Uber Eats drivers are taking advantage of a loophole in the app’s parameters to make off with the food they were meant to deliver to hungry customers.
The app has seen a number of recent complaints from South African users suggesting that drivers are exploiting Uber Eats eight-minute wait policy to take home people’s “unclaimed” food, MyBroadband reports.
What to be aware of
Uber Eats employs an eight-minute wait policy which allows an operator to start a timer when they have reached the customer’s location.
The timer is only supposed to be enabled if the driver cannot locate the customer, as the policy is meant to be a way for operators to avoid wasting time on unresponsive customers.
“If you can’t find the customer at their location, and you try to contact them twice through phone and chat, a countdown timer will start,” it says.
“Once the countdown timer is over, you don’t have to contact support anymore. By following this process, you will still receive payment for the order.”
Notably, its guidelines do not specify what should be done with the unclaimed food, and the wording of the guideline also makes it sound like the timer is an automatic process when it is actually the delivery driver who initiates the countdown.
This has allowed drivers to take advantage of the policy by starting the timer early, with some operators beginning the countdown before they have even arrived at the gate to a customer’s complex.
Users have vented their frustration on social media, with one post claiming that a driver said they were outside the person’s house when the individual was already waiting for them at the gate.
App users are also able to write down detailed delivery steps to make the process of entering an estate and finding the correct residence easier, but customers have complained that these instructions are not always followed.
Often, a driver will simply message “I’m here” and put the onus on the customer to reply to the message and come and collect the food, increasing the chance that they don’t respond within eight minutes.
Other operators are trying to exploit the feature entirely by starting the timer as soon as they arrive at the restaurant to pick up the order.
“@UberEats I need you guys to deal with this thief who stole my food! I’m done donating money to UberEats! I have screenshots! He never left the restaurant. Started the 8 min timer there then marked order as complete,” wrote one Twitter user.
Uber Eats is aware of the issue and its customer support has been responding to the complaints posted on social media and its website.
Another tactic that drivers have taken to using involves taking photos as “proof of a delivery” before leaving taking off with the goods.
The food-hailing app allows operators to take photos of the food and send it to the customer as a record of delivery.
In June 2024, a customer captured an Uber Eats driver on their security camera take out the food and put it on top of a nearby wall.
The operator then took a photo before packing the goods away again and driving off.
In a situation like this, it can be very difficult for the app user to prove that they never received the food.
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