Some gig-workers who work using two-wheeler especially bicycles to deliver food on the Uber Eats platform complained about the decreasing number of orders they received. From some of the delivery drivers forums that we have observed, some bike riders in Australia said that the number of trips they get every day now drops significantly.
Some even said that the number of delivery requests they get is only half of the number of trips they usually receive each day. With the decreasing number of orders, it will certainly affect the driver’s earnings every single day. This situation began to be complained starting at the end of May 2020 and it is still ongoing until this article was written in June.
Previously biker delivery partners are able to get more than 20 trips a day, now they only a get dozen of trips and sometimes even less than 10 trips, even though they have work with the same work time and area. Generally, they can earn more than $100 every day with 6 to 8 hours of online time, but now they only get around $50 for the same time online.
Different things are experienced by courier partners who deliver with a car, now they feel a surge in delivery requests. Some of them said that they started to be able to make more with the same work-time. Some car delivery drivers also explained that they started to get some close-range trips, before this their trip was dominated by long-range trips.
As we know, when registering with the Uber Eats platform, the company gives its drivers the option to choose their own vehicle. They can decide on a bicycle, scooter or car. Each vehicle choice has different requirements, if you choose a car and scooter, you must supply it with proper driver’s license, vehicle registration (rego) and auto insurance.
Every driver has no idea what is the exact reason why the biker’s Uber Eats accounts are less busy than the car account. Before this happened, the bike and motorbike accounts were very busy, even in the past many thought that Uber gave preference to them over the car. For this reason, many drivers used to try to outsmart the system by delivering with a car even though their Uber Eats accounts were registered with a bike.
We also don’t know the specific reason why many biker’s accounts are difficult to get orders at the moment. But here are some of our guess about this concern. However, only Uber knows the exact reason behind this, and it likely continues to be a company’s secret.
- Restaurant restricts deliveries from a particular vehicle type
This is the most logical reason, there are some restaurants that include additional pickup note to driver stated that they will only give the food order when the driver comes with a car, otherwise they will cancel the order immediately. Based on our observation in the driver forum, now some restaurants can ask Uber to be paired only with delivery partners using a car because they are afraid of food getting cold or broken when it reaches at the customer address. - Delivery partner’s acceptance and cancellation rate as well as ratings
This also could be the reason, Uber Eats trip are offered not only based on the distance of delivery drivers with restaurants and drop-off locations. Possibly many partners using cars have better ratings as the food arrives faster and is received in good conditions. When using a bike, the delivery duration could be longer and there is a possibility that the food arrived not in good shape. However, we doubt this could be the reason. - Uber might change its algorithm which responsible for distributing trip request
The company has its own secret method for distributing the delivery trip to every driver within range. Previously, there were rumours that Uber giving orders to partners at the closest location to the restaurant, giving short-distance trips to bikers only and long-distance trips to partners using car and motorbike. Uber might have changed their old algorithm or maybe this was just a temporary bug.
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