DoorDash Class Action Says Drivers Don’t Receive 100% of Tips

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DoorDash drivers have filed a class action lawsuit saying that they don’t receive a base pay plus 100 percent of customer tips, contrary to the food delivery service’s advertisements to drivers.

Plaintiffs Jamie Webb and Aaron Hodge are Georgia residents who say that they worked for DoorDash as drivers, delivering food to people who order it via the company’s app.

The two drivers say they agreed to work for DoorDash in part based on the advertisement made by the company that they would receive a base pay rate plus all of the tips given by the customer.

According to the DoorDash class action, this is not the case, and drivers end up receiving far less compensation than advertised.

Webb and Hodge say DoorDash gives customers the option to tip their delivery person. Allegedly, the app asks a customer “how much would you like to tip your driver?” giving the customer the option to leave a default 10 percent tip or to leave a custom tip amount.

The DoorDash class action states that drivers are promised a certain sum of money if they accept to be the driver for a delivery.

Allegedly, drivers like Web and Hodge were promised a base rate of pay plus 100 percent of customer tips, but in 2017 DoorDash changed its payment policy by using a customer’s tip to pay the driver’s base rate, so the driver receives less compensation.

The DoorDash class action lawsuit says that this policy change “contradicts DoorDash’s explicit representations, including statements on its website and [to drivers] that ‘if the base pay + tip is less than the guaranteed minimum offered, Dashers will receive the guaranteed minimum amount. If the base pay + tip is greater than the guaranteed minimum amount, Dashers will receive the base pay + tip.’”

The DoorDash pay rate class action lawsuit provides the example based on the advertised pay structure, if a driver was guaranteed a base pay of $5 for delivery, and the customer tipped $3, the driver should receive $8 dollars — $5 from DoorDash and $3 from the customer.

However, in the actual payment structure in which DoorDash uses customer tips to pay the base rate, if a driver is promised a base pay of $5 and a customer tips $3, the driver only receives $5 — $1 from DoorDash and $4 from the customer.

Allegedly, the actual payment policy is deceptive to both customers and drivers “because tips are meant to go to the drivers on top of whatever base pay the driver gets for the delivery — it it meant to be in addition to wages, not a substitution for them.”

Webb and Hodge claim that they and other DoorDash drivers are financially harmed by DoorDash’s wage policy because they made less money than they would have if they had received the advertised payment of a base pay plus 100 percent of customer tips.

The DoorDashers are represented by James F. McDonough III, Travis E. Lynch,  and W. Lewis Garrison, and Chris B. Hood of Heninger Garrison Davis LLC.

The DoorDash Driver Tip Class Action Lawsuit is Jamie Webb, et al. v. DoorDash Inc., Case No. 1:19-cv-00665-CC, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division.