• Maeve@kbin.earth
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      5 months ago

      That’s your takeaway? It’s like Walmart moving into a town and undercutting indie business prices until the indie businesses close, then raising prices.

      What doordash is doing is scraping restaurants’ websites for prices, taking a temporary loss, then going to the restaurants saying, “We got all these orders, it’s a win for both of us!” to sell the contact, then raising prices and tacking on extra fees, making money off the restaurants and the customers

      https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/27/doordash-pricing/

      • HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone
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        5 months ago

        I’m not sure the comparison is quite apt, I’m not familiar with any independent food delivery services beyond just asking your buddy to grab some snacks on the way over for a hangout or something.

        But I am vaguely familiar with the idea of loss-leading and think its despicable. If no regulation is ever going stand in the way of practices, then knowing they’re being exploited by folks like pizza dude makes me feel a bit better, at least.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
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          5 months ago

          In some ways, loss leading can be done in more or less ethical ways. For instance, a small mom n pop hardware loss leading on lumbar or hammers and taking a reasonable profit on ten penny nails. Or something, maybe a better example is the Costco 1.50 all beef foot-long dog and soda but their memberships are reasonable profit for those who would go often enough and buy enough to make it worth it. It’s late and I’m tired, I hope you get the general gist. But yes, doordash is just double-dipping on the sleazy. And maybe loss leading isn’t ever acceptable, but I’m simply unaware/haven’t thought of reasons that make it so. I’m willing to hear any argument against any of it, though.

        • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Especially at the prices the bill comes out to be. I had a day years ago where my car was in the shop, so I used one of them to get lunch. A $10 sandwich ended up costing me $30, and some people do this every day. Fuck avocado toast (which is delicious), this is why people are broke.

          • sunzu@kbin.run
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            5 months ago

            Price is surely fucked but alright, fuck it, i got the cash and i need this food NOW

            then I find out that “independent contractor” barely breaks even on the transaction.

            THAT’S A HELL FUCKING NOW… i aint feeding corpo trash with my hard earned money. fuk 'em