Deep Dive: What it really means to be an Uber Eats driver

This is by no means a wrap against others; customers, or anything — but as people who have previously driven for Uber Eats this article comes from the idea that some of our readers asked for it.

Uber Eats has set this precedent that drivers are literally at the beck-and-call of customers no matter the time of day. In fact, Uber has furthered this precedent by favourably siding with customers in almost any form of a dispute making it nearly impossible for drivers to stick up for themselves.

These are their stories.

First and foremost, the first thing that should be pointed out is that Uber Drivers have absolutely no control over where they are at any given time or how far your order pick-up actually is from them.

So let’s think about that for a moment.  I live in New York City — where blocks and avenues are pretty large and quite a distance.

This is a real example.  Yesterday, I had an order from some funky restaurant on the West Side (in fact, it became a double order).    This is where it gets troubling as an Uber Driver.

I had no idea where the drop-offs were for either of these orders. Why? Because Uber doesn’t allow drivers to see that information until orders have been fully accepted and we’re stuck with them.  Both of these orders were more than 4.5miles away and  a 35 block drive.

I was early to the first one, late to the second one. The first was downtown the second was back uptown.  

This is only one of the few examples of how the odds are stacked against people and why it is critically important that Uber allow its drivers to see pickup/drop off before the order is accepted.