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by chrisseaton 2175 days ago
But Doordash don't charge for an unsolicited service. They aren't charging the restaurant at all in this case. They're paying the restaurant's full price for food. Like anyone could.

Then they charge the customer for an additional service actually rendered - the delivery. They charge this as a delivery fee and a markup that they can vary on more expensive items. This is pretty normal for a retail business to do.
1 comments
ceejayoz 2175 days ago
The Grubhub UX makes a specific claim, though: "Restaurant X charges $10 for a burger, and we will deliver it for $5".

When they're marking the item price up, that claim is false. Given these apps' SEO juice and ubiquity, users are left with the false impression that Restaurant X sells a pretty expensive burger.

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chrisseaton 2175 days ago
Do they really specifically say 'Restaurant X charges $10 for a burger'? Or do they just say 'the burger costs $10'?

Like when you shop on Amazon - they say 'the TV is $x and our delivery fee is $y' - really the manufacturer charged them < $y but they mark up and then also charge a delivery fee, don't they?

Nobody looses their mind at this.

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ceejayoz 2175 days ago
Grubhub positions themselves as a delivery service, not a reseller. Receipts list the price for the item, Grubhub's fee, and Grubhub's delivery fee. I'm sure they're quite careful with exactly how they word it to avoid legal issues, but the implicit claim is pretty clear: "here's the restaurant cost, and here's our cost".

I would be upset if Amazon had brick-and-mortar stores and they sold me a $100 TV with a $10 delivery fee online, but that same product was available for pick-up at $90. I'd be fine with it sold in-store for $100.

We do flip out when these sorts of pricing tricks are used. One I can recall: Best Buy ran a bestbuy.com intranet in-store to wiggle out of online deals. https://www.engadget.com/2007-03-03-best-buys-secret-intrane...

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