![]() ![]() Referral fee: If Pros offer their services to customers outside the platform, they will be charged a referral fee of $100.Early departure fee: Handy informs its Pros that if they leave a job “ before completing the entire service, and without the customer’s explicit approval,” they will be charged a $15 early departure fee.It does make clear that Pros are expected to wait around for 30 minutes in case the customer is “ just running late”. Late arrival fee: Since late arrival “ causes customer displeasure,” Handy charges Pros a $15 late arrival fee when they show up past the scheduled start time of a job without “promptly communicating with the customer.” What exactly counts as late arrival (five minutes? 10? 20?) Handy does not make clear on its website.This fee is meant to underscore the fact that “ Handy has a very low tolerance for missing jobs.” If a Pro misses another job within 28 days, he or she will be permanently deactivated from the platform. Missed job fee: If a Pro does not show up at all, without giving notice, he or she is charged $50.These fees are, according to the company, intended to avoid “last-minute” cancellations that “erode customer trust and prevent other professionals from claiming the job.” Cancellation fee: In the US and Canada, Handy charges a $10 fee when a Pro cancels between 24 and 48 hours before the scheduled job, a $20 fee when the cancellation is between four and 24 hours beforehand, and a $40 fee when the Pro cancels four hours or less in advance.Currently, the company charges the following disciplinary fees to cleaners: Most other fees serve a disciplinary, punitive function. The first fee all Handy Pros are required to pay is a “background check fee” deducted from her or his first wages. By most accounts, the fees are easy to incur, can be hard to avoid, and seriously destabilize the income stream these cleaners are trying to establish and maintain. ![]() These fees-levied for a variety of “offenses” like leaving a job early or arriving to a job late-in some cases kept some Pros tied to the platform by creating a situation of debt bondage in which they spend periods of time working solely to pay off their debt to the company, which deducts all outstanding fees from their earnings. While recent research has usefully shown how gig economy companies nudge workers toward preferred modes of conduct by mobilizing some type of “carrot”-incentives used to encourage behaviors like working during busy times or logging a certain number of hours-many of the 19 Handy Pros who I interviewed for my research were more deeply affected by Handy’s frequent use of the “stick”, in the form of an elaborate system of fees like those mentioned above (an impact that was also described in a recent report from Data & Society). But while conducting ethnographic research on app-based cleaning work in New York City, as part of a five-year study funded by the European Research Council, I learned the extent to which Handy still influences its Pros’ behavior. These cleaners do not technically work for Handy, as they are classified as independent contractors-“Handy Pros”, in the company’s idiom-and ostensibly use the company’s platform as a service that gives them access to clients, thereby enabling them to grow their own businesses. ![]()
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