On a Friday night in December (12-4-20), I decided to try driving for Door Dash (in Virginia Beach, VA, which should have been a fairly populated area) because I had signed up for the app and was in a financial pickle. I had also driven for Uber Eats before and have some delivery driving experience, so at least I wasn’t a total newbie. It’s about 4:30pm and I wanted to start driving. I go to turn on the app like I would do with Uber and hope to start receiving some deliveries right away. Sadly, Door Dash seems to work differently. I had to sign up for a time and wait for that time to start receiving deliveries (5:30). I luckily had some access to other ways to make a quick buck and made a pitstop like 10min down the road to do a quick opportunity with an app called Observa; I had also been using that app for the first time. I decided to do that to kill some time and not just be sitting there doing nothing making no money. I finished the Observa opportunity and it was eventually 5:30pm. I was waiting to receive some deliveries. About 15min later, I finally received my first delivery notice. I drove towards the populated area attempting to find the place where the food was to be picked up. I also like to play music on my phone and had Google Maps open because I had no idea where I was going (very very new to the area). I finally arrive at the restaurant while I am struggling to figure out the interface of the Door Dash app; it is much different and more difficult to use than the Uber Eats app (at least for me). I parked my car and go to swipe in the Door Dash app that I arrived at the restaurant and the order completely disappeared. I have no idea what happened, but I luckily received another order a few minutes later that happened to be across the street. I pick up the food and go to drop it off at someone’s apartment. I then get another ping for another food order, which I thought was to drop the food off; I didn’t realize you could get 2 food orders in 1 go and then drop them both off in the same proximity. I think that’s a nice feature, but it confused the crap out of me. Uber Eats I believe (at least when I was driving for it) you could only get 1 order at a time. I finally drop off both orders and start to get the hang of the app after about an hour or so of driving. I didn’t end up all over the place like Uber Eats (from restaurant to apartment/house was 15min max), but since Door Dash you have to schedule a time instead of just going going going, you are luckily able to extend your dashes and I did so a few times. After about 3.5 hours of driving, it began heavily raining and I was making like no money (most of the money I made went back to gas, especially with a medium sized SUV). I made about 30 bucks in 3.5 hours and no one cash tipped me. You can tip in the app, which some people did, but people are still cheap, even during the pandemic. It also doesn’t display the whole delivery in 1 screen; it displays the place you’re going to pick up and how much you’d make for the order and after accepting the order and picking up the food, it then tells you your final destination. Luckily, Virginia Beach is pretty big or I would have been in more trouble, especially with not knowing the area at all. The moral of the story is, delivery apps are a rip off and they are the only ones making money. The app interface was very confusing. I don’t like how you can’t just turn the app on and off when you please. And I ripped myself off. No thanks. I would never do this again, even if it were a holiday weekend; I don’t feel like destroying another vehicle and my wallet anymore than I already did doing Uber a couple years ago!
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