Uber says
its drivers average $30 an hour. The delivery service
DoorDash says its drivers
make at least $25. In reality, many of their drivers are not sure how much they
make when taking all their costs into account.
اضافة اعلان
David Pickerell
discovered this while working as an operations manager at Uber from 2015 to
2017. It did not seem fair, he said, that drivers did not have access to the
same information he had sitting behind his computer.
“The information
is there — we’re just not empowering people,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we tell
the driver and help them with that math?”
So Pickerell
left Uber and built his own app, Para. Released last year, the free app aims to
give gig economy workers more information about their work to help them
maximize their earnings — even as the platforms that dispatch them resist.
The app’s most
popular feature allowed DoorDash drivers to know the tip for each job before
they accepted it. Other than in
New York City (where since last year, apps have
been required to show tips in advance), DoorDash hides that figure from
drivers, even though most customers set the tip when they place their order.
Para also lets
drivers set parameters to juggle multiple apps, automatically decline
low-paying gigs and flag rude customers and undesirable locations, such as
confusing apartment complexes and restaurants with long waits.
The app offers a
tiny form of resistance against the dominance of the large companies that
dispatch millions of drivers to deliver pizza, groceries, or prescriptions at
the tap of a button. The drivers work as independent contractors, or
freelancers, and get paid by the job, not the hour. DoorDash, Uber, Instacart,
Grubhub, Lyft, Caviar, Eaze, Postmates, Amazon Flex, Walmart Spark, and Shipt
all use this model.
Para is growing
in popularity as on-demand delivery services are under fire from all sides:
They are largely unprofitable, and investors are pressuring them to cut costs.
Restaurants, which relied on delivery as a lifeline during the pandemic, are
fed up with the fees they charge.
Drivers, many of
whom started working for multiple apps in recent years, have expressed
frustration over their pay, particularly as gas prices fluctuate. The
Federal Trade Commission said this month that it would crack down on unfair and
deceptive practices around wages by the on-demand delivery apps.
Para has not
exactly been welcomed by the gig companies. DoorDash sent a cease-and-desist
letter last summer, shortly after the app had started, saying that it was
illegal for drivers to use their DoorDash credentials on Para. Pickerell
responded by offering to have a conversation, and he never heard back.
In July,
DoorDash tightened the security controlling how drivers log into its app,
cutting off Para from it. Each time Para created a workaround, DoorDash quashed
it with a new update within hours, Pickerell said. After a few weeks of
cat-and-mouse, Para gave up, ending workers’ ability to use the app with
DoorDash.
“Getting in a
daily engineering war was not sustainable,” Pickerell said.
DoorDash does
not show full tip amounts for “orders that contain larger tips” in advance “to
ensure all Dashers have an equal chance at receiving high-value orders”, said
Rachel Bradford, a spokesperson.
Last week, Uber
also sent Para a cease-and-desist letter. Uber declined to comment.
Harry Campbell,
the founder of “The Rideshare Guy”, a blog and podcast for gig workers, said
there was “inherent tension” between the ride-hailing platforms and their
workers. Drivers want fewer drivers on the road, giving them less competition
for the best-paying orders and more bonuses. But the platforms want the
opposite — slightly more drivers than orders, to keep the service reliable and
consistent.
“That inherent
tension always leads to issues,” Campbell said.
In 2020, Uber
gave its drivers more flexibility to turn down lower-paying rides in its push
for a
California ballot measure that would keep drivers as independent
contractors. A year later, after the measure had passed, drivers accused Uber
of taking away that flexibility. The company made changes to address the
complaints in recent weeks.
Other apps have
offered drivers various tools over the years, but none have directly undermined
the delivery apps as Para did with its hidden-tip feature. The company claims
that its app has more users — 100,000 logging on each week and more than
400,000 downloads — than any others trying to give drivers more information
about their take-home pay.
Para began as a
pandemic project. Pickerell noticed that more gig workers were driving for
several apps at a time, so he built an earnings tracker that allowed them to
calculate their income in one place. He persuaded drivers to try it by
promoting it in online forums, in Facebook groups, and on
YouTube, and he
quickly discovered that the drivers who made the most money were the ones who
juggled apps and chose the best-paying gigs.
Doing that
required savvy decision-making — calculating the time, mileage, and gas
required for a job while driving amid app pings.
“We basically
said, ‘What can we do to help people do this safer and get more competition for
their time?’” Pickerell said.
Para does not
yet have a business model. But it recently raised $11 million in funding from
investors including Brand Foundry and GGV Capital. Some of the company’s
backers previously invested in the delivery apps that Para is needling, such as
GSR Ventures, which backed Didi, the Uber of China.
The app took off
last May, when Para began offering its tip-transparency feature. Luke Brewer, a
driver in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, heard about it through YouTube.
“I thought it
was, like, the best thing in the world,” he said. He aims to make from $50 to
$75 a night, which means turning down a lot of gigs. A no-tip order from Red
Lobster could mean less than $3 for 30 minutes of work during a peak time, he
said.
“They’re relying
on tips too much to make up the difference,” he said of the apps.
Stephanie Vigil, a
driver who works for multiple apps in
Colorado Springs, Colorado, started using
Para last year. “It ends up increasing your earnings because you’re not wasting
your time on anything,” she said. “I’m not going to take anything that’s not a
solid offer because I don’t have to.”
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