Overview
New York City voters overwhelmingly oppose new rules from the City Council on how and when to tip.
When asked about proposed tipping legislation, 94% of New Yorkers agree that customers should be able to choose how much to tip for food delivery, and 85% say the government of New York City shouldn’t be telling customers when or how much to tip.
Proposed rules mean Dashers would not only lose out on a potential tip, but an opportunity to earn money altogether.
It’s rare to get New Yorkers to agree on just about anything, but new data shows this much is clear: there is near unanimous opposition to bills that would set new requirements for when and how to tip for deliveries.
When the City implemented extreme minimum pay rules for food delivery workers last year, DoorDash aimed to balance out these increased costs for everyone who uses our platform. That brought on new fees for consumers in an effort to balance out these increased costs for everyone who uses our platform. However, this unfortunately only added to the challenges with rising costs everyday New Yorkers are already facing. The consequences have been painfully clear: fewer orders to local businesses, less work for Dashers, and mounting questions about how to move forward.
Idrissa Barry of the Bronx, who has worked with DoorDash by bike for two years, said that under the changes, he frequently cannot “clock in” to make deliveries in certain parts of the city. Before, he added, he could choose to go anywhere there was an available job. “It’s very difficult,” he says, “Everything changed” for the worse under the city’s minimum pay rule for restaurant delivery workers. (Bronx Times)
Every dollar counts right now for New Yorkers, so in an effort to further balance costs for everyone, DoorDash moved tipping to after checkout. Tipping still remains available for every order placed, but our hope was that this move would allow even New Yorkers who are just trying to live within their means to still place orders and support the local businesses that mean so much to them.
There are no easy solutions, but adding new regulations that would only worsen this situation certainly is not one of them. Unfortunately, the New York City Council has forged ahead with even more misguided bills, this time proposing new rules on how and when New Yorkers tip on deliveries from platforms like ours. But rather than serving special interests as some on the Council insist on doing, we actually wanted to listen to New Yorkers and asked if they would support these new bills, and they sent as clear a message as only New Yorkers can.
When asked about the proposed legislation around tipping requirements for platforms like DoorDash, 94% of New York City voters agree that customers should be able to choose how much to tip for food delivery, and 85% say the government of New York City shouldn’t be telling customers when or how much to tip.
To be clear: these new rules would take tipping for delivery and make it more like a tax, which would only further drive down orders in the city. That means Dashers would not only lose out on a potential tip, but an opportunity to earn money altogether.
Rules like these ignore the harmful impacts that they will have, while doing little to solve the issues they seek to address in the first place, and usually just create new ones. If the Council wants to support Dashers and workers like them, they can start by opposing such misguided new regulations.
