Changes to the DoorDash and Uber Eats apps are costing New York City food delivery workers millions of dollars in tips, according to a new report from a city agency.

The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) claims the companies made design changes to their apps that made it harder for customers to tip delivery workers after the city began implementing a minimum wage rate in December 2023.

According to reportaverage tips for both apps fell to $0.93 per delivery from $3.66 within a week of the new designs rolling. That decline continues. The current average tip on apps now sits at $0.76 per delivery, resulting in an estimated $554 million in lost tip income for delivery workers. The agency says that translates to roughly $5,800 in lost annual income per worker.

For context, the current average for other food delivery apps is $2.17, according to the report.

“Under Mayor Mamdani, the world’s largest corporations will no longer be able to rake in record profits on the backs of workers and consumers,” said DCWP Commissioner Samuel AA Levine in a press release.

The city agency claims that Uber Eats and DoorDash are switching tip prompts after checkout, forcing customers to navigate a separate, “easy-to-use” process.

“DCWP’s claims, and subsequent reporting, are false. To be clear: no money was stolen from Dashers. Consumers were not misled. Dashers always receive 100% of the tips placed by DoorDash,” said DoorDash Head of North America Public Policy John Horton in a statement emailed to Gizmodo.

DoorDash also launched a webpage push back the findings of the report.

“Transferring the tip after checkout is not novel or bad – it’s how tipping works in many areas of life. In fact, the DCWP proposed this exact method in their 2022 study. We followed that proposal and now they’re attacking us for it,” said Horton, referring to a different report the agency published while former Mayor Eric Adams was in office examining how a minimum wage rate would affect shipping applications.

The report said higher wages for workers would give delivery platforms the option to “reduce costs to consumers through user interface changes that discourage or eliminate tipping.”

Uber Eats did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The new report comes just days before the DCWP plans to begin implementing new amendments to the city’s delivery worker laws. The changes require food delivery apps to give New York City customers clear, user-friendly options for tipping delivery workers.

DoorDash and Uber Eats sued the city last month in an attempt to block the changes from taking effect. The court has yet to issue a ruling, meaning the department plans to go ahead and implement the law starting January 26.

“If these companies do not comply with the new tipping laws that will go into effect later this month, they will face serious consequences,” Levine said.

This isn’t the first time DoorDash has come under fire in New York over workers’ wages.

Early last year, the New York Attorney General’s office announced a $16.75 million settlement with DoorDash after learning that the company misled customers and delivery workers about how to handle tips.

The AG’s investigation focused on DoorDash’s “guaranteed payment” model, which was used between May 2017 and September 2019. Under that model, workers indicated how much they would earn for an order before they accepted it, but customer tips were used to cover the guaranteed amount, rather than increase it.