Comment by mistercheph | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mistercheph | Hacker News Reader

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Sorry, but it is insane that people that live in areas with no parking can request doorstep delivery in the United States. People that live on the 10th story of a luxury high rise in the downtown of a major city with a 5 minute security process will request doorstep delivery, forcing drivers to occupy driving lanes for minutes with their hazards thrown as they navigate the byzantine favela that the villager has requested their $8 Mcdonalds order be brought to.

And it is your responsiblity, it is clownlike to fall on your back and flail your hands in the air and shout about how there is nothing you can do about this and your hands are tied etc. Put on your flip flops, and squeak your way down to meet the man downstairs who doesn't speak english and has your McCheesy with McCrusty sauce. Delivery apps prey and set at odds with one another customers who are gouged and drivers who are miserably underpaid all for the sake of... burning VC capital. Both parties, drivers and customers, as long as they continue to participate in the carnival act, should treat one another with good faith and respect as much as is possible, instead of retreating into their castles and pointing at Arial carved into glowing stones that indicate the beginning and end of what they owe one another

> their $8 Mcdonalds order be brought to.

Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.

Look, the customer base for Uber eats is lazy. That’s why they are ordering McDonalds delivery in the first place. Guilting them for meeting at the door isn’t going to work.

In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.

Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.

If drivers don’t want to fully deliver then don’t do delivery.

Now I live in the burbs and ordered Uber eats for my family and the driver wouldn’t drop off food to my door and called to say come out to the driveway to pick up my food. It was kind of weird. They sat in the driveway and wouldn’t bring the food to the door.

This is very different from Brazilian inner city or even an urban setting but it was strange that the driver didn’t want to walk the 30 steps from my driveway to the door.

> Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.

It seems everyone is dancing around the obvious central fact: the drivers get an embarrassingly small amount of that $14 fee. The customer pays a premium, the driver is paid a pittance, it’s hardly surprising there’s an expectations mismatch around customer service.

If the delivery apps charged a fee that accurately represented their role in the transaction (running automated software matching driver with customer) it might be a better experience for both customers and drivers. But the companies have sky high valuations they now need to deliver on, so they can’t.

> Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.

Right. Pre delivery apps I’d order in NYC and have no problems with doorstep delivery. So apply simple logic: what’s changed? The customers haven’t. The drivers haven’t. But there’s a new middleman.

> Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.

Most new-ish developments I've seen have a central lobby or mail room that handles all deliveries. All external doors are locked and require a keycard. No one is delivering to your front door.

Of course, whether they're staffed at 1am to handle your Doordash delivery is a separate issue.

> Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.

Yep, I'd agree that paying that fee for a service which doesn't have to deliver to your door is silly, but some people still do it

> In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.

As a fellow city dweller: yep, I'd agree there, too (that's why I don't order $8 mcwhatevers with $14 delivery) but to each their own

It seems unreasonable to expect every driver to know how to legally park around, efficiently gain access to, and navigate the twists and turns of every building, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect every building tenant/employee to do so for their own. If your building was a house, you wouldn't expect the driver to know how to gain entry and navigate to a specific room in it. That's what an apartment building is: a way bigger and more difficult to navigate house.

> In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.

Then people in this situation should do that.

The only time I've requested delivery to my door was for a grocery delivery when I had a herniated disc and could barely walk. I am totally willing to leave a good tip for such service, but when I order it that way, it is REQUIRED.

I had the delivery driver do a half ass attempt at contact, he ignored my instructions and then he simply went home. No, that's not acceptable. I reported them to the company.

I sympathize with delivery folks, to the point where I almost never order delivery in the first place, but when I need it, I expect it to be full service.

Where does the mail truck park for deliveries. Other delivery persons can just do that. If the building has no lanes at all, then that's nobody's fault but the building owner. You can wait behind the delivery vehicle a couple minutes.

Mail trucks are a bit different though as they are federal vehicles. Private delivery services like FedEx get tickets all the time and pay them as the cost of doing business, but I doubt food delivery services do the same for their drivers.

So then find parking? Even if they need to walk a mile or 2? How is that the customer's problem?

If delivery is not possible it's up to the service provider to refuse service. If they accept the order they agreed to deliver it.

I don't see how it's the driver's problem that the orderer chose to live somewhere impossible for delivery drivers to park while taking food through whatever apartment maze they chose to live in, but there's always the option of meeting at the front door

if that's not possible, it's up to you to refuse ordering. If you place the order, you agreed for it to be delivered according to the terms and conditions.

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