659 Uber Eats Deliveries Down, $1000 lost
I confess I never wanted to be an Uber Eats delivery driver. I actually applied first with Door Dash, but was gently told three different times that they do not need me due to the number of existing drivers in my area. I think three times was excessive. Imagine if that was your boyfriend or girlfriend breaking up with you. I GET IT, YOU’RE POPULAR WITH THE OTHER BOYS. They did let me know they would keep me in mind if anyone dropped off their list. After about a month however I was ghosted. I do run into those Door Dash drivers however and I’m tempted to ask about Door Dash and how it’s doing and if they are happy together, but I refrain.
I went on to joining forces with Uber Eats instead and they happily added me though it was rocky even from the start. Their website continually forced me down the erroneous route of becoming a passenger driver only to reject me because I have a two-door car. In the words of Morrissey, ‘rejection is one thing, but rejection from a fool is cruel’. I persisted and eventually a support person sorted it all out and I was off. Let the record state that I would have been gone had it not for Uber Eats pursuing me at this point. I was looking into many side gigs and still unclear whether Door Dash and I were through.
What I really wanted to know before I started with Uber Eats was a list of tips on things to do and things not to do. I found strategy advice on orders which I later learned make no sense in California due to how Prop 22 pay comes into play with Uber Eats. So now, months later and 659 deliveries in, I will share my list of current pitfalls, dangers, and annoyances for anyone else who might be getting started or considering it. This education has cost me approximately $1000 and I’ll offer it here for free.
Cancels
Uber Eats records, tracks, and sometimes punishes drivers based on number of cancelled orders. You try to maintain your good street “cred”, but the streets are the streets and things happen. You get sent to stores that are closed, stores with broken order systems, lost orders, or stores that ran out of whatever was ordered. None of these can be predicted and none of these are reimbursed. Cancellations will cost a driver time, gas, and wear and tear, though mileage deductions on taxes are still possible. Estimated losses to date: $50. Best practice to avoid: don’t pick up fast food or convenience store orders.
Bundled Orders
This is a fun game. Orders pop up in the Uber Eats app and the driver has about 15 seconds to decide to accept or it goes away. Details of these offers includes name of store, general area of drop off, and estimated value to the driver. If there is any indication that the offer is actually a bundle of deliveries, I don’t remember ever seeing that. It is always a surprise, though sometimes you can guess it when the total offer value is north of $12. There is no real way to avoid these scenarios and generally they work out okay, but sometimes they are just a money loss.
For example, last week I picked up four orders from an Apple store that went to three different homes in generally the same area, but one home was about five miles from the other two. One of the homes was challenging to find and all were about 10 miles from the Apple store. Total estimated value paid: $6. Total time spent: approximately one hour. Now in California, I will get paid about $9 instead for the 30-mins or so of ‘active’ driving time and $0.30 per mile for ‘active’ miles. So maybe this trip was worth about $14 in pre-tax money when that supplement money comes in and another $0.625 x 20 miles, or $12.50 in mileage tax deductions to cover the gas, etc. At least that’s my guess. None of these three orders tipped.
When I contacted support, they do what I’ve come to learn they always do. They have a nice person with a fairly heavy Indian accent answer and record your complaint. They then respond in an hour or two with a generic response stating they reviewed the details when they did not. In this case, all of the restaurant charges were in line with policy. What!?!!? First, this was not even a restaurant delivery and what policy pays $6 for three deliveries? Remember that this can be multiple restaurants as well as multiple customers. The math here is much more difficult, but there are many long bundled deliveries where you hunt for apartments, usually without a valid phone number or gate code and spend an hour for about $10. Estimated losses to date: $50 Best practice to avoid: Nothing you can do unless you notice this on the pop-up, but again I don’t think it tells you.
Shop and Pay
Uber Eats is also involved in an Instacart-like business where the driver will typically go to a store, shop, pay, and deliver. Grocery deliveries take me an average of three mins per item to find and I typically have about fifteen to twenty items. The pay is usually higher but we’re still talking about $14 for the hour or most likely the $18 minimum Prop 22 hour’s pay (minimum wage + 20%).
Problems here are numerous, especially with the latest attempt to verify product barcodes. I will list the chain of Uber Eats failures from a single, seemingly simple order last night:
- Substitutions Break Everything — Order is three items. One is a large bag of Halloween candy which the store did not carry. This is normal of course and happens on virtually every one of these orders. The options are to remove item from shopping list or substitute for a less expensive one that is presumably agreed upon by contacting the customer. About 70% of the time, the customer is unable to be contacted. They don’t respond to messaging in the app and they can’t be reached by phone. Cancelling the item makes the app happy and you can sail through the payment process. Substituting will cause an error for the same price item or a higher price item and block this action. If the driver pretend to remove the item and then pay anyway, the Uber Eats payment card blocks the transaction at the register. If the driver attempts to use their own card, the app will ask if they are using their own card and will block this as well when it realizes there are any differences in the receipt total. Now the driver is really screwed because they cannot see the address of the customer and a cancellation means they also won’t see the customer’s address and will likely not be reimbursed for anything including the drive, time, payment, etc. Support will suggest calling the customer for the address (hopefully you can reach them or you will have to cancel and take a loss as noted in Cancels above). Support then suggests to call back to have them help clear the order and pay you, however this depends on a clear picture of the receipt being submitted and you being able to reach them again before they close for the evening. If Support has left for the day, the app is stuck and after a few minutes will think the driver is in some sort of trouble and continues to send safety messages. The driver could cancel and hope to sort all this out later or do nothing and hope the police are not called by the app. Estimated losses to date: $50 Best practice to avoid: Never do Shop and Pay Orders.
Phishing Scams
I will admit that this is partly on me, but it is also on Uber Eats.
To set the stage, drivers get paid out each week on Tuesdays, so they have the most in their accounts on Sundays before the time sheets, as it were, are pulled. Every other week in California the Prop 22 supplement money is also included which is about $150-$400 depending on how much driving you did the previous two weeks. So a couple weeks ago, I had just short of $900 in my account.
The Scam — after an afternoon nap, I turn the app on and get a small order from McDonalds (see my note above about never accepting fast food orders). I few minutes later the phone rings, I ignore it. Then a few more minutes and it rings again with a different number. I assume it is the customer based on timing. It is instead a scammer, who I believe had my number from the McDonald’s order. The man on the other end tells me he is from Uber Eats and that there is a customer complaint about a ‘broken order’ and they are sorting it out. He says to cancel the order and he will call me back and will offer a $25 gift card for my trouble. He asks about whether I can verify my account by telling him my number of orders for the day and the amount of money currently in my account for the week. He says thanks and he’ll call back in an hour. He calls back much later in the day and offers to give me a gift card number to enter in my ‘Wallet’ in the app. I enter the card number, expiration date, and validation number. He tells me to log out and log back into the app and it will ask me to validate who I am and that’s it. The validation step is a facial recognition step which does not say why it is asking to verify you and it does this periodically anyway. The scammer is able to access my account and initiate an ‘Instant Pay’. Now this is midnight and I am again not totally focused here, but I don’t see how this could be a problem. After all, I did not give him any of my account information or card information. He asks me to confirm those steps are complete. When I say they are completed, he hangs up. That seems strange and I immediately have a sense that this was some kind of trick. I delete the card and notice that ‘Instant Pay’ was successful draining all the money for the week, presumably onto that card. I change my password just in case and start calling support. I report it in three different calls and each time they say the complaint is escalated to their security team and each time they send a general email response saying they looked into it and everything looks fine. They close the cases and send me surveys. Estimated losses to date: $900 Best practice to avoid: Never add cards to your Wallet, share information with Uber or anyone else about your account, and in my opinion, never take a customer call because they never help and they only bring drama.
There is my list of pitfalls and stories. I hope you enjoyed them and perhaps can live a better existence because of them.