The Shift Hustle Show breaks down DoorDash safety, Spark updates, and platform perks you probably missed | Ep 1

The Shift Hustle Show breaks down DoorDash safety, Spark updates, and platform perks you probably missed.

The Shift Hustle Show debuts with host Jason breaking down new features and updates across major gig economy platforms to help drivers maximize earnings and improve their experience. Safety kits, rewards programs, and policy changes from DoorDash, Uber, and Spark are explored while revealing hidden perks many drivers don't know about.

• DoorDash is offering $20 off safety kit bundles that include a Birdie alarm and branded merchandise
• Uber is sending notifications about vehicle recalls and implementing a tiered rewards system (Blue, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond)
• DoorDash's new Platinum Pass allows drivers to bank "free weeks" of status to use during vacations
• Spark delivery is changing its Round Robin offer system to prioritize customer ratings over parking lot proximity
• Background checks are being conducted regularly by platforms as a safety measure
• Many drivers are missing valuable app perks like roadside assistance and cash back on gas purchases
• Future shows will explore individual apps in-depth weekly

Join me next Monday at 7pm Eastern for more tips and insights! Send questions to team@gigeconomyshow.com, and I'll research answers to help everyone earn more money on these platforms.

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• 15:22 (Cont.) The Shift Hustle Show breaks down DoorDash safety, Spark updates, and platform perks you probably missed | Ep 1

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hello, hello, we are live for the Shift Hustle Show. This is a new show that I decided to start with just myself, and it's called the Shift Hustle Show, where I help you own the hustle and navigate the plot twists. So basically it's a show about you and about tips and tricks and those kind of things. As you know, I am one of the co-hosts for the Gig Economy podcast and that podcast is more about gig economy in the news and we share funny clips and stuff like that. But this one's going to be basically about just different things that I see in the gig economy and maybe some tips to help you earn more money. And today we're going to talk about DoorDash safety. Uber wants us to stay up on vehicle recalls and DoorDash Platinum Pass safety. Uber wants us to stay up on vehicle recalls and doordash platinum pass and spark wants us to earn more. And then, number five, it just kind of added um, doordash is about ready to do my background check, which they kind of sent us a message sent, sent me an email that said that it's time for your background check. So let's talk a little bit about a DoorDash safety. So the email I got today well, no, I've been saving them for a week. So it wants us to stay safe. Of course, doordash, and if I did this right, I should be able to show this there we go. So it's talking about saying safe and we actually talked about this with mo side hustles, uh, on my show on wednesday about just being safe and stuff like that. And so they're offering a a a kit for $20 off. So let's go see what this kit is. This pops up, so safety swag bundle. You get a birdie alarm, you get a red cap, you get a small window cling and you get a safety belt. So I'm not sure if any of you guys would wear any of this stuff. Apparently, you can buy it and they'll ship it to you for free for safety. For me, I mean, the only thing that I would probably use is the birdie alarm I actually had. My wife has a birdie alarm and they actually work. They're really loud. The only problem is if you end up pulling it by accident because it's kind of on her purse or whatever. It tends to get a little loud. But I mean I guess I appreciate them trying to keep us safe. Mo says she has a birdie too. I sell it on TikTok shop, of course. Yes, I love it. Yeah, it's good to stay safe. I appreciate them sending out a bundle, uh, or a discount of 20% or 20. Oh, it's $20 off, holy shit.

Speaker 1: 3:16

So how do you guys feel about safety? Uh, do you ever feel like you're out delivering and you feel like safety is an issue for you? I do find that I feel like I'm okay, but I'm also a male. If you notice, I have a puppy cam up there. Even though I don't have puppies, I call them my puppies. You can see my dog Hamilton's rear end hanging out in the camera. Oh, now he's moving around there. He is, oh, yeah, yeah, he's doing the scoots a dumb dog most, as I always feel safe in my zone. But when I travel I like to have certain things with me, for sure, but I I don't really carry anything with me but, but I definitely don't ever have that with in my area.

Speaker 1: 4:09

By the way, this is super awkward, monologuing. So this is like a first thing for me. So if it seems awkward, it is because I'm used to having like a co-host. So it's kind of weird. But I wanted to kind of do this. I wanted to kind of stretch my wings a little bit and be you know just by myself and trying to talk to people was obviously with people in here. That's, that's always nice.

Speaker 1: 4:33

So DoorDash safety that's one of the things I wanted to touch on today. Uh, the next thing is I got this weird email from Uber. Not weird, but like I feel like DoorDash actually sends you stuff. That really means something. And uber is like hey, uh, we want you to stay up on your vehicle recalls. I mean why I don't understand why uber would be sending us this. Let me see if I can navigate. Um, so it says the national highway safety or just drivers check for open recalls. I guess I get all that, but like it just seems kind of weird that Uber would even care why you know when they're sending this shit about my car. I mean, I feel like I get enough alerts on that. So I'm kind of annoyed by the Uber stuff. I don't mind the DoorDash stuff as far as safety goes.

Speaker 1: 5:27

Next is the DoorDash Platinum Pass. So this will be a little bit longer and I'm surprised Mo hasn't done a video on it, or at least I haven't seen it. So, basically, right now you get a Platinum Pass. Basically, right now you get a platinum pass, reach and maintain a platinum status for four weeks and you receive a free week of platinum status will be added to your account. So if you lose your platinum status for example taking a dashing free vacation you can redeem that free week to keep access to your rewards without needing to meet the usual requirements. Number three keep up to three platinum passes. That's three weeks of free platinum. God, that's a lot of P's Status rewards stored in your account. You'll have a full two years to redeem each free week. Head to your app's ratings tab anytime to check your ratings.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Obviously, the requirements acceptance rate 70%. Completion rate 95, customer rating 4. 4.7. Deliveries in the last 30 days 100. Yeah, I mean, the deliveries is going to be hard for me and the acceptance rate, but just always, you know they're pushing you to do that stuff, but I actually think that's pretty cool. Uh, I, I kind of, I kind of like that. They're giving you that. So if you're, if you're kind of a hustler and you have platinum status and you can bank those for a shitty week, like what if you had a shitty week or you went on vacation or stuff like that so I think that's cool.

Speaker 1: 7:04

I think doordash, uh, I think as much as I don't. I'm not a huge fan of it. I I a fan of doordash. At times I definitely think that, um, this is cool moses. Yeah, I've done it. I've done a few. It's been around for a long time in my area. What this? This platinum pass like vacation? Oh, I see joe on the go sent me a heart. I didn't even realize it, sorry, I probably had, uh, something up. So, yeah, okay, so you've used the past. When I was on, yeah, I mean I think it's great if you're, if you're going to be, committed to doordash. But then also it makes me think this is one more thing that makes me an employee, right, like now I have. I mean, it's not vacation time, it's more like you know you don't get in trouble time. But I mean, if you think about it, it's kind of like a bonus if you hit their metrics, but their metrics are too hard. 70. Well, mo does earn by time, so I'm sure her percentage is lovely.

Speaker 1: 8:14

So the other thing, a couple other things. I want to talk about this spark thing and I'm testing this live. Um, so spark. So I'm going to read this um, oh, it is, but you have to keep that platinum stats for a full month without driving. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, I know I kind of rushed into these things, but as you pop in or whatever, um, definitely, uh, definitely, ask a question. Uh, so I got this email from spark. It says hi there. Did you know that you? So? This is different, because I thought you had to be close to the store. So they're changing this. Did you know that, if you don't need to slow down, jason, my allergies are killing me today, for whatever reason uh, it says hi there. Did you know that you don't need to be in store or in the parking lot to get a round robin offer?

Speaker 1: 9:03

We've made updates to the round robin offer experience. First, although we still take location into account when making round robin offers, drivers who are in the store or parking lots will not receive round robin priority within the local area. Second, customer ratings may now be factored into round robin, meaning that higher customer ratings could mean greater priority for round robin offers. Wow, that is a lot. So what I think they're saying is they basically don't want people to be hoarding around the stores. It's not talking about the offers they send to you, I assume the ones that you get directly. That says God does it say for me or whatever. It's basically an offer for you, before they put that back into the um like, into the like, into the queue or the round robin.

Speaker 1: 9:58

So we've made updates to the round robin offer experience first, although we still take location into account when making round robin offers, driver store in the store, parking lot will not receive round robin offer experience first, although we still take location into account when making round robin offers, drivers who are in the store or parking lot will not receive round robin priority within the local area. So maybe it is telling me that the round robin if I do stick. So here's the thing. Here's a tip. I don't tell this to everybody, but if you, when I do Walmart, I drive to the parking lot and I seem to get orders more when I'm in the parking lot than where I'm anywhere else. But this is confusing to me because it says drivers who are in the store or parking lots will not receive round robin priority within the local area. So it makes me think I'm not going to get those. Huh, the interesting part is, customer ratings may now be factored into round robin, meaning the higher customer ratings. See, this is where, if I had a co-host, I could ask them, but of course I don't. By the way, I was going to let everyone know too.

Speaker 1: 11:07

This is going to go on the audio podcast platform. I'm not sure how I'm going to set it on there. It'll probably go out on a different day, but I only want to do it on Tik TOK, cause I'm trying to grow the Tik TOK channel, um, but yeah, it's so. Tik TOK is so weird, mo. Like I was telling you that night that you and I streamed and again, maybe it got pushed out because you were on, but like nothing tonight. But I'm not too worried about it. It's gonna take time. I'm fine, I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it. Right, fine with it. Um, so yeah, I don't know what to do now. Should I park at the store? Should I not park at the store? It's making me think that I should not park at the store. Should I not park at the store? It's making me think that I should not park at the store.

Speaker 1: 11:54

And customer ratings my customer rating isn't that great, honestly, and I I don't know. I see people talking about it. Um, let me check it out. I'm not. I'm always like I'm just rambling. Uh, so my metrics for walmart I have a 98 on time arrival, 100 completion rate, 21 acceptance rate and 4.7 customer rating out of 563 trips. I don't know, I don't know if you can see no, you can't see but they're green and then orange and then maybe red. My customer rating is in orange and I don't know. I think 4.7 isn't horrible, but apparently, according to Walmart, it is I. I saw somebody else talking about that too and they were like how can I have a lower rating?

Speaker 1: 12:58

I don't do anything, like I just deliver the groceries, am I? Is it because you know he brought up? Is it because he's not knocking like on the door? Is he just delivering and walking away? Could that be it? I know we've.

Speaker 1: 13:13

I had a TikTok go viral for our standard about knocking or not knocking, and it's pretty. It's pretty 50, 50. Some people do, some people don't as far as the knocking goes. But like I wonder if that's my rating Cause I mean it's not like I trashed, but like I wonder if that's my rating Cause I mean it's not like I trashed, I mean I, I put the groceries in a safe space, I put it away from the door to make sure you know they can open the door. Um, are they? Are they dinging me because maybe they thought I shopped it and I didn't do a good job? I mean, some of those could be from actual shops where I maybe made a poor substitution, and that's the thing. I don't think people know as customers that the substitutions typically are done by Walmart, like they offer us the substitutions.

Speaker 1: 14:04

I think you can set it up. Yeah, you can. As a Walmart Plus customer you can set it up, but I think the default is Walmart just kind of suggests it. So maybe I'm getting dinged for that. I mean, it doesn't break down your trips in regards to, oh, it says there's a detailed view of it. Oh, it's just kind of like a tutorial, but it doesn't break down drives or just pickups or shops. So I kind of wonder if it's maybe some of the shops that I didn't do well or something, most as I wish they would tell us what we're doing wrong, because then we can fix the problem exactly. All right, what else did I want to talk about? I got a list of stuff, oh yeah, and then I, man, I rattled through that quick. When you don't have a co-host, holy cow.

Speaker 1: 15:27

The goal of this show is trying to be 30 minutes and if it goes less than that, it goes less than that. And then DoorDash is doing background checks on me. I've never seen an email, so I kind of want to whoops, I don't want to unsubscribe from this. So it says we, which I figured they did background checks. But yeah, I think they're going to think we're going to remember who rated us badly. Well, I don't even know. Like it's not like I go in there and check afterwards like every time.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Says we regularly perform background checks as part of our commitment to help keep dashers, consumers and merchants safe on the platform. You can expect your background check fresh to kick off in the next 14 days. You'll receive an email from our background check provider checker once the refresh begins. Um, so interesting. I don't think DoorDash does this. But with Uber, if you haven't driven in a while and you go to go online and it's time to do your background check, they'll do it and you can't drive. You can't drive until the uh background check is clear. So I don't think DoorDash does that. I mean, let's be honest, they're only doing the background check. They don't want to do it, they don't really care, they just want to do it, just so they can cover their ass for sure.

Speaker 1: 16:48

So, yeah, I think I covered everything. Oh man, doordash, it's funny. I was like, all right, I'm going to kind of, because you, normally, honestly I don't read a lot of these emails, but they sent me like five emails in the last week. So this is the Dasher Spotlight. They talk about safety and that's about it. It tells me how much I made. Hey, y'all, I made $11.77 and completed two deliveries. Mo says she doesn't. I don't read them a lot either, but they make good content. Yeah, I mean they do. I mean, honestly, I'll probably do that video about the Platinum Pass.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Did you say earlier that that's new in your area? Or sorry that I said it was new, but you've had that before, because, I don't know, I've never seen that. But again, I'm just kind of starting to pay attention more to DoorDash, so at least for nine months. Oh, also, too, maureen brought up a Uber and I didn't see that. But Uber is making, making you. Well, it's gonna tear it out like it does with rides.

Speaker 1: 18:05

So, um, you have god, what do you have? I can probably look, although it's probably not gonna tell me. I don't even know where to find it. But yeah, well, I'm uber blue right now and I think there's um uber blue, maybe silver and diamond, I think, basically what they're doing, that they're doing that for eats, but I have not gotten, um, I haven't got any email about that. I feel like I wonder why maureen gets all the stuff up there and I don't know, maybe because you're in a smaller market and they test it out. But and that's interesting green, silver, gold, diamond, oh, so it is different than than uber, because, well, well, I don't know because you're you're only, you just got the email. So I have no idea, because mine, I'm uber blue, but I don't see where it says you can.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Uh, okay, here we go. So we got blue, gold, platinum and then diamond. So if you're diamond, the only thing it gets you is premium support. So if you're Diamond, the only thing it gets you is premium support. That's the extra tier. Platinum Awards you get a one-year Costco membership, access to area preferences, extra destination and dedicated customer support. Gold gets you the 100% tuition coverage at ACU Online language lessons with Rosetta Stone recognition in your writer's app and you see trip duration.

Speaker 1: 19:48

But I see that now, obviously, you get everything you know when I read. Platinum, you get the or you know what I mean If you're diamond, you get it off your platinum you get platinum and gold and blue and stuff like that. But huh, it says that I get free 24 hour. I never read this shit. See, this is kind of why I want to do this show. I wanted to kind of dig into some of these things that you know on the, on the new show, we don't really we don't really dig into this stuff, and sometimes it's nice to kind of that's what I should do. I should do the next show. I should, let's, explore the DoorDash app and see what's in there that I don't have any clue what it is, but apparently, uh, you were digging for content ideas. Apparently, I get free 24-hour roadside assistance. Oh, sorry, so sorry, so sorry. I don't. I'm blue, I get 20% off, but you get golden above, you get free roadside assistance. Huh, interesting. So this is yeah, this is kind of cool. You guys should check your apps out.

Speaker 1: 21:01

Fast charging you get up to 45% off if you're gold, platinum or diamond. If you have an EV you know the upside blah, blah, blah. Cashback for gas and ev you get I don't know what this means backup balance if you're diamond or if you're platinum, you get 12 off, maybe it's 12% back rebates, backup balance of 150. Mo, do you know what that means? Backup balance Is that like you can float a loan? Hmm, interesting. And you get $1,000 when you go electric, if you buy an electric car? Oh, it's like overdraft, interesting.

Speaker 1: 21:55

There was a company oh my, my god I think we probably interviewed him that that funded like money like that if you needed it in a pen. What was that bank called? They went out of business. Oh, man, we interviewed them. Oh my gosh, what was it called? Not green light, that's what my daughter used, not chime, I don't remember it.

Speaker 1: 22:16

I really enjoyed the bank, though. I really liked it. Um, and they would give you like a little bit of uh stock. You bought a little bit of stock every time you like deposited your money into your account. Like god, what the name of that bank? I gotta google it now. It going to drive me nuts. Gig worker bank. I can see the debit card, but it's probably not going to show up because they're out of business. Now, damn, I know, if Larry was in here he'd know what it was, but anyways, it was a cool bank and I can't remember what it was and it's driving me nuts. I'm sure we have a uh an episode about that. So, anyways, that's the gist of the show.

Speaker 1: 23:02

I'd love for you to tune in on tiktok. That's the only way you can watch it live. That's where I'm sticking it to every other platform. Um, if you want this audio gonna be be as of right now, it's going to be in your regular. If you already listened to gig economy podcasts and I, it's called the shift hustle and I don't know. I don't know if I want to confuse people, so I may have to re, I may have to work the name if I'm going to keep it in the podcast player. But, uh, love for you to join us live on Tik TOK.

Speaker 1: 23:34

Uh, I'm just going to talk about, I think, next week. I already got my idea. I'm going to take a deep dive, at least one app a week, and we just kind of break down what I find and maybe you can teach me something and maybe I can teach you something. So check it out. I don't even have any music for this show or anything. This is kind of like the beta as far as it goes. I told Larry I was going to be on at 7. He didn't even show up, brat, that's okay. I told him I wanted to do it by myself. So you can see the puppy cam there. There's my dog, hamilton. He's the white pity. He's right there. Don't mind the mess. I think he's the only one in here. It's funny to see which couch he's on, because it's kind of backwards for me. But yeah, that's Hamilton.

Speaker 1: 24:20

Guys, thank you so much for joining me on the shift hustle show where I help you own the hustle and navigate the plot twist. Join me next week Monday at 7pm eastern. If you have anything that you want me to talk about or you have questions about or you want to that you want me to talk about or you have questions about or you want to bitch about, send me a message. You can email me. What is it? Gig economy team at gig economy showcom. Go ahead and email me any questions that you want me to bring up on the show and talk about. If you want anything answered and you know, if you do it early enough, I will research it, cause I'll I'll let you know I don't have all the answers. Um, I learned a lot of stuff from y'all and I'm just here to help everyone earn more money. So thank you guys so much for joining and I will see you next week at 7 pm Eastern. All right, peace you.