This Week in Uber Driver Rants
With Daylight Savings comes changes in human behavior and eating habits. Somehow what is also happening is a shift in business hours. Let’s discuss.
Bottlenecks
I’m seeing a return to 5–6pm dinner orders where all the orders come in during that one hour. This results in overwhelmed restaurants and a lot of waiting. I went to an Indian restaurant and waiting about 15–20 minutes. I never do this but there were plenty of seats and I was feeling relaxed. Plus I knew it was that bottleneck hour and everywhere would be the same. A couple was waiting next to me and they gave up after about 10 mins of waiting for a table. I saw them walk out right after me.
My next stop was a popular taco shop order that was cleverly packaged with the Indian food order or I never would have accepted it. I think people realize what a mess it is trying to get food and salsa there and they try to outsmart the system. I overheard a guy saying he didn’t understand how his mobile order was 40-minutes passed the pickup time and still not ready. This happened to work and the cashier found his order somewhere in the line and brought it. So mobile ordering really doesn’t help. So people try to place delivery orders. Yet, after about 10 minutes of waiting and gathering salsa and waiting and avoiding the pit of people, and re-checking the completed pile of orders to no avail, I cancelled and ran away very annoyed. You can’t get blood from a stone and you can’t rush tacos from a kitchen 50 orders deep. Whoever that poor shmuck was that came after that order after me hopefully had better luck. Think about it though. I had already driven to two restaurants and waiting a combined 30 minutes and the order was placed even earlier. So, I think the lesson is to order food at least 90-minutes early if ordering from somewhere popular around dinner time.
Location
Through experience and mistakes, I’ve come to learn the location logic of Uber Eats. Somewhere in the secret sauce of the Uber algorithm, a pickup location is selected though it often makes no sense geographically, or at least there is not consistent pattern to it. Sometimes it is near the driver. Sometimes it is closer to the customer location. Sometimes it is neither. There might be one or two McDonald’s locations that are closer or even on the way. The driver may actually be inside a Vons but be directed to another one 5 miles away to shop.
What happens if you shop at a different store anyway? What if you just buy that customer’s bottle of wine right where you are and tell the app you are done and ready to deliver. Well, I did this by accident. The app is very particular about where the driver is at each step of the progression of the delivery. This is true of another driver app I use as well. So, I bought the wine at the wrong, but convenient Vons and the app blocked me from completing the pickup. I had to drive to the other Vons. Now, in retrospect, I think I may have been able to just complete that purchase from the parking lot rather than return the wine and go shopping for it again at the designated store. The lesson is really that drivers must be aware to geographically be at or near the expected location to advance the process on the app.
Another case in point. Tonight and last night I have gotten at least four orders to closed restaurants. By the fourth, I thought it was time to start validating store hours before driving there. I called on the fourth order and found that sure enough, that restaurant just closed. 10-minutes saved right? Normally drivers are given $3 for their trouble if they cancel after driving to a closed restaurant. Can I have the $3 for my research and save the planet a little wasted gas here? Nope. Neither the app nor the driver support people will let you cancel until you are physically at the location. Further they now ask for photos to verify and they call to verify the closure. That’s a lot for $3, so likely the poor soul who got my cancelled taco order also got to drive to closed restaurant #4 for $3. That’s how cancelling works in most cases. It just goes to another driver unless a call is made to convince Uber support to stop the madness. You often see situations that make it impossible to complete an order but support is so backed up on the phone lines that driver after driver is given the same request only to cancel it on the app (which just releases them from the order) rather than call and get it stopped (killing the order). Hot potatoes of failure with zero reimbursement.
I won’t go into carding the elderly for booze or the new ‘Scan an Item barcode’ logic. Okay actually two notes on the barcodes. Does Uber not know delivery bags from Go Puff are sealed? Doesn’t matter anyway. I had an open bag and none of the barcodes matched anything in the order. I think they bought a fake database of product barcodes.
I’m sure your life is filled with workarounds also. Sometimes it’s nice just knowing you’re not alone.