Food Delivery Questions, Pet Peeves, Problems, etc.

[Loud-Invero]

I'm sure some people on here must do delivery... Okay, so I have a big complaint against how current food delivery networks with popular restaurant work out, including problems with the restaurants themselves that seem to be systematic.. Let me say that while I'll only be able to speak from working on Skip the Dishes, I'm sure this will pertain to Uber Eats, Doordash, etc. as well. This thread was heavily inspired by this article I read on Business Insider on how McDonalds will be refocusing on dining rooms once again (but I think that's only the U.S., *sigh*). I will be speaking as how it is in Ottawa (Canada) as that's where I deliver in and will be McDonalds centered as that's the only place next to gas stations and A&W's that are open 24 hrs in our city.

Okay, so the first problem I have with skip the dishes, is that the Courier app IS BUGGY... Sometimes I don't know if it's a server problem or my carrier connection, but when I slide the orange slide bar right on "Parked at Restaurant" or "Collected Order", "Ready to Drive", "Parked at Customer", sometimes it would repeat itself... So you swipe "Ready to Drive", loads the "Getting ready to drive" animation, just to redisplay the swipe "Ready to Drive" as if I never did it in the first place. Now, it's quite irritating, but you know, I may just to have to swipe more than I have to, but it's nothing too outrageous (well, sort of on principal...). With a recent update to their app (V: 4.13.1 -167), it seems to have made this issue not only occur more often, but now it glitches out and "double swipes"! Let's say I collected an order and swiped "Ready to Drive", if it glitches out and *swipe* "Ready to Drive" comes back again and I swipe it, there is about a 40%ish chance that it will jump right to saying you're parked at the customer, even though you haven't even left yet. Basically it's suppose to go Accept order > Parked at Restaurant > Collect Order > Ready to Drive > Parked at Customer > Order Delivered, but when the glitch occurs, it will go Accept order > Parked at Restaurant > Collect Order > Ready to Drive > Ready to Drive *again*, *instantly goes* Parked at Customer, Deliver Order. The problem is not only does this falsely alerts the customer I'm at their door, but it MESSES with the restaurant's POS system, which can cause EVEN LONGER delays in getting food into my hands to get to the customer. Now this is a problem on Skips end and I honestly don't understand why their I.T system is behind since they rolled out MUCH earlier than Uber Eats did, yet fall so behind even Doordash, like freaking Doordash.... As is if what I mentioned wasn't bad enough, but now there is also a new glitch where the colours for sliding on an order is inverted! Before you complete a task, you have to tick a box then swipe. If you don't tick the box, the slide bar will be gray and can't swipe it, but when you tick the box, it will be orange and actually be swipe-able. Now, about 50% of the time, if you tick the box and swipe on orange, it won't allow you to swipe, but if you untick the box (or never tick it at all), it will allow you to swipe the gray swipe bar! Like, wtf. Talk about trolling and horrible coding...

Next, how big restaurants deal with processing orders... For context, for the last 9 years on Skip, you've been able to swipe "Parked at restaurant" even though you weren't parked at the restaurant with no issue, but then COVID-19 hit, and so did the staffing shortages... When people left in droves, and they closed down lobbies (I'll get to that in the next paragraph), and demand for delivery increased, so did the wait times. As a mitigation factor on food quality, McDonalds (I'll use then as the prime example here) updated all their delivery systems to only show the order coming up on the Kitchen's screen the driver indicates they're parked at the restaurant, however, there actually wasn't anything preventing drivers from swiping "Parked at Restaurant" even though they weren't even close by. This had the lovely benefit of bypassing wasting time idling or on/off key ignition doing nothing. If it takes me 6 mins to get there, and it takes about 5 mins to make the order, that's perfect. I can just drive right up, pick up the food and just GTFO of there a head right to the door of the house I'm delivering too. No wasted time idling, especially when gas is right now 1.50/L in Ottawa for regular, no bottle necking Drive-Thru's as drivers get their food and just go, it was perfect! Until, dumb drivers "arrived" to the party... With this abuse, came its downside. Drivers would often confuse locations for one and another and as a result, the customers food would get cold because the driver drove to the wrong location, and I worked at McDonalds for almost 2 years and have seen it happened first hand. I worked at Carling McDonalds (at Carling/Maitland). Our civic address is 1880 Carling Ave. Just down Carling Ave. towards Bayshore, we have another McDonald's, called "Richmond McDonald's", but despite it being in between Carling Ave. and Richmond Rd, and being IN Richmond Plaza, the civic address for that McDonald's is 2625 Carling Ave. so often we would get drivers who were suppose to go to Richmond McDonald's, but came to OUR McDonald's instead, only for us to tell them, "that we don't have any orders with your number" just for them to realize they're not at the right location. As a result, Uber and Skip now use Geo-Fencing to prevent false arrivals at restaurants, which paired with their order only coming up for when you arrive, is a nightmare if you have long travel distances or the restaurant is extremely slow. Not only do you have to commute, but now you're at the mercy of the staffing availability at the restaurant, so you can be waiting anywhere from 3-30 minutes IN ADDITION, to transit time. So even if your ride to the store is 10 minutes away and the food the customer got takes 8 minutes to make (let's say, it's a fresh Crispy Chicken BLT at 3 am, takes about 6-7.5 mins approx. to deep-fry) well then it sucks for you, the driver, because you will cumulatively be waiting 18 minutes or more just to get that order in your hand to deliver. Now, skip does compensate for "Restaurant delays" automatically, but it will always be less than just getting a new $7 order right after you drop off your first $7 McDonald's order. All and all, I wish they'd SCRAP their system requiring you to be marked as at the restaurant, just for the order to come up. it is inconsiderate of overnight which will ALWAYS BE SLOW. It waste my time and fuel. It's not the summer where I can turn off the car and let the breeze cool me. I have to keep my I.C.E running to keep my water pump some what warm to still give off heat to my car when it's -36 like tonight, but I shouldn't even have to idle which I'll dig right into it...

Lastly, how McDonalds handles the pandemic differently from other... McDonald's?? With the staffing shortages and the prohibition of indoor dining throughout North America, many lobbies closed completely and drive-thru was the only option to get anything. Only cars would be served as it was McDonald's cooperate policy to not serve customers on foot, bicycle, or even wheel chairs in the Drive-Thru for safety reasons. This negatively impacted poor people who couldn't afford delivery and just wanted something small or even drivers who wanted to save fuel while they wait. What I said above is the primary result of bottle necking. If you live in Ottawa and have EVER been at the McDonalds just near St. Laurent/Lancaster (OC Transpo employees will know what I'm talking about) and waited over 30 minutes in DT just for a coffee, chances are is because most people ahead of you are Uber drivers. Now, I hear you saying, "doesn't a lot of locations have delivery windows?" And the answer to that is, yes, they do, but after 10pm, almost all locations, at least in Ottawa, just stop using them. That same location has a delivery window where drivers can just park, buzz in and just wait until it's ready, without clogging the DT or having them wasting really (nowadays) expensive gas on idling, which is ugh, really bad for the planet I hear, but they force everyone to go through DT, which combined with the "order don't show up until I show up" policy, you can be at a healthy car cycle rate in DT of 1 car every 3-6 minutes... Yay! Cold coffee anyone? This effects many locations that can absolutely separate Food delivery from plain old customers trying to get take out, but they just choose not to after 10 PM until 6 AM and it's rather frustrating for everyone involved... On top of that, you got to use the toilet at night? Too bad for you. Lobby is closed, doors are locked so no washroom access, or if through some act of god, it's open, usually it's blocked off by foreign objects placed by the restaurant to prevent entry. Now in Ontario, the Premier's Labour Minister has said he intends to table legislation to FORCE these places to allow us to use restroom and stop putting up these ridiculous barriers just so I can use the goddamn bathroom while I do my job, however, it seems he just kinda "forgot" about it and never did anything about this VERY COMMON problem... Typical...

In the end, McDonald's (and all places) should reopen their damn lobbies to all 24 hrs, or at least allow me to wait somewhere without having to being dog piled into a drive-thru, let me relieve myself properly in a proper place, stop making me waste time and gas (which = money) with your "order don't show up until I show up" mandate, Skip, fix your shit app. Curious what your thoughts are and all.

[9924]

Never used them - never will.

[captaintrolley]

I've used Door Dash a few times (less than half a dozen times), with mixed results.  Most drivers can't find the proper door in our building.  Or, once inside the building, many get hopelessly lost. I don't have any apps so I can't speak about those.

[MCIBUS]

All providers have isses.

The one complaint I have about these delevery services is "credit"?

I can't comment on Urber Eats, but for Door Dash if you use your credit card to pay and for some reason your order never shows up or some other issue they credit back your credit card either for the full amount or partial depending what the issue was.

 

For Skip The Dish if your paying by credit card and there is an issue, and you need to get either full or partial credit back on your credit card, they don't refund your credit card but they give you crediton their system so next time you order, what ever the credit is on your account it's deducted from that amount.

 

I rather have my credit card refunded then having account credit, because who knows how long it will be before you use the service again.

 

Also I find Door Dash way better then Skip The Dishes as with Door Dash they give you the courier cell phone number so you can call the individual personally, with Skip your stuck, also Door Dash customer service is way better, try calling the Skip toll free number it says out of service.

 

I don't know how Urber Eats is never tried it.

 

One thing also is I hate it when the resturants take for ever to confirm your order.

 

Another issue is fees, not the ones they charge you for delivery, though slightly higher then restaurants that have their own deleviry, but the fee's the services charge the restaurants, I doin't know what they charge the restaurants but I heard it's high.

 

[GTAmissions1]

I have used DoorDash and I can tell you that it is pretty unreliable and buggy from my experience. Having several times placing the order at the same place and they don't respond for 20 minutes. You would think they respond in a timely manner acknowledging and preparing my order in that time. Instead saying "we are closed and refunding your order."

Me: Why didn't the restaurant just simply acknowledge and prepare my order in those 20 minutes?

UberEats, I have no issues other than simply notifying the delivery driver that I will be picking up outside. 

[FutureHeartsJunkie]

On 1/29/2022 at 10:55 AM, GTAmissions1 said:

I have used DoorDash and I can tell you that it is pretty unreliable and buggy from my experience. Having several times placing the order at the same place and they don't respond for 20 minutes. You would think they respond in a timely manner acknowledging and preparing my order in that time. Instead saying "we are closed and refunding your order."

Me: Why didn't the restaurant just simply acknowledge and prepare my order in those 20 minutes?

UberEats, I have no issues other than simply notifying the delivery driver that I will be picking up outside. 

I never had an issue with Skip, Doordash and Uber Eats - either for delivery and (to a lesser extent) "order for pickup". 

Speaking of the latter, I used another service that does that called "Ritual". Back in the days that I used to work downtown (or during a Saturday outing), I order food from a place on the Ritual app, confirm my payment details and once my order is ready - I tell the people that "I'm here for my Ritual order" (or something like that). 

They ask me my name and I got my order in no time. 

Anyone here remembered an app called "Foodora"? Their Canadian operations folded back in 2020 (likely during the start of the pandemic - mostly) but their operations have been acquired by an under-the-radar company, Facedrive (which later rebranded the Foodora's Canadian operations as "Facedrive Foods"). 

[Loud-Invero]

On 1/31/2022 at 6:26 PM, FutureHeartsJunkie said:

Anyone here remembered an app called "Foodora"?

Ah jeez, didn't know they folded. They started off way too small. Like when Ottawa got that awhile back, the selection was poor and service availability was minimal which as the company admitted, they were no match. They basically became the Target of the food world.

[FutureHeartsJunkie]

On 6/9/2022 at 10:41 PM, Loud-Invero said:

Ah jeez, didn't know they folded. They started off way too small. Like when Ottawa got that awhile back, the selection was poor and service availability was minimal which as the company admitted, they were no match. They basically became the Target of the food world.

Delivery Workers who worked with Foodora's Canadian operations - won a right to unionize, which resulted in the company ceasing operations at the beginning of the pandemic between March and April 2020.

A series of negotiations took place between the company and the workers - which resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement court four months later in August 2020.

Further reading:

https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/08/25/foodora-couriers-win-346-million-settlement-following-food-delivery-giants-abrupt-canadian-closure.html

[Loud-Invero]

So I recently just got back into doing delivery and it's actually not bad. Decent pay now. My only problem and gripes I still have is some McDonald's in my city still do not allow Lobby access during overnight hours. Now gas has suddenly dropped 20 cents in two days, but still I do not like idling whatsoever...

[FutureHeartsJunkie]

(Decided to revive this thread, but...)

Has anyone had experience on ordering food on the delivery apps - while staying at a hotel?

For my experience, I had no issue (and the experience may vary with you) - during my visit to St. Catharines in Ontario, Canada back in the summer of 2022 - to attend a concert/festival. 

The hotel that I stayed in - was fine for allowing their guests to order food to be delivered to the hotel as long as I meet the delivery driver at the front.