I am not sure how I feel about the gig economy as a whole, but I hold a high disdain for Uber Eats. Some of my grief is for food delivery services in general; some of my grief is specific to Uber Eats.
Let’s start with the issues that plague food delivery services in general.
Uber Eats and DoorDash are predatory entities essentially forcing restaurateurs to work for them. Imagine owning a business and suddenly having a third party entity trying to take portion of your profits. Imagine losing the freedom from corporate America that owning a restaurant gives you thanks to these food delivery corporations. Restaurants are in a sense partly taken over by these entities.
On a financial front, profit margins are small in the food industry. Uber Eats and its competitors seek to take a portion of the profit margin for themselves, thus lowering a restaurant’s already low profit margin. Additionally, those to-go orders do not pack themselves, restaurant personnel have to prepare and pack the orders, yet the delivery drivers to do not usually tip them, so the restaurant personnel are losing part of their potential income to the delivery drivers.
On a reputation front, every restaurant owner has received at least one bad review that was really the fault of the food delivery service. Somehow customers ordering from Uber Eats and its competitors do not understand that the restaurant and food delivery services operate independently. The delivery person is not going to tell the customer that their food was late or the order is wrong because they mistakenly picked up the wrong food, or left part of the order back at the restaurant, or they were trying to pull off multiple orders at one time, or that they got lost, or that they stopped for a quickie in the car. They are going to blame the restaurant to protect their own tips and ratings.
On an environmental front, think about all of the throw away packaging that goes into a to-go food order. It fascinates me that the same generation that wants to do away with fossil fuels thinks nothing of placing a food delivery order virtually everyday. By the way, nearly all of that plastic packaging is made from oil.
On a mental wellbeing front, the food delivery services encourage people to sit at home in isolation. Nothing could be less healthy. Getting showered and dressed to go somewhere, being greeted by a hostess, a food server asking how one’s day is going, may all seem trivial, but they promote a person’s mental wellbeing. All of this is lost as people can easily fall into the habit of staying home and ordering food delivery.
Lastly, locally owned restaurants are vital to local economies. The restaurants often employ high school students with their first jobs. They employ college students as they work their way through school. Locally owned restaurants are often the largest donors to local schools and youth organizations. When is the last time the high school theatre department received a donation from Uber Eats or Door Dash? By leveraging corporate delivery services, one is literally taking money out of the local economy, out of the local schools and youth organizations.
Now, let’s get to the specifics of why Uber Eats especially bites.
Not once, not twice, but three times I have had fraudulent charges on my Citi Bank credit card from Uber Eats. I go around in circles with Citi Bank trying to get the charges removed. I actually wound up paying for some of them as my credit card bill was due, and Uber Eats was still fighting the charges. Uber Eats refuses to provide any sort of details about the transactions, like where the food was ordered from or delivered to, which would allow me to definitively prove that they were not my charges. Given that one has to have the food delivered, Uber Eats could effectively investigate and find the fraudsters, but they do not have reason to do so. They are so large that they can bully the credit card company into enforcing the fraudulent charges.
Uber as a corporation has done a great deal to slight its employees. Once established, Uber began taking more and more for itself and paying the people doing the work less and less. The company is able to get away with this because of their size and large customer base. Uber quickly went from being a great example of capitalism to a great example of corporate greed.
Lastly, for the love of God, could we please stop the Uber Eats commercial that runs all day on Sundays during NFL football? I question the awareness of any company that puts the sound of a doorbell in their commercial. If that stupid commercial comes on one more time with that doorbell ringing, which causes Potatoe to go into a barking frenzy every time, startling me and the kittens, I am going to boycott Uber forever.
In conclusion, Uber Eats bites. The corporation is damaging to local economies, the environment, the mental wellbeing of its customers, and they consistently interrupt Chewy’s catnap time with their ridiculous commercial. What could be worse than a company that does not consider the wellbeing of a cute little kitten?