This looks super confusing. So now in addition to presenting me an itemized breakdown of what I am paying, I have to also see an itemized breakdown of what the restaurant is paying?
In the example invoice in TFA, how would they allocate the promotional fee without knowing in advance how many customers the fee will generate?
How would a consumer know what a fair delivery commission is? Was my driver carrying multiple orders on this trip? If so, should I reduce my tip?
Adding this kind of complexity to bills is silly when there are options like ChowNow out there that handle the website + app + booking part for a flat monthly fee. (And let the restauranteurs determine the difficulty of offering delivery themselves.)
Sounds simple, but there are at least two obvious problems with this approach:
1) It does not take into account that driver comp and Uber Eats commissions may both well be on a sliding scale, where the percentages depend on order volume on prior days/weeks.
This will make it difficult for consumers to compare these fees across orders, making the actual numbers less meaningful. Did the driver earn less on this order because it's her first order this month, or because the restaurant doesn't do much volume, or because the driver was carrying 3 orders at the same time and delivery fees scale with mileage or time or some other metric, etc. The calculations may involve more context than is reasonable for a consumer to process.
2) This may reward the richer restaurants. Big restaurants & chains may negotiate better deals and get a bigger "Paid to restaurant" number. Choosing to display information to consumers in this fashion might incentivize people to choose bigger restaurant owners at the expense of small shops like those highlighted in TFA.
3) Doesn't address the invoice shared in TFA, where ~20% of the fee to GrubHub was for a promotion that could be CTA or the like and not directly tied to specific deliveries. So you could implement your suggestion and the restaurant could still post the same invoice & complaint.
#3 is fun. Where does the promotional discounts go to? How do I know if the restaurant is price dumping to gain ground or GrubHub is actually screwing them?
Bingo. I would expect that if GH just started separately delivering invoices for marketing & other non-commission charges, a lot of the furor would subside.
In the example invoice in TFA, how would they allocate the promotional fee without knowing in advance how many customers the fee will generate?
How would a consumer know what a fair delivery commission is? Was my driver carrying multiple orders on this trip? If so, should I reduce my tip?
Adding this kind of complexity to bills is silly when there are options like ChowNow out there that handle the website + app + booking part for a flat monthly fee. (And let the restauranteurs determine the difficulty of offering delivery themselves.)