"Tony Delivers" - just order your food and send him a screenshot

Rimu@piefed.social to Technology@lemmy.world – 1027 points –

https://seattle.eater.com/2024/2/21/24079162/tony-delivers-seattle-delivery-app-fees-downtown

Tony Illes was working as an Uber Eats delivery person when an ordinance passed last year by the Seattle City Council came into effect in mid-January. The new rule required app companies to pay workers like Illes a minimum wage based on the miles they travel and the minutes they spend on the job. The apps say that this amounts to around $26 an hour, and both Uber Eats and DoorDash responded by adding $5 fees to every order (even when the customer is outside Seattle city limits) while calling for the law to be repealed. According to a recent DoorDash blog post, the ordinance has resulted in an “unprecedented drop in order volume,” a drop that Illes felt personally. He told Geekwire that “demand is dead” and told local TV station KIRO 7, “I didn’t get an order for like six hours and I was done.”

So Illes had an idea: Who needs these apps, anyway? He printed up signs with QR codes directing people to a bare-bones website with his phone number, promising that he would deliver food by bike in Uptown, South Lake Union, Belltown, and a chunk of the downtown core for $5 a pop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. All you had to do was order the food and send him the screenshot. He called himself “Tony Delivers.”

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I do the basic maintenance stuff myself and then pay a shop to tune up the bike each spring. When you use a bike to commute suddenly $150 a year doesn't seem like much to spend on it. That's less than one month of parking at my last job.

$150 a year doesn’t seem like much to spend on it

Holy crap. I have a gearless road bike to just pedal around the neighborhood with (if I wanted to go anywhere legitimate, I'd have to go down a 4-lane highway which I sure as hell am not doing. Hooray America being designed for cars) so I just maintain it myself...

But back when I had a decent 10-speed, which, admittedly, was like 15-18 years ago, a tune-up was like $50. In L.A.

Crazy how expensive things have gotten.

That poster must be adding on stuff like replacement parts and additional maintenance supplies throughout the year. A tune up here in OR is like $75.

I hope so, because $150 is ridiculous for a bicycle tune-up that probably takes less than an hour.