Working for uber eats is a a choice.
Uber Eats undercover: Delivering your food for $1.74 an hour
Submitted 1 year ago by cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
sturmblast@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That isnt the point. Also is the US famously lacking in social safety nets and appropriate methods of bettering yourself are generally paywalled? So an unemployed person with no in come hs very little choice in getting work and have to take what they can.
Boot licker.
StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Uber Eating your mum is a choice.
hark@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This must be that innovation which is making the world a better place that these tech parasites keep gushing about.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I will never use uber so long as I shall live.
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
For drivers, the results are unpredictable and too often unfair. Data obtained by the Star shows Uber Eats’ platform can offer two food couriers different wages for the exact same trip.
Labour advocates charge that the app collects data on driver behaviour and can use it to decide who it can pay at a lower rate, allowing the company to pocket the difference and boost its revenue. This concept is widely referred to as algorithmic wage discrimination.
Wild
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
Wage discrimination sounds like a fancy way of saying wage theft.
Venator@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
Yep, it’s just when they only do wage theft on the most disadvantaged employees that are the least likely to sue them or quit as a result.
veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Time to change your name from Patel to Smith
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 year ago
It shouldn’t be a massive surprise. The whole platform exists as a way to circumvent minimum wage laws for drivers while taking a massive slice of restaurant profits.
No hygiene inspections either, half the places listed aren’t even restaurants or takeaways, it’s just in somebody’s house…
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Par for the course based on Uber’s history. I stopped using them in lieu of a local/community app…which is honestly absolute garbage, but it is essentially completely pass-through and free for my local area restaurants to use.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
I maintain that it would be realtively simple to create an open source version of an app/protocol like this that serves people’s needs for this exact use case, and if it were designed for any community to use, it could be essentially free as you say and high quality, and be a single point of service for everyone.
If this were done right it could put all these thin platforms out of business and allow delivery drivers to establish fair terms for themselves.
This would be a really good fit for federation I think.
PedroMaldonado@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Buddy, I cant use that service in any good concience…
gearheart@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I hear the smallest violin Everytime I hear about UberEATS executive complain about the company not being profitable.
I know GrubHub is bad too but I typically only pay a small fee of 3$ for their service and a tip of 20% to the driver.
Yet UberEATS usually includes a $10-15 UberEATS fee which the employee sees none of. Yet “oh no UberEATS is not profitable, oh no my 3rd yacht isn’t being enough”
Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Tipping culture caused this mess, meritocracy bullshit
Raiderkev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I only use eats if there’s a solid promo, and then I pick up the food myself. They don’t get the fee, I don’t have to tip, and I get the deal. A lot of time the price per item is cheaper on pickup too. Their fees are absolutely ridiculous, and they are just a middleman. They for sure are losing money on me.
Wrench@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Best to just call it in. Even for pick up, all these online providers take a huge cut, eating the profit margin from the people actually making the food you like.
I try to only use online orders for restaurants that have their own website cart. I do sometimes resort to the big ones when I’m busy / lazy, but I make a point to try to make sure the actual restaurant gets my money, because I want them to survive and keep making me tasty food.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I feel like you gotta go out of your way to make so little money doing this. If they actually did it correctly there would be no article to write. Not saying they would get rich but there’s no way they did this honestly.
Alpha71@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Spoken like someone who’s never done delivery work in their life.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I delivered pizza from high school through college. And now I own 2 business that we use third party delivery at. I can assure you literally no one makes this little on these apps even the people who are illegals and doing profit sharing with people with legal accounts make more.
rational_lib@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Many of the food couriers I worked alongside were young international students struggling to earn an income while they make their way through school. Others were refugees or undocumented workers, navigating precarious lives.
I honestly wonder if pretty much all of the surge in illegal immigration over the last 5 or 6 years comes down to Uber Eats.
theonlytruescotsman@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Given you need proof of residence, proof of registration and insurance, and a valid driver’s license (and valid itn or SSN) to do it, the article writer is either entirely making that part up, or the far right is correct in the absolute ridiculously improbably widespread unreported, unnoticed identity theft required for that to work.
NlGGER@leminal.space 1 year ago
$1 is already too much for what those monkeys do
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So how many lemmy users are going to stop using food delivery to avoid being complicit? Especially asking if you refused to vote for Kamala Harris because of Gaza - or you can rant about how it’s “not the same thing” lol.
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
This is… a weird gotcha. “You claim to be aginast murder, but sometimes you like to order Taco Bell! Checkmate, progressives!”
I personally voted for Harris despite being in California, but I can’t afford doordash for going out. It’s often:
- Meal Price (often but not always extra charges because fuck you, they can
- Service fees
- Driver fees
- Tip to get someone to deliver in my rural area
Meanwhile I can often walk to there and put in my order in the same amount of time. It’s often even cheaper to take the bus someplace, then take the bus back. Doordash makes more sense in an urban area, but I don’t live in one. And when I am in one, I’m often with a friend who knows how to drive.
TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I live in California where we attempted to pass a law that would force these companies to hire their drivers as employees. Every gig worker i know bought the corpo propaganda and voted against it. That was when I realized exactly how much of an education and media literacy problem we have in this country.
Raiderkev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
My buddy who was a driver at the time would try to convince the Uber drivers in the lot at the airport and they all believed the propaganda from TV and radio that was clearly paid for by Lyft and Uber. The majority of the American public are just not intelligent.
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
That law still pisses me off. I heard that it got a court check because of a clause in the amendment required a 7/8ths majorty vote in both the Senate and Assembly, but I don’t recall if the judge ruled to keep it or abolish it.
California can be such a great state, but sometimes we vote for the dumbest shit because companies lobbied for ads that make no sense but to the dumbest voter. The most recent set of props come to mind.
theonlytruescotsman@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
The problem with that law is many that qualify to deliver now, wouldn’t if they were considered employees, and a lot of homeless/near homeless deliver instead of begging.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The education and media literacy problem has been brewing for decades. Our culture is so entertainment addicted, lots of people can’t even take a shit without watching something on their phones. I had high hopes in a progressive victory and a slow turnaround, but Trump winning after everything that’s happened tells me we’ve gone over the event horizon into Idiocracy and collapse. Not looking forward to it.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I don’t buy through food delivery apps, I only order delivery if the store itself provides the service.
And I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris, not because of Gaza, but because she sucks in a lot of areas. I also didn’t vote for Trump because he also sucks in a lot of ways. My state is heavily partisan, so me voting for one or the other feels like more of a wasted vote than voting third party, because everyone knows which party will win my state before the primaries even start, so I might as well juice the third party numbers a bit.
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Last time I tried doing that I spent an hour trying to find a restaurant that still had delivery drivers on staff.
Fucking capitalism is killing everything.
otp@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
So how many lemmy users are going to stop using food delivery to avoid being complicit?
I generally avoid food delivery apps because of the extra cost either way…but if you have a problem with the wages, just tip more. Tip cash if you have it – there’s no way for the app to get its hands on that money!
Tregetour@lemdro.id 1 year ago
but if you have a problem with the wages, just tip more.
enabler | noun
en·abler i-ˈnā-b(ə-)lər
: one that enables another to achieve an end especially : one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior (such as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I either pick up the food myself or eat there and highly tip the server, because that’s how the system works right now - but long term it would be better if they got more wages and didn’t need to rely on generosity.
dx1@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I didn’t vote for Harris because she’s one of them. I also don’t use food delivery. Enjoying your feeling of superiority from pointing out the hypocrisy of random group intersections?
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Reading comprehension dude - I specifically addressed the Harris question to people who are in both categories.
NlGGER@leminal.space 1 year ago
Not a single soul lol they don’t even know what normal food is
dx1@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Doesn’t really seem to help when it still shows their username…
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
Uber eats is such a scam. When these new VC companies come on the block offering things that are to good to be true I am constantly saying “we shouldn’t support this unsustainable vc funded business, once they have market share they will have killed the competition and then they will raise their prices”
So many places used to deliver at reasonable prices but after years of uber delivering at way cheaper rates they stopped. Now uber delivers at $10 more.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah I liked the idea of Uber at first because taxis have been shitty for a long time and Uber was shaking up that industry.
But then I learned that Uber wasn’t making money and immediately realized that they were just looking better than taxis for as long as they needed to to drive them out of business so they can be even worse, while providing even less than taxis companies do. At least taxi companies have a relationship with their drivers while Uber was just a platform for connecting anonymous riders with almost as anonymous drivers and handling the financial aspect of it (so that they control it all as middlemen with control of the wallet).
So now I just use taxi services when I need a ride (while cursing the state of mass transit in North America and GM plus corrupt politicians for their role in making this like this).
Similar story with hotels/airbnb, though they’ve made it even worse because they are affecting the housing market itself rather than just the luxury service of staying somewhere while away from home.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Many reports of landlords evicting their tenants so they could turn their homes into airbnbs… Disgusting
minorkeys@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Which means it’s financially viable to compete with them again using their own drivers. Uber just trained an entire sector on delivery driving which is a larger pool of labour places can now draw from. And you can start by talking in person to the drivers who conveniently come directly to your business every day.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
No because after uber cornered the market uber raised the bar for what kind of fuckery is acceptable. Takeaway shops would do normal prices plus a $10 delivery fee. Now they can double their prices and have contractless uber drivers manage all their deliveries.
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
The awful part is, even without tipping the driver the food is drastically more expensive. The restaurant takes an extra cut, The delivery service takes an extra cut. This person’s delivering your food practically for free and the meal is already sit down restaurant price.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
My wife and I ran the numbers and, in our area, Uber Eats was pulling in about 1/4 to 1/3 the cost of the meal between charges to the restaurant and the customer. We were discussing opening a non-profit delivery service in our area. Turns out it’s pretty hard to do.
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Oh yeah, they’re going to want to see some serious reason why you shouldn’t be paying tax.
It’s a lot easier to start an SCorp or an LLC in the US. Starting the corporation’s not horribly expensive either
Since you’re not selling the product, you probably just need to pay the tax on The money they pay you to do the pickup. You need to start it more like a postmates where they ask you to go pick up the order they placed at some shop. But then I suspect you would have timing issues if you have a limited staff. You couldn’t just place the order and then wait a unlimited amount of time for it to show up.
Then there’s that daunting problem of when the store screws up the order. Because they always screw up the order.
But you’re still going to have to deal with labor laws, You’re going to need bonding, a CPA, advertising, presumably a web presence and software maybe across platform cell phone app. These are all things that get easier as the company gets bigger but are rather daunting it small scale.
I guess it’s kind of a tough business to break into. Owning my own car, I could place an order, drive to McDonald’s pick up the food and come back for pennies. Obviously that 30 minutes is my time but it’s time I would spend not making money else wise. Because I’m already spending a couple hundred a month on a car, it’s not worth very much for me to pay someone to bring me food. But at a livable wage, plus someone else’s maintenance, that’s probably $7 to $10, assuming there’s a limited number of orders they can pick up at once in a small area.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just one note, restaurant prices go up because uber eats charges a percentage based fee for each menu item. So, restaurants need to up the prices on the app just to make the same amount of money. Just some good ol’ under-the-table fuckery courtesy of Silicon Valley bastards.
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
In any case, when it cost me $20 more to get the meal through delivery, and f**** over a delivery person I’ve got a lot more incentive to drive 10 minutes to pick up food.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 1 year ago
I was just commenting on a thread about public transportation (there’s none where live) and someone commented that they’re moving to micro transportation by just buying a $3 Uber every time they need to go somewhere. Even if uber is only taking $1 of that, $2 isn’t paying someone to drive you somewhere. Uber drivers should make at least $30/hr.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Where can you take a $3 Uber? If I took an Uber to my next door neighbor’s house it would be more than $3.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 1 year ago
That’s what I was saying too. Maybe somewhere with much lower wages and cost of living.
wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
I haven’t done the math but if you don’t drive that much, did it beat their yearly costs (maintenance/insurance/gas)? Honestly that scheme is wild but makes total sense for a customer because not having to deal with car maintenance and insurance seems like a good tradeoff. I wonder when the dominos are all gonna tumble for these driving companies
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 1 year ago
I don’t know where the person who commented that lives, but you can’t get an Uber five blocks for under $10 around here. If I was that close and walkable I’d just walk. I do know uber is losing drivers locally though because they don’t pay enough, certainly not enough for people to maintain their cars. It’s predatory employment at this point, and it is becoming normalized.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Had a colleague that did it as a side gig and no matter how many times I told him to do it, he always refused to do the calculation to figure out how much he was making after expenses.
billwashere@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Living in denial is the only reason we aren’t already eating the rich.
shplane@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That and fear of imprisonment
Nusm@yall.theatl.social 1 year ago
I was going to do it as a side hustle, but then I found out that I would have to change the type of car insurance I have, and my rate would go up. If I didn’t and had an accident while delivering, my insurance company would 100% deny all claims - assuming they found out I guess. I want willing to risk it , and the higher premium cost made it unprofitable.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Honestly, I’m surprised insurance companies don’t actively pursue this. Like doing a side gig such as this would very easily increase the possibility of claims because you’re on the road, so financially speaking it would make sense for them to try to partner through those delivery apps or Research into whether someone is doing it professionally on the side.
Then again I guess it is more financially Justified for them to just milk your insurance money up until the point that you get into an accident and then deny your claim there for being a gig worker
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
externalizing costs. vehicle maintenance, insurance, wages… it’s all a ruse to get anyone else to pay their overheads without realizing it.
jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
I’ve never delivered for Uber Eats specifically, but I don’t know how they managed less than $2 an hour without doing obviously impractical things like trying to deliver at off hours, or in a poor area for it. I average about $27/hour. This is however, with GrubHub that has a wait list for drivers and they deliberately don’t overcrowd regions. Area really has a lot to do with it. I can imagine that if Uber doesn’t cap the amount of drivers in an area, a full on city is probably the worst example of a place to try it. I know that DoorDash is the same way in Atlanta, and the few times I have tried there, it wasn’t worth the trip. One thing you learn very fast through observations is that the “hot zones” mentioned in the article don’t matter. All they mean is that someone ordered from a place there before the map refreshed.
I guess my point here, is that the pay isn’t necessarily shit. You have to put in some leg work and learn the best areas around you as well as the times to work.
I do have a lot to say about doing this line of work with over 1k deliveries done across 3 apps, but it is kind of out of the scope of this comment unless someone asks.
SpaghettiYeti@lemmy.world 1 year ago
[deleted]jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
See my edit.
jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
I edited my comment to include a lot.
rbesfe@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
This was in Toronto, and to call the ebike courier job market here “oversaturated” would be an understatement.
Evotech@lemmy.world 1 year ago
27 an hour after expenses?
Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Considering that the average pay for doordash workers are usually between 15 to 20 an hour, I’m guessing that 27 an hour is before taking out for expenses.
27 an hour becomes 22.8/h after taxes (assuming you are in a state with no state income tax) minus whatever paid for fuel expenses, and that’s before you take into consideration the wear and tear on the vehicle and unless you are flying under the radar(bad idea they’ll refuse your claim or even drop you) the increase Insurance costs for using the vehicle commercially
cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I will definitely be interested to hear about your experience.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think the trick is you’ll never make it just driving for one service, you have to do Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, maybe even Instacart as well if you want to do it for a living.
Just like the people who drive for both Uber and Lyft.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Food delivery only made sense as an operating cost of the business, so third party delivery would have only made sense as something that the businesses subsidized. It also only makes sense if it is structured around the busy times of day as well.
I worked in a few businesses in the late 90s that offered delivery. In every case the delivery drivers were basically kitchen staff who went on deliveries OR the business itself was primarily delivery based in the first place and they still had the drivers do some other work around the place during downtime between meals. Both approaches spread the cost of the employees over more than the literal time delivering, because otherwise the cost per hour would be ridiculous. They also delivered food that held up to delivery times, so the food waiting 10-15 minutes before being delivered wasn’t an issue.
There was a reason that pizza places and Chinese restaurants frequently had delivery even in smaller towns while things like McDonald’s did not. The food held up to delivery and was frequently of a volume that made the restaurant subsidizing the cost of delivery feasible.
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I think the problem is: what they call a “Tip” is more like a “Bid”/“Offer”. People see “Tip” and thus believe its optional, I mean it technically is optional, but the base pay is like $2.50 so its customarily required. I think for even the shortest delivery of a place 10 minutes away with a 2 mile distance is supposed to tip at least $5. and if the delivery is done in 30 minutes, that’s an effective wage of $15/hour, that is, if they get orders back-to-back.
Customers don’t understand how this works and puts $0 as the “Tip”, buts its really a “Bid”, effectively making anyone who is willing to accept the order, to work below minimum wage. And also new drivers doesn’t understand how this works and acceepts orders without a good enough “Bid”, effectively working below minimum wage.
I mean, why even call it a “Tip” if its customarily required, just change the base pay to $7.50. So for an order that takes 30 minutes, its an effective wage of $15/house, assuming they get orders back-to-back. Much less confusion amongst both customers and drivers.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Americans be crazy. I never tipped in my life and ain’t about to start.
Womble@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“Let me help subsidise a company paying below minimum wage” totally normal not batshit insane idea.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think for even the shortest delivery of a place 10 minutes away with a 2 mile distance is supposed to tip at least $5. and if the delivery is done in 30 minutes, that’s an effective wage of $15/hour, that is, if they get orders back-to-back.
Since these shitty companies don’t provide vehicles or gas money most of that $15 is going to vehicle costs.
When I delivered for a pizza place in the late 90s in a midwest college town with my own car I got 15-20 per hour between base pay, gas and car use subsidy, and tips. That business was 90% deliveries, so the delivery was baked into the cost.
GnillikSeibab@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We don’t have to use that service. Who’s with me?
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Well this is a more or less solved problem in BC:
mynamesnotrick@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
I just can’t use uber eats. It just feels weird. Like, I am fully capable of getting food myself, I know uber eats, doordash etc, pays shit, delivery folks have to wait at the restaurant if its not ready and then fix it if its not. Get my drink from the fountain if I ordered one. And then, drive all the way to my place. I then receive a cold, tossed meal. It’s just depressing all around. I don’t get it.
I’ll pay for delivery of pizza or even something like jimmy johns who have delivery drivers, but having a third party involved just feels wrong.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What a sad country, where people have to accept being paid so little.
I’ve been arguing for decades that EU needs to tax US imports, because USA is using social dumping to compete unfairly.
The US minimum wage is not a living wage, and employers can even go below that if they can claim tips are part of the wage.cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
“Minimum wage and the idea that hard work should lead to economic security, can be — and are being — destroyed by these A.I. systems.”
gwilikers@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
How much did the CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, earn last year?