DoorDash Quality Rating TRUTH! (Every Driver Needs To Know This)

[00:00:00]There is a DoorDash metric on your account that most drivers have never actually clicked into long enough to really understand it.

[00:00:09]It's called your quality rate. It tracks every single delivery you make. It can move without you knowing it moved. And the way it actually works it is not what most people think. Today, I'm giving you the full DoorDash quality rating truth. What it is, how it moves, what is quietly dragging it down, and exactly what you can do to protect it.

[00:00:35]Because the drivers who get surprised by this are always the ones who never took the time to really look at it. If you have never actually clicked into your quality rate and read what is on that screen, this video is for you because I did the work for you. Because what DoorDash lays out in there is something every driver should understand before they get back behind the wheel. Your quality rate affects your overall Dasher rating score, your rewards tiers, and your standing on the platform. And most drivers are guessing at how it actually works instead of knowing. Well, we're going to fix that today. All right, so let's start from the beginning so we're all working from kind of the same information. So, DoorDash tracks a couple of metrics on your account, not one, a couple. If you're in the overall Dasher rating system or you might be in regular tiers depends on your market.

[00:01:32]But each one of those puts you in different levels, right?

[00:01:37]Silver, gold, or platinum.

[00:01:40]So, here are what a couple of them that they measure you on. So, acceptance rate, completion rate, customer rating, on-time rate, quality rate. And then depends on your market if you have to complete a certain many deliveries in the last 30 days. For me, it's 100 deliveries in the last 30 days. It might be different by your market. Most of you know the first few. You check your customer rating, that five-star score from the people you delivered to because you feel like it's personal. And then you watch your completion rate cuz you can't fall below a 95% if you're platinum or 90 or you'll get deactivated. You know obviously your acceptance rate cuz that's one of the biggest levers that's sitting right in front of your face every single time you decline. But the fifth one, the quality rate, that is the one that operates completely differently from a lot of the other metrics on this list. So, check this out. So, your quality rate is the percentage of your last 100 completed orders that had zero reported issues.

[00:02:37]That is the whole formula. No star ratings, no written reviews, just a rolling calculation out of your last 100 deliveries.

[00:02:46]How many came back clean?

[00:02:49]And here is how the penalty system kind of breaks down. So, a minor issue is a small complaint from a customer and that drops your quality rating by 1%. A major issue drops it by 3%.

[00:03:04]Yeah.

[00:03:05]So, on a rolling 100 order window, that is not a slow-moving number. That can shift in just one single week. Here's the first truth and this is the one that matters most once you see how the system is kind of built. When a customer reports a problem, a missing item, the wrong order, food arrived damaged, the flag goes up on your quality rating and it is your quality rating that adjusts based on that report. That is the reality of how this metric is built. Now, and this is the part that matters. DoorDash does have a review process that runs before any of this hits your account. If you go into your quality rating screen on your app right now, you will see a section called keep your readings there and here is what it actually says. So DoorDash reviews accuracy of every report before it counts towards your metrics. So they check for fraudulent customer activity, drop-off and pick-up photo details, customer photo details and other delivery information. That review can take up 12 hours. So if you just completed a delivery and you're expecting your quality rate to up it immediately, like instant gratification, it's not going to. DoorDash is running that check first. It's kind of protecting you in a little way. This is exactly why your drop-off photos matter every single time.

[00:04:34]That is not just about confirming delivery for the customer. That photo detail is one of the four things DoorDash reviews when deciding whether a report is against you and it's legitimate. Your photo is your documentation. If DoorDash pulls that image and it shows a clean confirmed delivery, that's your evidence working for you inside that review period. So the restaurant packed something wrong, a customer reports an issue and DoorDash starts that review. Your photo, that is what they're looking at that's on your side of the delivery. Here's the second truth for you and this is the one actually changes the way you should be thinking about every delivery. In the overall Dasher rating scoring system, not every metric carries the same weight and if you don't know this, you need to pay attention because most likely it will come to your market soon. But your on-time rate is the single highest weighted metric in the entire model.

[00:05:32]Your acceptance rate sits right behind it as the second most influential factor. Your quality rate, it's one of the lowest weighted metrics in this whole system.

[00:05:42]We're going to let that land cuz out of these metrics, the one designed to measure whether you actually do your job well, whether you protect someone's food, whether you follow through the delivery correctly, carries less impact on your tier standing than how fast you move and how many orders you accept.

[00:06:02]That's not an opinion. That is how the DoorDash model is actually built on this metric. And what this means practically on the road in the moment, never sacrifice your on-time rate chasing a quality situation. That doesn't make sense. Those are not equal battles.

[00:06:20]On-time is what moves a lot of your overall Dasher rating score the hardest and hits the hardest when it drops.

[00:06:28]Protect your quality rate, absolutely, but know exactly where it sits in the hierarchy, so you know the importance behind it.

[00:06:36]Because if you are ever weighing a late delivery against a potential quality issue, on-time rate is the metric that does the most damage to your reward status. Okay, here's the third truth, and this one matters the most. Every metric on your account, it has a defined minimum. So, customer rating 4.2, deactivated. Completion rate 90%, deactivated. Acceptance rate, there's no minimum, we all know that, but you all also know that it affects your tier status. But for your quality rate, here is the exact language from DoorDash's help center. Get ready for this. So, repeated contract violations for major issues for your quality rating may also result in deactivation.

[00:07:20]Repeated major issues. No defined number, no published threshold. This, in my opinion, it's intentional. Think about what that actually means. You could be accumulating major issues right now. 3% per incident, and there is no line on your dashboard that tells you when you've officially crossed the danger zone, the danger territory.

[00:07:43]DoorDash reserves the right to make that call with zero published standard for what, repeat, means. This is why you have to be checking your ratings tab on a consistent basis, not occasionally.

[00:07:55]And this is why this is important.

[00:07:57]Consistently pull up your ratings, look at them.

[00:08:02]I'm going to say, me, I look at it twice a day. I will look at it before I start and after I end.

[00:08:07]And look at every single metric on your screen. If your quality rating is sitting below 90%, you need to know that right now, not after it happens, because the window to course correct exists while you're still ahead of the problem.

[00:08:22]Okay, so what do you actually do about it? Here are four real steps you can build into every single shift.

[00:08:29]Step one, take your drop-off photo on every single delivery, every time, no exceptions. DoorDash reviews drop-off and pick-up photo details as part of their quality report check. That photo is not just a delivery confirmation for the customer, it's documentation DoorDash uses when they are reviewing whether a complaint against you is actually legitimate. A clear, clean drop-off photo is your strongest protection side that 12-hour review.

[00:08:58]Make it a non-negotiable happen every single delivery. Step two, do a visual bag check on every single pick-up before you even leave. Is the bag sealed? Is it properly closed? If it is not, ask the restaurant to seal it. That 20-second check at the door is your simplest line of defense against a customer reporting damage or an open package before it ever reaches DoorDash's review. You prevent the flag from ever being filed in the first place. Do not skip this process.

[00:09:31]Step three, document your restaurant wait times in the app. If a restaurant is making you wait, mark it. When you document the wait, you are creating a timestamp and then showing the delay came from the restaurant, not you. If a quality issue comes back on that order, that documentation supports your side when DoorDash reviews the other delivery information on that order. Build this habit every time you are sitting at a restaurant waiting on a food step forward. If a quality flag lands on your account that you believe is not legitimate, contact support directly. Be factual, be specific, reference your drop-off photo, reference your documented wait times if you have them, tell them exactly what happened. You will not flip every flag, but building a paper trail shows DoorDash that you take your quality seriously and the flags you do reverse protect your volume percentage.

[00:10:31]Your quality rate is manageable. It is not some mystery number that moves on its own when you really understand what DoorDash is actually reviewing and you make those four habits just kind of automatic. You kind of stay ahead of it.

[00:10:46]That's the real breakdown, your metrics, how quality rate actually moves it and what DoorDash is reviewing before a flag ever hits your account.

[00:10:55]The cause buried in that help center and the four steps you can use starting on your very next delivery today. If you know, with DoorDash, the rules keep on changing. We just need to know what they are to be active in the app and work it the correct Everything is with a lot of these things with DoorDash is you don't know about them until they're actually right in front of you and sometimes you don't know about them because you're not informed. Well, you know what? Now you are and you have a better understanding of that quality rate. And if you're looking for the next DoorDash video to watch, this one is up next. I'll see you over there.