I always go direct to my favourite local takeaways. Not only is it cheaper, but they keep more of the money and we build up a relationship over time.
But customers from delivery apps aren’t “your” customer. Even if they’re repeating. The delivery apps are driving volume to their business and it’s entirely possible they wouldn’t be their without them.
The fact that restaurants are willing to pay a relatively large fee demonstrates that they are getting value from the service.
My Octopus “Saving session” is switching my gas to fuse energy for gas
Ignoring the estimated charge….. the standing charge is 14p cheaper…. That adds up, doesn’t sound like much, but it’ll add up to £4.50 a month saved on the standing charge based on some quick maths
You must be very bored.
Inflating prices is immoral. A few others have explained in different ways, the price of bread should be the same price on delivery, third party delivery, and as purchasing in store.
The service charge and delivery fee are what should be outlier for a customer to recognise it costs more to order through third party opposed to direct.
I do also disagree in service charges, as the business should swallow those costs, as they’d still be making a profit on the sales just not as much as they would in store, but that’s another argument. Service charge wasn’t always a thing on the delivery apps, least not in the form it is now.
I usually order takeaway direct, unless there is an offer on a delivery app which sometimes makes it cheaper overall.
I would agree if they’re inflating prices purely for profit, it’s not unsurprising if the business is facing increased costs.
Your point after this does not make sense to me but maybe I’m misunderstanding it. Each stage and supplier would have their own costs and margins, and so the cost will rise to cover those.
The end customer will often be the person or company that bears the cost.
Which should be demonstrated in delivery costs and service fee.
Not the product.
It depends on the product and how each company structures it’s costs and margins.
It doesn’t cost them any more to make, and they’re not even delivering it.
It’s a hill I will die on. The service and delivery should be where the consumer finds it’s not as good value.
I think there’s a lot of variables here. The cost of production is just one of many costs.
If a product costs £1 to make and it’s sold for £10, that’s not £9 profit. There will be packaging, payment processing, acquisition, customs, insurance and so on.
If the product is then sold at £12 through cost pass-through due to increase cost via that third party, I don’t see the issue? That’s just business. Unless the third party is double dipping and advertising extra on the product at £14 or whatever?
Shouldn’t come near groceries and daily life products, IMO.
People are busy, keeping it affordable for them to not be wasting time in a supermarket should be a focus of government (and if they reduced the prices they could offload a decent bit to cheaper real estate and compete better with the big A)
I don’t really believe this. While they might not be the direct customer of the restaurant they are coming for what the restaurant offers. Certainly not coming just to use the JE app.
Repeat customers in an even truer sense.
Because of the discovery. Keeps new people coming in. Keeps the tourists coming in.
At that point the customer just keeps using the initial platform and it’s a battle to move them over. They don’t want to potentially lose the customer.
I’m not sure you understand my viewpoint and that’s ok.
So I’ll leave it there.
Correct - I don’t fully, although I do agree with your points around over-inflating of prices / not disclosing properly etc. I think!?
The lack of business understanding here is mind boggling.
if you want a fuse referral for £100 each let me know on the discord
There’s a Discord?
I thought it died and that’s why everyone came crawling back.
I do think the situation is pretty questionable to be honest. Using huge amounts of VC money these services ran at a loss to provide overly competitive services. They put a lot of local businesses out of business in this phase (almost all my local taxi firms for example).
But after they became the main platform customers go to, they increased prices astronomically, decrease wages for drivers, and charged businesses more. They are using ‘AI algorithms’ to obscure what’s happening / make it much harder to calculate, but in essence ok all three fronts the profit keeps going up.
It’s not illegal, I guess it can be argued if it’s unethical, but one thing that feels clear is it has a negative effect on local workers, businesses and consumers with more money being taken out of those and going instead into large international corporates. Same thing is happening in hotels / accommodation, taxis… lots of places and it’s fair to question if it’s a good thing or not.
I’d much rather just call a local restaurant or cab firm which is normally about 20-30% cheaper anyway, and see my money go to the people who keep a local business open rather than shareholders overseas.
And the same thing is now happening everywhere with AI… dependence is being bred by offering short-term very low prices subsidised by VC money (this time trillions of it!), and once everyone is dependent on it, the prices will go up astronomically and there’ll be a huge squeeze on everyone as the money funnels back to a few Silicon Valley companies.
It is.
So on the arguments here, if you book your hotel through Booking, the hotel should pay the 10% charge that Booking charge the hotel. And, if hotels inflate their prices to allow for all the nights that they have empty rooms, that should be banned.
And landlords, of course, shouldn’t be allowed to make any profit.
I do like the notion that bread should be the same price if I buy it in the shop and if the shop deliver it to me. There’d be a lot of shops that stopped selling bread if that was a law.
I’ve just done two weeks of travelling and been in this situation at quite a few of the hotels and B&Bs. Nearly all of them commented (on check in) that I’ve booked directly (with thanks) and one of them even said “as you’ve booked directly, you are welcome to complimentary breakfast tomorrow morning usually charged at £14.50”. I don’t think the charge for using third party would be as much as £14.50 (the room was £120), but a nice gesture.
The reason I booked directly as it was nearly always cheaper. I’d expect non-direct to be more expensive due to the costs. That said, I’m sometimes surprised particularly with online whisky sales and promotions that crop up - often cheaper than direct!
Depends on who you list with. If memory serves, we were required to have our lowest price on Booking. However, you can throw in things like breakfast for direct bookings.
The £14.50 might be the list price, but the cost is probably more like £5 to the hotel I.e. they can give you good value at relatively little cost to themselves.
