I don't order delivery food, but I recently learned my Amazon Prime membership includes GrubHub Premium membership, and fees were waived, so I said why not give it a try.

The no-fee price for the order was $70. Going directly to the restaurant website would have been $38. Item prices were higher, there was a non-fee driver fee, and there was a non-fee order fee. I shudder to think how many more fees there would have been if I were a non-non-fee member.

The only advantage I can see from DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates et al. is that they provide a directory of places willing to deliver to me. For that, every restaurant suffers from 80% higher delivery prices, or faces the challenge of advertising itself against all the delivery platform giants. I fail to see how anyone but the platforms have benefited from this new normal.

There has to be another name for this than mere rent-seeking or scalping. Extortion?