The sneaking suspicion that I'm being robbed : memes

[+] [email protected] 167 points 10 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

[deleted]

[-] [email protected] 99 points 10 months ago

Voting with your wallet doesn't work when there aren't any alternatives. If all the services are bilking people, then there's no choice but to stop using an entire type of service. There's a similar argument in American tipping culture: you can just vote with your wallet by not going out to eat.

But that's austerity measures and those have been shown definitively to NOT work. People won't give up most of life's pleasures and conveniences unless they have to. No one wants to deprive themselves of most of society's benefits. And they shouldn't have to. There should be laws regulating how companies charge and introduce fees and what they can charge for to prevent abuse and industry-wide abuse.

[-] [email protected] 78 points 10 months ago

Yes there is an alternative, you don't use delivery services. It is just a big dumb waste of money.

I pick up all my own food, have never used any of the 3rd party food delivery ripoffs

[-] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Tbf, not everyone has a car. I mean, cooking ramen at home and saving up for a car would be a better use of your money, but then people like whoever replies to this that are ideologically opposed to cars would rather have someone else with a car deliver it so they can disconnect themselves from that reality.

Fwiw I also always pick up, I was a delivery driver for 10yr, I can take one more run (to myself).

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[-] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

But you can vote with your wallet and not use the third party delivery app. Order from the place directly or call and order for pickup depending on the venue. Almost any resteraunt will let you call and order for pickup (that's already what Uber/GrubHub/etc. do then charge you the fee for the convenience), and they'll prefer that over the app because they get 100% of the money you pay for that meal

[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I get that boycotts don't work, but who the fuck is still paying double/triple instead of picking it up themselves on their way home or just driving out to get it - I haven't ordered third party delivery since the pandemic since there's no way I can justify the stupid high cost.

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[-] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

I'm my area the Uber eats prices are higher than if you order in person. An order at my fave dumpling place is 11$ pick up and listed at 14$ on Uber. Add service fee and tip it's +20$. Paying almost 10$ extra for a meal to take 45 minutes to get to my house cold is not a good deal.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Why would it be a “deal”. It is a luxury service for those who can afford it. Mostly paying for someone else’s labor which isn’t cheap.

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[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

"But I'm too lazy to cook..."

"Why don't I have any savings!?"

[-] funkless_eck 31 points 10 months ago

I would eat out the most when I was pulling 14-16 hour days, and I cook at home the most when I work 8 hour days.

I dont think laziness enters into it

[-] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

I used to cook literally every day of the week, but then I started clinical rotations and now I'm working 14-16 hour days 6-7 days a week. I've entirely stopped cooking for myself, even though it was previously my favorite hobby, because there's no fucking way I can fit it into my schedule anymore. Anyone who wants to call me lazy can go fuck themselves, and doubly so for anyone who argues it's my fault for paying exorbitant prices for delivery "because there are alternatives". I don't have the luxury of voting with my wallet and it honestly makes me made whenever I complain about unregulated prices and am told I should just not use the service and instead do X, Y, or Z option that isn't even close to practical for me.

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[-] [email protected] 108 points 10 months ago

Uber eats etc pulled all the money out of the community. No longer does the restaurant make money and pay a little bit to the driver, who back in the day might have been the owner or the owners kids. No, now the restaurant margins are impossibly thin and so the food is shit, and the driver isn't an employee and spends it all on gas and oil changes.

Uber eats takes all the money and sends it to investors.

Uber and all the other Ubers for X no longer provide a service. They made an app that helps deliver goods and services, but now what? If we nationalized these companies and made them owned by the people, or the people in that industry, we could actually keep the money in your own city.

Instead we have $80 pizzas and poor, disaffected workers.

[-] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago

I stopped using uber eats after like 2-3 times. I was sick of the bait and switch pricing.

Restaurant promotion near you! Two pizzas for 20 $!

Ok I guess I'll get that, delivery gotta be like 5$ no big deal...

Meanwhile the total is somehow 37.85...

Ugh...ok I guess everyone has to make money and at least everyone is compensated, and it's convenient...

click next

Would you like to tip the driver? It's only fair he gets some too! 15%?18%?20%?

Fuck off wtf was the deliver charge then? Wtf were all the fucking charges.

App uninstalled.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

In theory, the delivery charge should have been the money that goes to Uber to cover their costs. It's expensive to develop quality web apps, manage drivers, do customer support, etc. But in practice, Uber double dips. There's the delivery fee and restaurant paid fees (often resulting in higher menu prices).

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[-] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago

I agree with you until you said to nationalize Uber eats lol. Just stop using it.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

Yeah, we can just go back to the restaurant hiring their own delivery people.

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[-] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

It's a useful (though non-essential) service that leans toward a natural monopoly. Nationalisation or heavy regulation are the solutions to this.

Under regulation, profits flow to shareholders. Under nationalisation, they flow to treasury. Practicality of nationalisation in the current climate aside, I know which I'd prefer.

[-] AlDente 10 points 10 months ago

No, just let it die. Please don't force the rest of us to pay for this.

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

If they nationalize Uber before Amtrak, I'll blow a gasket

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Or the fast food places could employ a delivery driver or two, like they used to. Or still do, in the case of most of my local places.

[-] [email protected] 96 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I had an item in my Amazon cart yesterday morning. Wait until the end of the day to order, in case I wanted other stuff. When I came back, it notified me the price had risen from 30USD to 50USD.

I searched for the item again, checked it, and it was 30USD.

the fuck

[-] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago

Camelcamelcamel always

[-] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

I prefer keepa. Browser extension puts a price history graph right on the Amazon page

[-] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Camelcamelcamel has an extension that does the same thing as well

[-] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

How the fuck is that even legal?

[-] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Because every item on Amazon can have many different sellers, some of them have the same product in the same Amazon warehouses. OP added the item to their cart using the default seller, it just so happens that the seller also raised their prices that day. So the price went up in OP's cart.

Searching the product on Amazons store likely still said $30 because Amazon switched the default seller to the new cheapest one, which was no longer the seller that OP added to the cart.

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[-] [email protected] 88 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Do you want to round up to the nearest dollar for a donation so we can have a bigger tax write-off and gain profit rather than us just paying our ~~employees~~ contracted drivers better?

[-] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

I think they'll round up to the next thousand dollars. They don't seem like they figured that math thing out yet.

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[-] [email protected] 78 points 10 months ago

[-] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago

I don't have the disposable income for ordering or even takeaway anymore and the fees only get worse from here. Learn how to cook. Impress your visitors. Get nice things in life with the savings.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago

Unfortunate but this is the truth. Too many of us have been accustomed to small luxuries like "affording takeout", but we unfortunately have been priced out of being able to afford stuff like this.

It's a tough pill to swallow if you've been doing it your whole life and think that a functioning adult with a full-time job should be able to afford some takeout every now and again. We are not the generation that gets to enjoy that privilege, it seems.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Also you reset your taste buds and come to realise how greasy and sugary everything is that you don't make yourself or eat out at a nice place.

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[-] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago

Delivery fee and a tip?! lmao get the fuck out of here

[-] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

I quit using is forever ago. All the fees on top of markup cost would often double the price, and the food was always delivered cold and soggy.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

That's been a staple of restaurants for decades. The restaurant would charge the delivery fee on the bill, but you were still expected to tip the driver directly. People who didn't became well known to drivers. It was a good idea to just tip the driver...

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Dealer markups.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

don't pay them for failing infancy

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