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I’ve had food sitting at restaurants for over an hour before while Uber attempts to find a driver. After a particularly frustrating instance where Uber told me

by ssharp 5y ago

I’ve had food sitting at restaurants for over an hour before while Uber attempts to find a driver. After a particularly frustrating instance where Uber told me to cancel but didn’t refund me for me, I did manage to find a support inbox that’s read by an escalation team and I had a real life human calling from SF let me know that they would refund me. The effort it took to get the refund was ridiculous though as every contact option Uber presented me resulted in robo responses telling me since I initiated the cancel that I’d be responsible for food costs, even when I included chat screenshots of their agents telling me to cancel.

pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
> I’ve had food sitting at restaurants for over an hour before while Uber attempts to find a driver. If you're in a metro area ordering during ordinary hours and having this happen, it's almost certainly because the restaurant has developed a bad reputation and people refuse to work with them. The thing about Uber's intermediation is that if you had this sort of experience by ordering directly through the restaurant, you'd rightly associate the experience with the restaurant's failures, but with Uber, it feels like Uber failing. > a particularly frustrating instance where Uber told me to cancel but didn’t refund me for me UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food. They have no special powers here. Expecting one to refund "for" you is like having a mail person show up at your door and then berating them for the screwup of whatever business sent you the wrong thing, etc.
- ShroudedNight 5y ago
  > UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food. This is to be expected, but it's not clear how this is relevant to your parent given it appears to have been Uber customer-service agents directing them to cancel, not a driver.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > the restaurant has developed a bad reputation and people refuse to work with them Do you mean delivery drivers refuse to pick up from there? How is that a customer's problem? That's a potential breach of contract between Uber and the delivery drivers. Uber Eats positions itself as an end-to-end managed service where you pay money to receive delivered food, and charges hefty fees (on both sides of the transaction) for doing so. It's up to them to make sure this works by implementing appropriate penalties for drivers or restaurants who default. However in typical Silicon Valley fashion their business model is to screw everyone so I'm sure the restaurants and delivery drivers have equally little recourse when things go wrong or to provide feedback so bad/misbehaving actors are allowed to remain as long as it's not causing a problem for Uber. > UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food Not really. FedEx/USPS doesn't manage the customer relationship, doesn't broker the transaction nor takes a fee off the transaction amount itself.
  - pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
    > Do you mean delivery drivers refuse to pick up from there? How is that a customer's problem? It's not (necessarily), but it's not the drivers' problem, either. It's the restaurant's problem—just like it's their problem if no customers want to do business with them because their food tastes bad, or if their suppliers refuse to do business with them because they're always late paying invoices, etc. > That's a potential breach of contract between Uber and the delivery drivers. You can't have a breach of contract for contracts you don't pick up... Or are you implying that you believe the relationship between Uber and their contractors is/should be one where the driver has to take every offer that Uber sends them? If so, are you a freelancer? How would you feel about an arrangement where, because you agreed to work with Marcy in Q2, then when Albert comes to you in Q3 and wants some work done, you have to take it no matter how bad Albert's offer is—e.g. one which very well might turn out to have you working for less than minimum wage—or without regard for whether you find Albert to be a loathsome, demanding prick? > FedEx/USPS doesn't manage the customer relationship, doesn't broker the transaction Neither do UberEATS drivers. That's the entire point of the metaphor. (Having said that, I misread your original comment, which other comments have pointed out.)
- ssharp 5y ago
  > UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food. They have no special powers here. Expecting one to refund "for" you is like having a mail person show up at your door and then berating them for the screwup of whatever business sent you the wrong thing, etc. I'm not sure what this means exactly or how it's relevant. In these instances, it's not the driver's fault, it's Uber's fault. They are taking orders they can't fulfill and then denying refunds when you cancel until you figure out how to escalate it to a human who can do things other than press canned-response buttons.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Uber Eats will lie and blame the restaurant for being slow when they can't find a driver. The order status will stay on "preparing your order" for an hour while I know full well (by calling the restaurant directly) that the food was ready for over an hour. Sometimes it'll switch to "driver on the way to pick up" and then back to "preparing your order" which makes no sense. Deliveroo is was similar in that aspect back in 2018, not sure if that's changed now. Regarding your refund, a chargeback is the typical way to deal with such scum, and the evidence (chat screenshots) will make it an open & shut case.
- ssharp 5y ago
  I usually at least make a decent attempt at resolving these types of conflicts before reporting to AMEX. Even though AMEX's chargeback process is probably the best of the credit card companies I've used, it's still not as ideal as simply getting the refund from the merchant, if possible. Oddly enough, I've NEVER had this issue with DoorDash. I think DoorDash simply makes restaurants unavailable if they don't have drivers, whereas UberEats ALWAYS takes the order and then simply doesn't fulfill it if they can't. What you say about "preparing your order" is 100% correct. There isn't a "waiting for driver" status, so if there is no driver on the way, it stays at "preparing..." This is a particularly terrible customer experience since you almost always time your deliveries so you eat them right when they get there and you are hungry when they arrive. By the time you realize Uber is not going to bother fulfilling your order, you've already probably been waiting 30 minutes, cannot cancel then without being charged, and have to start making other plans for food as you get hangrier and hangrier. It's even worse when you're getting food for the whole family delivered and have to deal with hangry kids!
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    I don't use Ubereats anymore because of multiple bad experiences, but I've found that often now even if you call the restaurant directly to order they will use Ubereats to deliver. If that happens, that is the last time I order from that restaurant.

by ssharp 5y ago

pwdisswordfish9 5y ago

> I’ve had food sitting at restaurants for over an hour before while Uber attempts to find a driver. If you're in a metro area ordering during ordinary hours and having this happen, it's almost certainly because the restaurant has developed a bad reputation and people refuse to work with them. The thing about Uber's intermediation is that if you had this sort of experience by ordering directly through the restaurant, you'd rightly associate the experience with the restaurant's failures, but with Uber, it feels like Uber failing. > a particularly frustrating instance where Uber told me to cancel but didn’t refund me for me UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food. They have no special powers here. Expecting one to refund "for" you is like having a mail person show up at your door and then berating them for the screwup of whatever business sent you the wrong thing, etc.

ShroudedNight 5y ago
> UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food. This is to be expected, but it's not clear how this is relevant to your parent given it appears to have been Uber customer-service agents directing them to cancel, not a driver.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> the restaurant has developed a bad reputation and people refuse to work with them Do you mean delivery drivers refuse to pick up from there? How is that a customer's problem? That's a potential breach of contract between Uber and the delivery drivers. Uber Eats positions itself as an end-to-end managed service where you pay money to receive delivered food, and charges hefty fees (on both sides of the transaction) for doing so. It's up to them to make sure this works by implementing appropriate penalties for drivers or restaurants who default. However in typical Silicon Valley fashion their business model is to screw everyone so I'm sure the restaurants and delivery drivers have equally little recourse when things go wrong or to provide feedback so bad/misbehaving actors are allowed to remain as long as it's not causing a problem for Uber. > UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food Not really. FedEx/USPS doesn't manage the customer relationship, doesn't broker the transaction nor takes a fee off the transaction amount itself.
- pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
  > Do you mean delivery drivers refuse to pick up from there? How is that a customer's problem? It's not (necessarily), but it's not the drivers' problem, either. It's the restaurant's problem—just like it's their problem if no customers want to do business with them because their food tastes bad, or if their suppliers refuse to do business with them because they're always late paying invoices, etc. > That's a potential breach of contract between Uber and the delivery drivers. You can't have a breach of contract for contracts you don't pick up... Or are you implying that you believe the relationship between Uber and their contractors is/should be one where the driver has to take every offer that Uber sends them? If so, are you a freelancer? How would you feel about an arrangement where, because you agreed to work with Marcy in Q2, then when Albert comes to you in Q3 and wants some work done, you have to take it no matter how bad Albert's offer is—e.g. one which very well might turn out to have you working for less than minimum wage—or without regard for whether you find Albert to be a loathsome, demanding prick? > FedEx/USPS doesn't manage the customer relationship, doesn't broker the transaction Neither do UberEATS drivers. That's the entire point of the metaphor. (Having said that, I misread your original comment, which other comments have pointed out.)
ssharp 5y ago
> UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food. They have no special powers here. Expecting one to refund "for" you is like having a mail person show up at your door and then berating them for the screwup of whatever business sent you the wrong thing, etc. I'm not sure what this means exactly or how it's relevant. In these instances, it's not the driver's fault, it's Uber's fault. They are taking orders they can't fulfill and then denying refunds when you cancel until you figure out how to escalate it to a human who can do things other than press canned-response buttons.

Nextgrid 5y ago

Uber Eats will lie and blame the restaurant for being slow when they can't find a driver. The order status will stay on "preparing your order" for an hour while I know full well (by calling the restaurant directly) that the food was ready for over an hour. Sometimes it'll switch to "driver on the way to pick up" and then back to "preparing your order" which makes no sense. Deliveroo is was similar in that aspect back in 2018, not sure if that's changed now. Regarding your refund, a chargeback is the typical way to deal with such scum, and the evidence (chat screenshots) will make it an open & shut case.

ssharp 5y ago
I usually at least make a decent attempt at resolving these types of conflicts before reporting to AMEX. Even though AMEX's chargeback process is probably the best of the credit card companies I've used, it's still not as ideal as simply getting the refund from the merchant, if possible. Oddly enough, I've NEVER had this issue with DoorDash. I think DoorDash simply makes restaurants unavailable if they don't have drivers, whereas UberEats ALWAYS takes the order and then simply doesn't fulfill it if they can't. What you say about "preparing your order" is 100% correct. There isn't a "waiting for driver" status, so if there is no driver on the way, it stays at "preparing..." This is a particularly terrible customer experience since you almost always time your deliveries so you eat them right when they get there and you are hungry when they arrive. By the time you realize Uber is not going to bother fulfilling your order, you've already probably been waiting 30 minutes, cannot cancel then without being charged, and have to start making other plans for food as you get hangrier and hangrier. It's even worse when you're getting food for the whole family delivered and have to deal with hangry kids!
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  I don't use Ubereats anymore because of multiple bad experiences, but I've found that often now even if you call the restaurant directly to order they will use Ubereats to deliver. If that happens, that is the last time I order from that restaurant.