DoorDash – Dasher

My Experience with DoorDash – Dasher

So I’ve been dashing for about thirteen months now, mostly on weekends and some weeknights when I’m bored. I got into it because I kept seeing people talking about it on Reddit and figured why not try making some extra cash. My iPhone 15 Pro handles the app pretty well most days, but there are definitely times I want to throw my phone across the car. Last Tuesday around 6 PM I was trying to pick up an order from this sushi place called Ocean Roll in downtown, and the app just froze showing me the wrong address. I had to restart everything while the food got cold. That’s the kind of stuff that makes you wonder if they even test this thing.

The money can be decent though. I usually make between $15 and $25 an hour depending on the day, and I like that I can just log off whenever I’m tired. But the app has a personality of its own. Some days it’s smooth, other days it’s like it’s fighting me. And when I tried reaching out to support about a pay issue back in March, I got some copy-paste reply three days later that didn’t even answer my question. That left a bad taste in my mouth, like they don’t really care about drivers.

Features Worth Noting

The navigation built into the app is actually pretty solid. It opens up Apple Maps or Google Maps depending on your settings, and I like that it shows me the delivery instructions before I even start driving. The earnings tracker is nice too — you can see exactly what you made each day and week, with breakdowns of base pay, tips, and any bonuses. There’s also a feature where you can schedule yourself for busy times like Friday dinner rush, and if you stick to it, they sometimes give you a little extra cash.

Another thing I appreciate is the ability to rate customers. Not everyone knows this, but after a delivery you can give a thumbs up or down to the person who ordered. It helps avoid the really sketchy drop-offs later. The app also shows you how much you’ll make on each order before you accept it, which is huge. You’re not blindly taking a $2 delivery across town. Oh, and the in-app chat with customers works fine most of the time, though some people never respond.

What Needs Work

Honestly, the app crashes way more than it should. At least once a week I’ll be mid-delivery and the screen goes black or the map stops updating. I’ve missed turns because of it. The support system is a joke too. When I had an issue where a restaurant said my tablet wasn’t working and I couldn’t mark the order as picked up, I spent 20 minutes in a chat loop before giving up. They never fixed it either.

The way they hide the full delivery address until you pick up the food is also annoying. Sometimes I accept an order thinking it’s going somewhere familiar, then find out it’s a 20-minute drive into the middle of nowhere with no tip. That’s not fair. And the battery drain on my iPhone 15 Pro is real. With the screen on and GPS running, I lose about 30% per hour. If you don’t have a car charger, you’re in trouble after a few hours.

Pricing

Well, the app itself is free to download, which is nice. DoorDash takes a cut from every delivery you do — they call it a “service fee” or something — and you don’t really see the full details. The base pay is usually around $2 to $3 per order, and tips make up the rest. They do offer promotions like “peak pay” during busy times where you get an extra $1 to $4 per delivery. But honestly, those are rare in my area lately. You also have to think about gas and car wear and tear, which DoorDash doesn’t help with. So your real earnings are less than what the app shows.

Developer Notes

DoorDash the company is huge, you see their ads everywhere. They push updates pretty often, maybe every two weeks or so, but half the time it feels like they’re just moving buttons around instead of fixing actual bugs. I remember one update last summer actually made the app slower for a month before they patched it. They also have a program where you can cash out daily for a small fee, which is useful if you need money fast. But don’t expect them to respond to your feedback. I’ve left a few suggestions through the app and never heard back. It feels like they care more about customers than drivers sometimes.

Security & Privacy

For a delivery app, it’s pretty standard. You log in with your phone number and a password, and they use your location even when the app is in the background — you have to allow that for it to work. They show your name and photo to customers, which I’m not crazy about, but I get why they do it. There’s also a two-factor authentication option if you want extra security, which I turned on after hearing about some driver accounts getting hacked. Your earnings and personal info are stored on their servers, and they say they encrypt it. I haven’t had any security issues myself, but I do worry about how much data they collect on where I drive and when.