I like to use Venmo as a sort of offshore account. It's where I hide some of my money from myself. And then it comes in handy when I'm not very liquid.
That little nest egg comes in handy when Emily and I decide to order Postmates. And we've ordered Postmates a lot during this pandemic. Honestly, between online orders from craft stores, Sephora and Amazon I may well be single-handedly keeping this economy afloat right now. Of course, I'm not made of money and that explains why I believe that non-essential businesses that have recently reopened are skimping on the AC to save money right now. But that's a story for another time. Actually that one sentence was kind of the whole story. Between the humidity and a face mask, ya girl is dying.
But when I'm not busy attempting to treat the chin acne that comes from sweat pooling in your cotton face mask, I do enjoy some take out. I think that it's fiscally irresponsible to pay what I swear is always like $20 more to have food delivered, but when I'm venmoing Emily and not entering my debit card number, am I really spending money? I think not. I don't claim to be an expert, but I did teach Personal Finance. Once.
So for the past few months I have been forking over a little money here and a bit of venmo balance there to get sweet and sour chicken, arroz con pollo and of course, cheese curds, delivered to the comfort of my home. And there have been some bad experiences, sure. Burger King never gives me my sauce, drivers can never find my apartment and once a cheese dip was missing. Emily wanted to press charges. But love (of food) covers a multitude of sins. We forgave and forgot. Until now.
The thing about these food delivery services is that there is a service fee. In order for Grubhub and Postmates and DoorDash and whoever to make money, they charge a service and delivery fee. So even when you get a code for free delivery, you are spending more than you would if you just went yourself. That's how it works. People pay for convenience.
The girl my father raised still cringes at the idea of paying more for the same food just to have it brought to me, but when I noticed that certain menus were completely marked up through Postmates, I had to investigate. Maybe I was misunderstanding? Not likely but I hear it happens. One day Emily was filling up her Postmates cart with Zaxby's and told me that our total was $40. Now have wee been known to spend that much at Taco Bell? Yes. But this was ridiculous. I asked her how much the 4 piece chicken tender meal was and on the Postmates app it was...$15. You know how much it is at Zaxby's? $8. Is Zaxby's upcharging? Is it Postmates? We have no idea. No more Postmating Zaxby's. Problem solved right?
But like everything else in my life, it gets worse! For my birthday we were going to use a free delivery code to order some lemon pepper wings from Apex Wings Restaurant & Pub. I've only been there once but they have something called tot fondue so Emily was sold. We placed our order and anxiously awaited the arrival of melted cheese and fried wings. But somewhere in the process, we got a phone call from Apex Wings. Whoever was in charge of handing out the delivery orders made our Postmate call us and give him the phone so he could explain that Postmates was upcharging every thing on their menu. He recommended that we cancel the order and not buy their food through Postmates anymore. We stan a king!
As I was researching for this post I see that Apex Wings is no longer available on Postmates. Could be a coincidence but I'm going to assume they cut ties. I recommend everyone support Apex Wings because they have wings, trivia nights and employees that value their customers.
Hidden costs bad, happy customers good.
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