I don't even think it's deplorable, if it's possible to charge iPhone users more, do it. They'll pay. It also doesn't matter if it's illegal; they're suing because the entire fee system may be fraudulent, and since they're hiding this alleged iPhone tax in arbitrarily named and applied fees, it's relevant.
Even worse imo, if it's held to be true, Doordash will be in real existence-threatening trouble with iPhone users and will have to increase its marketing spending towards them drastically.
HN isn't the source though. the two articles I can remember are sfgate.com, readership in around 30 millon/month, and ars Technica, which is a fairly popular site, though I don't have stats for them.
That still doesn't sound a terrible situation for door dash considering the global reach. Not sure about sfgate, but ars would be a pretty niche group as well
That'd put you in the minority, but companies have been working hard for many years to get consumers used to the idea that they should be able to discriminate against specific groups of people and jack up their prices for individuals based on whatever they want. Retail, even grocery stores, have been experimenting with dynamic discriminatory pricing.
I'd love to see laws that require companies to post their prices clearly and publicly and prevents them from deviating from those prices no matter who places the order or brings an item to the register.
We may soon find ourselves in a future where you're required to identify yourself just to see a price because it'll be calculated as a percentage of your total income. Where your political views, your medical conditions, countless proxies for race/religion/sexual orientation, or even who your friends are, can cause you to pay more or even get you priced out of things you regularly buy today.
You might think that you can always "vote with your wallet" if you feel that you're being ripped off, but that doesn't help you when every restaurant and retailer is doing the exact same thing, and none of it is transparent to the user so you won't be allowed to know when you're getting screwed over or how badly no matter which arbitrary metric is being used as justification for squeezing every last possible penny out of you.
Traditionally this is how markets worked. Every purchase was individually negotiated. It's only in recent times that uniform "consumer" pricing was even invented.
> ...no matter which arbitrary metric is being used as justification for squeezing every last possible penny out of you.
This is how free markets are supposed to work. The seller seeks to maximize the price and the buyer seeks to minimize it. Lazy buyers who don't bother checking the competition can expect to pay more.
The problem occurs when there is limited competition. In that situation I'm in favor of regulation (as well as to protect certain classes of people such as race, gender etc). But I don't think that's a problem in this case - or at least, that's not what you're arguing?
I think the complaint is not about doing price discrimination, but being misleading about it. Calling an upcharge a "delivery fee" could be fraud if the customer thinks they're paying for the delivery.
My same question, yeah. If you think of buying a new car, for example, the salesman will size up the customer in all sorts of ways, taking many signals into account in order to negotiate the price as high as he think he can get the customer to agree to. Perfectly legal, and it happens all the time.
I don't know if this DoorDash suit named the specific area of law that they allege was violated, but I would need to understand the difference between what DoorDash is doing and my scenario of the car salesman, for example.
I think it's about misleading the consumer. This has less to do with a felony violation of the law and more about whether they are liable for the way they have marketed and misled consumers. The end result is a fine, not a criminal conviction, so I think the plaintiffs have a nonzero chance of winning.
No tons of companies do this, people charge X for people from poor countries and a much higher Y for people from rich countries. People get paid less because they are from a poor country and more because they are from a rich country.
A protected class is a group that is illegal to discriminate against in this manner, in the United States (and several other legal systems).
"Phone OS" is not a protected class. Many other things are, though, such as Race, Religion, Sex, etc... Varying a bit by jurisdiction and legal system.
Even worse imo, if it's held to be true, Doordash will be in real existence-threatening trouble with iPhone users and will have to increase its marketing spending towards them drastically.