The decision follows days of widespread outrage and angry customer complaints about the policy after a New York Times reporter described in an article what it was like to work as a deliveryman for the company.
DoorDash’s reversal comes amid a broader debate about jobs and fair pay in the so-called gig economy, where workers have more flexibility but less stability and fewer benefits.
“Going forward,” DoorDash’s chief executive, Tony Xu, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night, “we’re changing our model — the new model will ensure that Dashers’ earnings will increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order. We’ll have specific details in the coming days.”
DoorDash’s 400,000 delivery workers are known as Dashers.
Under the policy, which the company adopted in 2017, DoorDash would offer a Dasher a guaranteed minimum amount to do a delivery. If a customer tipped, in most cases a tip paid through the app would go to subsidizing DoorDash’s contribution toward the guarantee, rather than increasing the Dasher’s pay.
For example, if DoorDash guaranteed a worker $7 for a delivery and a customer did not tip, DoorDash would directly pay the worker $7. If the customer tipped $3 via the app, DoorDash would directly pay the worker only $4, then add on the $3 tip so that the worker would still get only $7.
While the announcement is good news for customers who would like to think that their tips are going to increase a worker’s earnings, the implications are much less clear for the Dashers themselves.
There is no such thing as minimum wage in the piecework world of on-demand delivery. Also, the apps frequently adjust their complex pay models, which include incentives for working during rush periods and volume bonuses for doing a certain number of deliveries in a set time.
A DoorDash spokeswoman did not immediately comment on whether the company would change its payouts to workers.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.