PSA: DoorDash System Bug Adds Unauthorized Fees For Small Orders

Update 8/20/24: Based on my own experience and that of readers, it seems the issue here is that the DoorDash system just adds fees after the fact for small orders. (I don’t think it’s related to items being unavailable, as I originally wrote in the post below.) My guess on what’s happening is that there is an official minimum to waive certain fees, and then there are various offers to waive the fees at lower numbers. At checkout you’ll see the price based on the promo rate, but when they re-run the numbers to issue a final charge the system isn’t coded to take the special offers into account. I’d recommend taking good screenshots of all DoorDash orders, especially smaller orders, and comparing the final price to those screenshots.

Original Post 8/8/24:

Here’s a PSA based on my recent experience: DoorDash might tack on fees to your order afterward if some of your items are unavailable causing the order total to drop below certain thresholds minimums.

DoorDash recently added a $10 credit for various Chase cardholders which can be applied on DoorDash at checkout. Because of this, many of us will be placing lots of small DoorDash orders. We’ll either use the Pickup option to avoid fees or we’ll make a larger order to reach the $35 threshold and reduce the fees. (There are multiple fees added to each order: service fee, delivery fee, taxes, bag fee, and probably others. DashPass members get certain fees waived when meeting an order minimum which varies by vendor.)

I recently made an order at Aldi on DoorDash. Once I hit a $35 threshold, the DoorDash system showed me at checkout that there are $0 in delivery fees and $0 service fee.

A few hours later, I received all the items minus one; one item was not available in the store which resulted in a $2.20 refund on my order. That $2.20 refund triggered a $4.96 delivery fee and $1.99 service fee to get added on.

Apparently orders above $35 were not subject to those fees and orders below $35 are. And so the refunded item resulted in a delivery fee and service getting added to the final bill. Again, these exact details will all vary by vendor, I’m just trying to bring out a point here.

I’m pretty sure this is a bug and is not meant to be. Retailers can’t really add fees like that after the fact. I’m not a lawyer, and maybe someone will find some fine print somewhere in DoorDash terms which will allow it. I don’t know. My guess is that this is just a bug in the system. For what it’s worth, we’ve had a similar things occur many times with Instacart and never experienced additional fees.

I tried chatting with DoorDash to get them to escalate the issue. I ended up with a $5 credit. Hey, I’m not complaining. (You might want to keep good screenshots of your DoorDash orders at time of purchase because there’s no way to see it afterward – they just adjust it in the system and there’s no record of your original checkout details.)

In any case, I thought this worth flagging since many of us will be making multiple small grocery orders from DoorDash in the coming years. It’s possible that my experience was an anomaly, but for now I’m assuming this is just how their checkout system works, albeit likely an unintentional error. Going forward, I’ll switch to pickup orders or I’ll try ordering enough items that I’m confident the final order total will be above $35 (or whatever that store minimum is).

Let us know if you’ve had this issue with DoorDash before.