“But What If We Earn Less?” Negotiating Deliveroo’s Introduction of Dynamic Order Pricing

• In Event: Disrupting Algorithms: Innovating Work and Life in the Digital Economy - II

Abstract

This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of how food delivery workers negotiate Deliveroo’s dynamic order pricing system; a major “update” the company introduced in Germany shortly after I signed up as a courier and started my fieldwork in Berlin. Whereas each order used to have a set payout of 5 euros, earnings are now calculated “based on a combination of the distance an order will travel, as well as the time we expect it may take to complete” – according to Deliveroo. While many couriers like the new system because it gives them more information about the order’s destination and it pays more for longer trips, they are worried about a lack of transparency regarding the algorithmic pricing of orders: what are they earning per kilometer and per minute?; is there a minimum payout and, if so, how much? I show how, in response to Deliveroo’s silence, the grassroots Deliverunion campaign experimented with two ways of getting some grip on the new system and its impact on future earnings: analyzing order data collected via an open-source app, in an effort to “reverse engineer” Deliveroo’s pricing algorithm; and inviting riders from the UK to share their negative experiences with dynamic pricing, as a sort of dispatch from a future that should be prevented in Germany. This paper contributes to STS by demonstrating how workers creatively (re)assess and redefine the risks and rewards of a technological innovation whose properties – and thus their potential consequences – are black boxed as proprietary information.

Author

• Niels van Doorn, University of Amsterdam