fascinating. I’m realizing it just be some kind of software or vendor they’re all using to set up this ghost kitchen explosion.
I wonder if there’s a clever vendor out there shipping them some kind of device to keep track of all this stuff, complete with menus and an instruction guide or something.
Or, of course, the platforms themselves.
I just realized this screenshot is actually from GrubHub which I don't use anymore, so I'm not able to go back and check for further details.
Behold: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agrubhub.com+%22108+ja...
Ghost kitchen chain?
1. Ones that pretend to be a real brand name but serve out of an unrelated restaurant's kitchen
2. Ones that are 100% fake chains made up just for delivery apps that are used across the country
Before I order on apps I first google for the name to make sure they have a real physical location in my city and it's not a scam (yes, I believe all ghost kitchens are scams).
That's not actually the expensive part. The expensive part is the greedy investors behind it and their attempt at monopolizing the industry (which thankfully is failing).
In my city (Vancouver), a restaurant owner actually setup a local only food delivery service during the pandemic with the idea that they keep costs as low as possible to run the service and restaurants didn't charge a markup which allowed for a flat service fee for every order and the restaurants pivoted employees to do deliveries instead of laying them off. The only downside for using it for most orders was that the options tended to be higher end dining.
It just shows how much VC money these larger services waste on their shitty services that get more and more expensive when maybe a couple of people were able to deliver the a better experience in a few months at the start of the pandemic. Unfortunately it seems like the service is shut down now as it always says "ordering unavailable", so maybe it wasn't that sustainable as a business.
In many ways, the pandemic worked as a catalyst for changes that were long overdue anyway. Yes, these changes were all the more beneficial in that specific situation. However, that doesn't mean those changes and the huge benefits they provided beyond the immediate response to an emergency become irrelevant once that emergency is over.
For example, while dining out, with fine dining in particular, is at least as much about the experience as it is about the food and having that experience on site in a nice restaurant absolutely is preferable to just having the food delivered to your door, this doesn't have to be an either-or proposition: Why not complement your usual offering with high-end delivery and take-out?
Since at least the Black Death, pandemics have also served as an accelerator for innovation and this one certainly is no different in that regard. The least we can do is to make use of that momentum and the opportunities it provided us with in addition to all the hardship.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, after all.
It's one of life's exquisite pleasures. You'll save a ton of money. Massively improve your health. It really impresses any potential partner - many a lifelong relationship started in the kitchen not the bedroom. Cookbooks are recipes are really fun. Surely my fellow hackers, don't we love to know how things work and be in control?
Poorer nations spend much more time per capita on cooking. India averages 13 hours per week. The average American male spends two and a half hours per week (20 mins per day) in "food preparation". We all have equally "busy" lives, yet our labour is distributed in different ways.
The 'first world' problems I am poking fun at (in a light way so please don't take it so much to heart) is known as "Time Poverty" [1].
My serious point is that western "oh so terribly busy" people allocate labour that preferences sitting in traffic en route a job sitting at a desk over cooking food. Cooking feels beneath us, because our time feels so valuable, in turn because we are robbed of it trying to be "productive". That is really unhealthy, mentally and biologically. It is a symptom of "affluenza" [2].
So rather than being "condescending" I am politely inviting you to descend amongst those of us with dirty hands from chopping vegetables (those weird shaped plants you mum used to ruin supper with :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money-rich%2C_time-poor
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza
You're absolutely right. It would be silly to just focus only on cooking, much as I love it.
> Do you give up other creature comforts that you can afford
Absolutely yes. Instead of being enslaved to comfort I find that many of the things one "gives up" create vast swathes of opportunity and freedom in life. Walking instead of driving creates precious thinking time. I also find that being less 'available' by digital connectivity makes people value my time more and the more opportunity I obtain from fewer meetings - paradoxical perhaps, but it's sometimes odd how things work. Once you start "giving up" things it's amazing what riches the world offers up.
> Do you also farm or is that beneath you?
It's behind me. I lived in a village where we grew more than half our food and kept small livestock. Definitely miss that. But I was a kid, and so most of the hard work was done by my parents and neighbours. Obviously though, it set me up in life with a mindful relation with food. Never give names to the ones you're going to eat :)
Food is a problem, though, because restaurant food is generally skewed to tasty rather than healthy.
You need to go shopping for food, you need to pick ingredients, manage "freshness" so that food doesn't go off and plan what meals you'll cook with the ingredients you bought. It would create situations where I had to choose between going out after work to a restaurant or letting food spoil.
You also need to clean up after cooking, either washing dishes by hand or loading/unloading the dish washer. If you use the dish washer, it creates a "task" in the future where you need to unload it. If you wash them by hand, it takes a long time.
I never really thought about all those things before, but when I stopped cooking/shopping it was like a huge mental load was lifted and I was free. I am much happier with this lifestyle and so is my SO.
But I don't really like delivery services because they deliver things in plastic containers and are bad for the environment. I prefer meal replacement powders and eating at restaurants. That being said, some delivery places are better than others when it comes to packaging waste.
This reminds me of Rob Rhinehart's (Soylent) old (now deleted) blog post about groceries:
>I have not set foot in a grocery store in years. Nevermore will I bumble through endless confusing aisles like a pack-donkey searching for feed while the smell of rotting flesh fills my nostrils and fluorescent lights sear my eyeballs and sappy love songs torture my ears.
Still quoted here: https://www.businessinsider.com/soylent-ceo-rob-rhinehart-qu...
But here's the thing: I live in HK — so I just pay for a full time domestic helper who takes care of all of that (though the main reason is to have someone to take the best care of my dog). All in cost is <$1000/mo. I never have to worry about any unpleasant chores whether it's keeping the house spotless at all times, laundry, post office visits, etc. And as far as cooking, I send her on grocery runs, use as many dishes as I want to be the most comfortable cooking, and don't worry about any cleanup. It's wonderful.
I could easily spend more than that on restaurants (and I still do), but overall the value here is a no-brainer.
There are dozens of things I would rather do in my limited time than spend time cooking.
Especially from snobby "hackers" with who lack a sense of perspective and empathy to other people's situations.
There is one day a week that my wife and I both have a ton of meetings. At the end of the day we are both exhausted and neither of us want to cook. We frequently order food on this day. That's not a moral failing.
I will say that Thusbezorgd is often more expensive than just going directly to a restaurant's website. But also we find restaurants that we like and keep ordering from them. I typically know precisely where my food is coming from because I physically know where the restaurant is.
Nowadays I can order straight from the app, simply pay for my pizza, the service fee, tax, delivery charge, and tip. Wait a little while and it comes straight to my door.
Sure, now it costs a little more, but that money is going straight to the guys that deliver my food. That's great for everyone.
Ha ha, sorry that isn’t the case. Door dash etc are actually killing some restaurants by impersonating them, forcing huge discounts on what they will pay, and of course notoriously stealing from their delivery people.
Me. Specifically, before they bought Caviar [1].
No fake restaurants. Dedicated delivery staff who were on time and friendly. Differentiated offerings from Seamless.
[1] https://help.doordash.com/dashers/s/article/Caviar-x-DoorDas...
Pizza and Chinese food delivery has been a thing long before doordash, and the quality of directly employed delivery seems to be much higher.
If a restaurant doesn't have delivery I'll just making a to-go order and go pick it up.
https://get.doordash.com/en-us/blog/virtual-restaurant-brand
They seem to be used frequently as decoys to allow restaurants to drop bad reviews though.
E.g require any restaurant to have a brick and mortar restaurant with actual customers in it, or it’s banned. And requiring each such restaurant to have only one listed name in the app - which must be the same as the name on the sign of the physical restaurant. And clearly highlighting the age of the physical restaurant (under the current name) in the listings.
Basically: I want to use services that aren’t trying to grow quickly by inflating anything. I don’t want VC funded startups operating at a loss for growth for anything. I want to pay the true price of the service and only use services that aren’t “disrupting” by using legal loopholes or pricing to a loss to drive established actors out of markets.
Why on earth would it matter to me as a delivery app user if I'm ordering from an ordinary restaurant or a dark kitchen? The only thing I care about is the food being good. And ordinary restaurants with actual customers in it often treat deliveries as something not really important.
Many of the Chinese places around here have different names in Chinese and English. Sometimes slightly different, sometimes seriously different. I don't find it at all surprising, the Chinese names make sense to Chinese people but are hard for Americans to pronounce. It's the same thing as most Chinese people taking an Americanized version of their name (usually just informally) because their proper names get too badly mangled. (My wife is Chinese, more than once we've had the experience of being called from a waiting room and neither of us recognized what they had done to her name. At least with my last name the butchering is pretty consistent so I don't have a problem.)
If you haven't seen it and knows where it is then don't order from it