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Comment by _sbrk | Hacker News Reader

"Although the FTC examines claims of predatory pricing carefully, courts, including the Supreme Court, have been skeptical of such claims."

Which means that predatory pricing rarely, if ever, exists.

If you don't like the 25% delivery fee, GET OFF YOUR ASS AND GO GET YOUR OWN FOOD.

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Would you please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, including in this thread, and it's not what HN is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

It's good to see that cancel culture is alive and well on HN. You're free to ignore my comments, and I encourage you to do so, if you're not swayed by my arguments. However, if there's one thing I _won't_ do, it is to go along blindly with the gaping-mouth masses. I pride myself in being a free thinker, both behind the keyboard and in person. Not everyone expresses opinions the same way, and to tell me that my comments are unsubstantial is definitely a violation of the guidelines you posed. In the immortal words of Bob and Doug McKenzie: "Take off, eh?"

> GET OFF YOUR ASS AND GO GET YOUR OWN FOOD.

A gentle reminder that people with disabilities exist and they benefit from food delivery services.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/794278/disabled-populati...

Let's take the first-order approximation that 15% of the population is disabled and cannot get their own food. A quick, but by no means, thorough search shows both government and private programs to help these people obtain nutritious food. We could delve into this and go down the rabbit hole of what % of that 15% cannot prepare food or even feed themselves, but I don't have data on that. Yes, delivery might be a need in some of those cases where family, friends, programs, etc. don't exist. These can be a special case, perhaps < 10% of total population.

My comments are directed at the other 90% of keyboard pushers who whine that they're getting charged too much / businesses are being harmed when they click a button for Beef Lo Mein.

There are 330,000,000 people in the USA. 1% of that is 3,300,000 people. Therefore, the Portland-Vancouver MSA (only 2.2 million people) does not exist for any nationwide consideration.

Congratulations.

> only 2.2 million people

Nitpick: That was 2010. We're getting closer to 3M now.

I fail to grasp what you are implying. Please explain.

You announced that below some percentage of the population, people don't matter and shouldn't be accommodated. By your logic, I showed that Portland doesn't matter.

I hope we can all agree that this is a very stupid conclusion, and therefore you should rethink your argument.

We accommodate disability because it is the right thing to do. We require businesses to spend extra money, lowering their profits, in order to put in ramps and openable doors, in the name of our common humanity. Not everything is done for a profit motive; not everything should be done for profit motives. In conclusion, Ayn Rand can spin in her grave but it would still be wrong to wrap her in wires and use her to generate electricity.

You clearly didn't understand my meaning. I suggest re-reading what I wrote, and then think about the "90%" figure.

I'd flag your insulting "stupid conclusion" statement, but I'm sure someone else will do that for me.

Yes, this is a completely unnecessary law. Restaurant phone numbers are seconds away using the same device used to order from these apps, and a phone call is free.

Absolutely no reason a restaurant can’t recoup extra costs by charging the app users more or simply refusing to do business with the app.

A family member of mine owns a restaurant that does mostly delivery business. He employs his own drivers; he's on GrubHub because it brings in more business and is a net positive for his bottom line. He includes flyers with every order that says, in large obvious text, "Call us directly at [this number] and save 20% compared to GrubHub."

He still gets a sizeable amount of repeat business from GrubHub.

This is explicitly against the ToS in his grubhub contract. While he may be doing it in a way that skates under the radar for now it is not scalable.

I am pretty sure he signed a contract that says he isn't allowed to charge GrubHub users more.

He's not charging more, GrubHub pads the price and charges a delivery fee.

I've experienced the opposite. I used to order pizza on a phone from a local shop a few times a month but then one day a machine answered the phone telling me to order using Grubhub. I've never bought anything from that business again.

Non competes, price parity rules, and simply market exposure.

You cant start a book selling website without selling on amazon. The market share is too large to function without participating in the monopolistic market platforms.

What is https://www.barnesandnoble.com/ https://www.indiebound.org/ and https://bookshop.org/ (probably among a hundred others)?

Almost every restaurant I order from also has their own website you can order from.

Same with my experience, which makes it even more perplexing to me why people use these apps.

People use these apps because they're in some manner more convenient. The perplexing part is that anyone complains about such convenience to the point that government uses its heavy hand.

This discriminates against deaf/mute customers and customers with severe social anxiety who can't speak to another person.

Charging higher prices to the disabled violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

You could always obtain a TDD terminal, use those facilities to call the restaurant (call TDD, interpreter then calls the restaurant, ..) to place the order.

IANAL. You could also sue and see how it comes out.

The ADA requires the restaurant to make the accommodation, not the disabled person.

And that still doesn't solve the problem of people with social anxiety who are unable to engage in a conversation with another person.

There is a limit to reasonable accommodations. For instance, restaurants are not required to feed you if you cannot lift a fork.

From my reading, social anxiety has only recently been suggested as a disability under the ADA, in one state. I am unable to locate ADA material which outlines if, and to what extent, accommodations for this disability are to be provided.

> GET OFF YOUR ASS AND GO GET YOUR OWN FOOD

That's really something to say to people who are 100% quarantined during a pandemic.

I live in a state which has one of the highest new-cases-per-day number, and we can still go get take-out.

1) I call in my order. 2) I drive to the restaurant. 3) I put my mask on. 4) I go inside, get my sack of food. 5) I drive home.

We do a lot of cooking at home, which we find to be enjoyable, so this doesn't happen very often. Costco same-day (via Instacart), even when it tacks on 20% to the cost of items, is perfectly acceptable to me.

Quarantine means quarantine. It sounds like you're failing to properly observe quarantine.

1. I don't have a vehicle of any kind.

2. I am at severely high risk for COVID-19 complications due to multiple medical problems, and I cannot enter a building other than my house under any circumstances.

3. Masks do absolutely nothing to protect you; they protect other people from you. You should wear a mask in case you're sick and asymptomatic so nobody gets the virus from you, but it won't prevent you from getting infected.

4. I am autistic and cannot wear a mask for more than a couple of minutes due to sensory issues, and during those couple of minutes I am constantly touching my face. Because I'm not an irresponsible maniac, I am doubly committed to staying home 24/7 for the entire duration of the pandemic. Even if I wasn't at elevated risk for complications, I would not leave my house unless I was dying.

5. Multiple studies have shown that the virus aerosolizes in your breath and hangs in the air after you breathe for several minutes, if not hours. If there is any kind of fan, the aerosol will be blown all over the entire interior of the building and everyone gets infected. If not, it hangs in place and anyone who walks through anywhere you ever stood will get infected.

Learn how to cook and cooking all meals at home is both safer and is a cool new skill to have :)

The 25% delivery fee is fine as long as it's explicitly charged to the consumer and not charged as commission from the "restaurant cost"

I have no qualms if I order on the system and it shows, let's say:

- Pizza: $15

- Delivery fee: $9

And the entirety of the $15 goes to the restaurant

But that doesn't seem to be happening

The restaurants have this option, and I frankly have no idea why they don't pass the entire cost of delivery onto the customer. I'm happy to pay a delivery fee, though not everyone will, but the restaurant can strike a balance -- they can choose to raise their prices in general, to fund some of the delivery cost from their direct-ordering and in-person traffic. That's what they're doing anyway, just not being explicit about it.

There's some information asymmetry. A $24 pizza with free delivery might look to a consumer like a better deal than a $15 pizza with $9 delivery because the consumer can't tell that it's the same pizza. The $24 pizza might be more expensive because they use better ingredients, and the delivery might be free because of a loss leader. Or at least it might look that way to the consumer.

Another, probably cleaner way around this information asymmetry is the reviews that already exist on these apps. If you order a $24 pizza and something the quality of Domino's arrives at your door, you're not going to enjoy that place and you're not going to rate it very highly. There are plenty of problems with review systems, but there are problems with price caps too.

Are you attempting to explain why we don't see restaurants offering free shipping while rolling the cost into the food price?

Because we do see this happen, which suggests to me that reviews are not effective enough in practice to overcome the perception advantage of the information asymmetry.

No, I'm suggesting that, to the degree that customers suffer from delivery fees rolled into prices, that should be reflected in reviews. Pricing isn't determined entirely by ingredient cost, so there's nothing inherently wrong with a $24 pizza A that has cheaper ingredients than an $18 pizza B (maybe Mr. A is just better at making a pizza). What matters is that the customer feels like the value they're getting from pizza A isn't dramatically misaligned with its cost (incl the delivery fee). This is the kind of thing that reviews do capture.

You don't seem to realize that restaurants already pass the costs of delivery to consumer?

Out of a $15 order at a restaurant. There is $5 paying for the food (30% of the price, general practice in the industry). The other $10 are supposed to cover waiters, chefs, service, rent, taxes, profits, etc...

But there is no service and no large rent when doing delivery rather than dine in. The extra money should be enough to cover delivery. Yet restaurants and apps prefer to tack on another $5-10 in delivery fees, easy margin.

In some ways this is what I find most bothersome about it. The restaurants all want us to order directly from them, but you pay the same prices as if you went through Grubhub or whatever. So if you call them directly, you're not really "helping" them -- you're just subsidizing all the Grubhub people.

Delivery apps and websites highlight and promote restaurants with "free" delivery. Anecdotally, people like feeling like they are getting a good deal. The "free delivery" that is included in food pricing is more enticing than cheaper food with a $9 delivery.

Maybe; as a gimmick. But as you become familiar with restaurants in the area instead of just trying them out for the first time, you'll start to develop affinities. Maybe not everyone, maybe not every time, but if the restaurants doing the free delivery thing are losing money on every sale, eventually this achieves an equilibrium (so long as the market is not being artificially pumped by capital injections).

Same reason if you dont do "free shipping" on ebay you get shafted.

The market is conditioned to look for the free shipping label.

You may be able to see through the sham, I can assure you, many others do not.

> GET OFF YOUR ASS AND GO GET YOUR OWN FOOD

Nah, I’ll just ask the police to do something about it.

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