Some Food Delivery Apps Keep Their Drivers' Tips

Depending on which food delivery app you use, you may want to stop tipping your delivery driver through the app. Apparently, some apps actually keep that tip money for themselves rather than passing it on to the driver. Sneaky!

DoorDash, Amazon Flex, and Caviar are the three main companies who do not automatically pass customers’ tips on to their drivers, according to Lifehacker.

Here’s how it works with DoorDash: the company guarantees a certain minimum payout to its drivers for every delivery order. If a driver is going to make less than that amount for an order, DoorDash makes up the difference.

If you tip your dasher, that extra money first goes toward the base pay to cover whatever DoorDash has contributed. In other words, you’re subsidizing the company rather than tipping the driver.

Photo Credit: DoorDash

Amazon Flex and Caviar both have similar policies — tips go toward reducing what the companies contribute to meet guaranteed minimum payouts.

Since these companies operate in a gray area in which their drivers are not official employees, they can get away with misleading payment systems like this, and their policies aren’t always very transparent.

Photo Credit: iStock

Fortunately, most food delivery apps do seem to give tips to their drivers: Seamless, Grubhub, Postmates, and Uber Eats do not keep any of customers’ tips, based on the information on their websites.

Instacart used to share the same policy as DoorDash, but they reversed it in February after public backlash.

If all of this is a little confusing, here’s a simple takeaway: always tip your delivery drivers in cash!!!