Para App: The Tip Transparency Movement Is DEAD? [2021 Update]

What will be your reaction if you found out that you were underpaid for a delivery you completed? How will you respond if you realize that a part of your tip is being held back? How happy will you be when you find avenues of discovering how much your service was worth? I am sure you will be glad and want to stand for what is yours.

So, come along as the success story of an app that provides a feature capable of helping delivery drivers earn more is unveiled. Also, this app helps to track the full tip amount on every completed delivery and.

What Is The History Of The Para App?

Delivery driver job companies like DoorDash, Instacart, Uber and others hold a lot of data on the independent contractors that use their platform. They then utilize that information to develop incentive programs, design features and drive gig workers to locations where their skills are in high demand.

What if ex-employees of these organizations decided to quit one day and start an app that used that sort of data to help drivers earn more money? That's how Para was born.

David Pickerell who was also a delivery contractor with DoorDash, and the CEO of Para a startup, came up with the Para app to help delivery contractors to improve the quality of their businesses through the use of data.

Therefore, to achieve this – he constantly made findings of deliveries to have a full understanding of what independent contractors face in the hands of delivery companies such as DoorDash and Uber Eats.

This investigation was necessitated because it was discovered that DoorDash held back a part of the tip on delivery and sent a lower amount to delivery drivers. The Para app was designed with various features which included tip transparency and mileage tracking (no wonder the thousands of downloads within a few months).

So, with the tip transparency – a delivery contractor can know the full tip amount on deliveries while the mileage tracking made it possible to be able to track miles covered in situations a driver forgets to do so. Therefore, with the information provided by the Para app, a delivery contractor can decide to either accept or reject an offer.

What Does Para Do For Drivers?

As stated earlier that the Para app was designed to improve the businesses of independent delivery contractors, so, here are the strategies employed to achieve this mission;

• Direct Access To Personal Earnings

When a dasher logs into their account via the Para app, it automatically connects to the driver’s account and also makes use of Argyle to access the details of your earnings. This first version of the app was capable of putting together your earnings from the different delivery apps which can be reported and viewed weekly, monthly, or even annually.

Interestingly, this offers an improvement in business transactions for contractors because the delivery apps like Grubhub and Doordash did not provide such information.

• Ability To Track Mileage Covered

The Para app also made it possible for dashers to track the miles covered through the use of a mileage tool that makes use of delivery data for setting up an IRS compatible mileage log. Drivers that did not initially take a record of miles covered can easily track it.

• Tip Transparency

Para app had also set up a feature known as the ‘’tip transparency’’. This feature makes it possible for delivery drivers to know the actual tip delivery as compared to what DoorDash offers. Para app discovered how to access the full details of the tip on deliveries and therefore send a notification indicating the real amount the delivery offers.

How Does The Para App Work With DoorDash?

Usually, when there is an offer, DoorDash often sends a lower amount to the driver with the other necessary information to carry out the delivery. This way, DoorDash can hide some part of the tip.

When you log into your DoorDash account via the Para app, you will be able to access the exact amount the delivery is worth.

This is possible because the Para app has been able to gain access to raw information sent from DoorDash to the dashers’ account and by directly accessing this information, it makes it easy to come up with the full payment details and this is what Para makes available to Dashers through notification and it also places Para ahead of the delivery app.

With this, the real value of the delivery is revealed to the delivery drivers and it can be compared to what DoorDash offers. So, having gotten access to the data the client sends, Para will send you a notification of the exact tip on the delivery.

These activities of the Para app put dashers at risk since the app reveals the total figure of the DoorDash delivery offer, therefore, making a splash on the delivery scene.

Can I Make More Money With The Para App?

The Para app cannot fetch you more money but it will provide information that will help you to earn more money. When the Para app sends a notification of the full tip amount, you will be able to compare it to the offer from the delivery app and make your decision to either accept or reject it.

In situations where an offer is rejected, the delivery app can be prompted to increase the offer to a reasonable amount and in that vein, you automatically earn more than you would have earned had it been you had no access to the information.

Can I Get Deactivated Using Para App?

Well, there is no direct answer to this question but one thing you should know is that the Para app does not comply with the terms of DoorDash and this may put you at the risk of being deactivated for using it.

So it is up to you to decide how you can smartly work around it even though your intentions for transparency are right yet going against the terms of DoorDash in the process may cost you(although it is assumed that there should not be an issue).                          

What Happened To Para? Did It Die?

No, Para did not die although the tip transparency feature did. The tip transparency feature gave Para a name in the community of delivery drivers because it helped dashers to know the entire amount for a DoorDash delivery offer.

This brought so much gladness to the heart of its users but unfortunately, the joy was cut short when DoorDash killed the tip transparency feature.

Yes, it killed it! How? DoorDash killed it when it changed the details of the information of its offers. It no longer revealed the total payout at the instance until a later time.

It was able to perfect this by updating the version of the app and sending it to its users. This made it impossible for Para to access the actual information and thus made the Para app provide the same information to delivery drivers as DoorDash did.

Contractors no longer saw the difference between the tip transparency feature and the delivery app. Besides the app updates that DoorDash sent to its users, it also ensured that the old version stopped working therefore those with the old version were unable to access the app.

Facts About Para

There are a few misconceptions about what Para could do and could not do but here are some facts about Para.

• Access To Contractor’s Details

It is believed that when you enter your details into the Para app, the app automatically stores your information which can be used to defraud you later on. This isn’t true because Para will not keep records of your log-in details. Regular Para users have to log the same number of times they want to use the app.

• Access Into DoorDash Servers

It was believed that the Para app hacked into DoorDash servers to generate the information it provides. This is not so because Para generates its information from the details sent to the phone of the dasher, although the dasher may not be able to access these full details. However, Para can access them and that’s why it can provide the full tip amount along with the delivery app offer.

Just as Para couldn’t access the delivery app servers, it cannot also hack the account of dashers. It was even this that made the death of the tip transparency feature happen so easily.

This is because if changing the information sent to the phones of dashers, could affect the tip transparency feature, then it is obvious that this relied on the information sent by DoorDash to its contractors and not that any account was hacked.  

Conclusion

The tip transparency feature was the real shaker of the delivery driver job community and the delivery apps. It placed the contractors ahead of the delivery apps. This didn't go well with them and therefore had to find a way to terminate it.

The Para app with its features has been able to provide solutions to some of the challenges of an independent contractor – this to a greater extent has improved their businesses. However, the mission of the tip transparency movement has been cut short and sent to its early grave but the Para app still lives on.