DoorDash Contract Violations: What They Are & How They Work

DoorDash drivers work very hard to deliver food to happy customers.

Sometimes they fall short, however, whether intentionally or not.

If you’re a Dasher and you’ve run into a situation where you violated your DoorDash contract, you may be concerned about what comes next.

Read on to learn what DoorDash contract violations are, how many you can accumulate, and what to do when you’ve been deactivated from the DoorDash platform.

What Are DoorDash Contract Violations?

A DoorDash Contract Violation is a formal notice that you have violated some part of the DoorDash Dasher contract expectations.

You receive a contract violation as soon as DoorDash clocks your violating behavior.

DoorDash keeps track of your movement and actions, so they are quickly aware of all contract violations.

How Do You Get DoorDash Contract Violations?

According to DoorDash, there are minimum consumer rating and completion requirements for you to remain a Dasher in good standing.

So this means that the customers who order DoorDash deliveries can rate you and your service poorly or highly.

If you fail to complete a delivery, DoorDash will mark that as a violation.

When either of these minimums is not met, you will receive a contract violation.

Several issues can add up to these minimums not being met.

Each time you do not fulfill your contract expectations, a violation is documented, and they can add up from there.

List of DoorDash Contract Violations

The list of contract violations possible is long and may seem daunting.

However, if you know what to look out for and avoid, you can successfully be a violation-free Dasher.

1. Low Ratings

If you are consistently rated very low by customers, this can cause a contract violation and is one of the most common reasons for Dash’s deactivation.

After completing your first 20 deliveries, as a Dasher, you must maintain a 4.2 out of 5 stars rating.

Because you’re likely completing many deliveries, don’t worry if you receive one low rating from one customer.

This happens occasionally, but it will not impact your overall Dasher rating too much.

If your rating is nearing the cutoff, DoorDash will notify you.

This will help you to be on your absolute behavior for the next few deliveries.

2. Low Completion Rate

Another common reason for Dasher deactivation is a low completion rate.

DoorDash considers a low rating under 80%.

You may accept an order and realize the restaurant takes an hour to make the food.

You may not want to complete that order anymore, but be careful how often you do this.

The more times you cancel an order after accepting it, the faster your completion rate will creep down to 80%.

Try to monitor your completion rate to avoid canceling when you’re already low.

DoorDash will notify you that you are nearing the 80% mark.

3. Failed New Background Check

To begin delivering with DoorDash, you must first complete a background check.

This is done for all Dashers regardless of circumstances.

But even if you pass the initial background check, there can be changes to your record that DoorDash does not approve.

In this case, you will be deactivated as a Dasher.

You can generally know when something like this will happen because the incident on your record will have been something big in your life that happened.

4. Marking Deliveries as Complete That Are Not Complete

Marking a delivery as complete before you’ve gone through the proper documentation steps for completing the order will also get you in trouble.

Sometimes customers will make you wait a long time once you say you’ve arrived with their food.

But DoorDash has a process to complete your order successfully.

If you’ve arrived at the delivery address and no one is around to take your order, you can call or text them from within the DoorDash app.

If they still do not answer at this point, you can identify this to DoorDash by pressing the “Customer Unavailable” button it displays.

At this point, you can set their food on the ground, take a picture of exactly where you placed it, and walk away safely.

This will not give you any kind of violation.

5. Late Deliveries

One of the other common reasons for getting DoorDash violations is delivering late consistently.

Delivering late often causes bad reviews and customer complaints.

This can tank your rating.

Once you’ve been late consistently enough times, DoorDash will mark this as a contract violation.

To avoid consistently late deliveries, try to focus on only delivering for one app at a time.

6. Tampering With Deliveries

By now, you’ve probably seen one or two of the viral videos of food delivery drivers eating or stealing their customers’ food.

It doesn’t take a genius to know this is an awful idea.

If you tamper with the food deliveries, your customer is almost certain to notice.

Many customers will overlook other offenses, but tampering with their food is where they draw the line.

They will undoubtedly complain about you, and DoorDash will know that you’ve tampered.

In these cases, you may be facing DoorDash deactivation, so it’s best to avoid touching or messing with your customers’ orders.

7. Misusing Promotions or Red Cards

Because DoorDash offers benefits and promotions, especially for those who are signing up to be Dashers for the first time, people have tried to take advantage of as many bonuses as possible.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to get extra bonuses by cheating the system.

Sometimes people sign up to be Dashers from multiple different accounts.

This will immediately flag you in the DoorDash system because their algorithm can detect this.

Additionally, sometimes people will try to make endless referrals or referrals only to themselves but through different accounts.

This, too, can be detected easily by the DoorDash algorithm.

Lastly, DoorDash offers a Red Card which is like a debit card that only functions for DoorDash order payments made by Dashers.

If you purchase anything other than the approved DoorDash orders with this card, you will be in severe contract violation.

8. Inappropriate Contact With Customers or Businesses

It should go without saying that you must be on your very best behavior while delivering for DoorDash.

If you physically or verbally assault anyone, specifically restaurant customers or workers of the local restaurant you’re picking up from, you will certainly get a contract violation.

In general, try to be as polite and appropriate as possible.

DoorDash will not condone inappropriate, unbecoming behavior. Such violations will result in deactivation.

Do DoorDash Contract Violations Go Away?

Yes, DoorDash violations go away after 100 violation-free deliveries.

And because one violation will not get you deactivated, you don’t have to worry if you encounter just one.

Even if you are perfectly polite and punctual, you will inevitably get some bad ratings or reviews.

Sometimes this is because the customer is seeing if they can get reimbursement for their delivery, or perhaps the customer is simply hard to please.

DoorDash understands this is normal.

For this reason, if you get an occasional contract violation once in a while, you will not receive any consequences.

How to Get Rid of DoorDash Contract Violations

If you have received a contract violation that you can prove untrue, you can reach out to DoorDash to appeal the violation.

If DoorDash determines that the contract violation was untrue, DoorDash will remove the contract violation from your record.

If the contract violation is something that did happen, you can remove the contract violation by simply delivering 100 more times successfully.

It will then fall off and your account will be free of violations.

How Many Contract Violations Before Deactivation From DoorDash?

There is not a set number of contract violations that DoorDash publishes as the deactivation mark.

Generally, it seems to depend on what the contract violations are.

Sometimes, if the violations are severe, it takes very few and sometimes only one.

For example, deactivation is inevitable in the case of an incident coming up in a new background check.

But in other cases, Dashers on various platforms have reported being able to accumulate up to six contract violations within 100 deliveries and still not being deactivated.

Will DoorDash Deactivate Me for 1 Contract Violation?

No, they will not.

There may be cases where the violation is severe (like a background check not coming back clean or physically assaulting a customer), but one contract violation will not deactivate you.

Official Contract Violation Policy

You can find DoorDash’s violation and deactivation policy here to examine how violating the contract can affect you and your activation on DoorDash.

You can also find the full Independent Contractor Agreement contract here.

It outlines everything you need to know and everything you’re expected to abide by as a Dasher.

If you ever have any doubts or questions about expectations and contractual obligations, it is better to reach out to DoorDash and get answers for yourself.

How Do You Know if You Have Been Deactivated on DoorDash?

There are two different ways that DoorDash will let you know that you have been deactivated from their app.

They’re outlined below.

App Notification

In the DoorDash app, you will immediately receive a notification that you have been deactivated.

This notification may even come in the middle of a delivery.

Often, the deactivation will come without warning.

Because there is no set number of contract violations that will result in deactivation, you can never know when one is coming.

Email

In addition to getting an alert in your DoorDash app, you will also receive an email.

This is where you can learn more about your deactivation.

If you submit an appeal, the email will tell you this.

It will also provide you with instructions on how to do so if you think you have been wrongly deactivated.

Some deactivations, however, are unable to be appealed.

You would not be able to ever reactivate your DoorDash account.

How to Get Reactivated on DoorDash

You must go through the appeal process to reactivate yourself as a Dasher on DoorDash.

If you can appeal, you can follow the steps below.

Appeal a Deactivation

When appealing your deactivation, tell DoorDash that what they think happened did not happen or perhaps occurred differently than they think.

If your explanation is accepted, you could successfully be reactivated back onto the DoorDash app.

Step by Step Instructions for Appealing

Here are the steps for appealing your deactivation:

First, read your deactivation email thoroughly.

See what DoorDash says happened and see if you can successfully appeal this.

If you pursue an appeal against the deactivation, you can access the DoorDash Deactivation Appeals link here.

Enter the requested information into the form.

It will ask you what the reason for your deactivation was, and after that, it will ask you to provide proof of your reasons for reactivation.

Lastly, submit the form with the proper information and documentation filled out.

From here, it’s just a waiting game for DoorDash to respond.

Reach Out to Customer Service

Finally, if you’re hoping to inquire about your appeal process or get some answers on contract violations, you can reach out to DoorDash’s customer service.

Their phone number is (855) 431-0459, or you can reach them online here.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it’s important to remember each contract violation and avoid them.

Of course, extenuating circumstances can happen, and you may receive a violation.

If you have a small number of violations in minor areas, you should not be worried about being deactivated.

Just be sure to continue to be on your best behavior going forward.

After 100 more deliveries, the contract violation will fall off your record.

And if you were not lucky enough to avoid the contract violations and ended up being deactivated, be sure to check if you’re able to appeal or not.