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Uber crushed themselves in food. As a customer, I would get the wrong food about half the time in NYC even pre-pandemic. I complained and got a refund the firs

Uber crushed themselves in food. As a customer, I would get the wrong food about half the time in NYC even pre-pandemic. I complained and got a refund the first couple of times but then they stopped refunding me when it kept happening. Clearly thought I was fraudulently trying to get meals for free. Thing is, I’ve been a customer since the black car only days. Been Uber VIP for my high rating as a customer. Problem wasn’t with me. If they can’t get quality control done with their restaurants then they don’t deserve my money. I’d rather go direct. I’ve never had a problem go unresolved going direct. In fact, I’ll often use Uber to find a restaurant near me and then call them direct to order to avoid their lousy customer service.

voz_ 4y ago
I think your NYC centric anecdote kinda reinforces my point, in an old-man-yells-at-cloud kinda way. The eats usecase was supposed to be around delivery for places that did not already offer it. If you are talking about the eats experience vs in house delivery, that's kind of an edge case...
- nrmitchi 4y ago
  “Supposed to be around delivery for places that did not already offer it” is beside thee point. It isn’t an excuse to be so terrible across the board (but note this isn’t unique to Uber and DoorDash is pretty terrible as well)
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  I’m not sure I agree. People in NYC are in for the market - you just have to beat the existing haphazard setup, create a unified payment and support and order taking platform, and do as well as the incumbents in delivery quality.
- rexf 4y ago
  Disagree. If a restaurant is listed on uber eats, the customer (johnebgd) should expect to get their order right the vast majority of time. Why should it be the customer's problem to figure out the implementation detail (delivery for new places, not in-house)?
ravenstine 4y ago
Most restaurants are horrendously incompetent when dealing with delivery apps. I know because I once drove delivery for a few apps for about 6 months. The vast majority of restaurants treat delivery apps as easy side cash and don't take it very seriously. Depending on the restaurant, since the employees don't see you as a real customer, they'll rush things and miss items. They almost never report orders as being ready through the app, which would make it easier for drivers to schedule their drives and get in and out faster. The result is drivers show up and end up waiting because even after 30 minutes the food still isn't ready when they arrive. The tablet the restaurant is using could be completely off or dead but they won't bother signing on to the GrubHub/Doordash website to stop taking orders. Most of the time, restaurant staff doesn't give a fuck, which is stupid because restaurant staff also tends to hate delivery drivers. Why the hell would you not get the manager to sign in to the website and prevent drivers from coming in and wasting your time? On the other side of the coin, these delivery apps also don't give a fuck. I was way above average in terms of the effort I put in as a delivery driver, but no matter what you're gonna get customers blaming you for things you couldn't have prevented. A bunch of times the customer opened the bag at the door (this was before the pandemic), find an item missing, then scowl at me while telling me they're gonna complain to the app. Not once did I ever get reprimanded by an app or receive fewer orders. I kept in touch with a bunch of other delivery drivers, many of which were far lazier than I was and admitted to screwing things up, and none of them every got so much as an email for forgetting drinks too many times or being way too late. The only way you can really get fired from these apps, absent doing something illegal, is if the area the driver is in just doesn't have enough people ordering food to make it worth paying the driver. Oh yeah, I did a little driving for Uber Eats, btw. Most delivery drivers I knew at the time looked at Uber Eats as the "slut" of delivery apps. It paid the worst, the customers were cheapskates, but you also got lots of McDonalds and KFC orders through it, so it was only really good for if you could fit one of those orders in on the way to another delivery. I stopped doing it pretty early on because Uber Eats effectively had no meaningful driver support. At least GrubHub could be reached, even if it wasn't always helpful. Good luck reaching Uber as a driver in 2018. IMO, Uber had no business competing in the food delivery space. I think people overlooked all these issues because we've been in the honeymoon phase of the post-2008 economy with all these "innovative" mobile apps doing amazing things, so we largely overlooked both the bad customer service and ridiculous pricing. Gradually, the rest of the economy will adapt to not rely so much on the likes of Uber unless something changes. And I would say the same thing about a lot of other aspects of the food economy as a whole. Much of it is of underwhelming quality and the customer service tends to suck, and now it's more expensive than it's worth. If you're gonna eat a bunch of carbs and glorified dog meat with some fake cheez product, you might as well do it at home for a third of the price, if not less than that.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
"DoorDash Introduces Premium DoorDash+ Service Where They Will Actually Attempt To Get Your Order Right"
Nextgrid 4y ago
I had the same thing happen with Deliveroo despite being a "volume customer" ordering multiple times per day and providing proof of the wrong orders every time the app asks. My conclusion is that these services are based on the idea that the customer will "eat" (pun intended) a certain amount of wrong or missing orders. Completely illegal and in breach of card network regulations (I won a chargeback against Uber for the same reason) but the law doesn't apply to big companies.

voz_ 4y ago

I think your NYC centric anecdote kinda reinforces my point, in an old-man-yells-at-cloud kinda way. The eats usecase was supposed to be around delivery for places that did not already offer it. If you are talking about the eats experience vs in house delivery, that's kind of an edge case...

nrmitchi 4y ago
“Supposed to be around delivery for places that did not already offer it” is beside thee point. It isn’t an excuse to be so terrible across the board (but note this isn’t unique to Uber and DoorDash is pretty terrible as well)
edmundsauto 4y ago
I’m not sure I agree. People in NYC are in for the market - you just have to beat the existing haphazard setup, create a unified payment and support and order taking platform, and do as well as the incumbents in delivery quality.
rexf 4y ago
Disagree. If a restaurant is listed on uber eats, the customer (johnebgd) should expect to get their order right the vast majority of time. Why should it be the customer's problem to figure out the implementation detail (delivery for new places, not in-house)?

ravenstine 4y ago

Most restaurants are horrendously incompetent when dealing with delivery apps. I know because I once drove delivery for a few apps for about 6 months. The vast majority of restaurants treat delivery apps as easy side cash and don't take it very seriously. Depending on the restaurant, since the employees don't see you as a real customer, they'll rush things and miss items. They almost never report orders as being ready through the app, which would make it easier for drivers to schedule their drives and get in and out faster. The result is drivers show up and end up waiting because even after 30 minutes the food still isn't ready when they arrive. The tablet the restaurant is using could be completely off or dead but they won't bother signing on to the GrubHub/Doordash website to stop taking orders. Most of the time, restaurant staff doesn't give a fuck, which is stupid because restaurant staff also tends to hate delivery drivers. Why the hell would you not get the manager to sign in to the website and prevent drivers from coming in and wasting your time? On the other side of the coin, these delivery apps also don't give a fuck. I was way above average in terms of the effort I put in as a delivery driver, but no matter what you're gonna get customers blaming you for things you couldn't have prevented. A bunch of times the customer opened the bag at the door (this was before the pandemic), find an item missing, then scowl at me while telling me they're gonna complain to the app. Not once did I ever get reprimanded by an app or receive fewer orders. I kept in touch with a bunch of other delivery drivers, many of which were far lazier than I was and admitted to screwing things up, and none of them every got so much as an email for forgetting drinks too many times or being way too late. The only way you can really get fired from these apps, absent doing something illegal, is if the area the driver is in just doesn't have enough people ordering food to make it worth paying the driver. Oh yeah, I did a little driving for Uber Eats, btw. Most delivery drivers I knew at the time looked at Uber Eats as the "slut" of delivery apps. It paid the worst, the customers were cheapskates, but you also got lots of McDonalds and KFC orders through it, so it was only really good for if you could fit one of those orders in on the way to another delivery. I stopped doing it pretty early on because Uber Eats effectively had no meaningful driver support. At least GrubHub could be reached, even if it wasn't always helpful. Good luck reaching Uber as a driver in 2018. IMO, Uber had no business competing in the food delivery space. I think people overlooked all these issues because we've been in the honeymoon phase of the post-2008 economy with all these "innovative" mobile apps doing amazing things, so we largely overlooked both the bad customer service and ridiculous pricing. Gradually, the rest of the economy will adapt to not rely so much on the likes of Uber unless something changes. And I would say the same thing about a lot of other aspects of the food economy as a whole. Much of it is of underwhelming quality and the customer service tends to suck, and now it's more expensive than it's worth. If you're gonna eat a bunch of carbs and glorified dog meat with some fake cheez product, you might as well do it at home for a third of the price, if not less than that.

rufus_foreman 4y ago

"DoorDash Introduces Premium DoorDash+ Service Where They Will Actually Attempt To Get Your Order Right"

Nextgrid 4y ago

I had the same thing happen with Deliveroo despite being a "volume customer" ordering multiple times per day and providing proof of the wrong orders every time the app asks. My conclusion is that these services are based on the idea that the customer will "eat" (pun intended) a certain amount of wrong or missing orders. Completely illegal and in breach of card network regulations (I won a chargeback against Uber for the same reason) but the law doesn't apply to big companies.