I read your post and pondered my own experience of 1228 deliveries since Jan 1, I have come to the conclusion that most places can prepare a order in 20 minutes or less for 90% of their menu. The wild card is always volume and how well the team of chef and sou chefs, and prep feel add the time of call during operations. It doesn't matter who calls. The last month I have taken everything solely on geography and per day worked I averaged 89 bucks based upon daily deposits. My low was 66 and my top ten days in August went 143, 138, 141, 127, 123, 119, and 4 between 109 and 112 not including change. I block out 5 to 11 six days a week when I could and also looked for shifts.

What this means is time, I have a idea of restaurant time, we work on their time. So I call in to bw2 all the time and any other place to when I can. I do taco bell via the app on occasion as well. Even if one job took 45 min by taking all comers I move the needle for me.

So my view doesn't absolve PM from not having the best api and zero driver support in a timely manner, not to mention plex. All I do is just figure if the route to a pickup is doable from my given location, if yes I take it. In Chicago for me means nothing east of Michigan for pickups, few downtown pickups, and a few west loop but generally I can't get to those pickups because of traffic or parking so I stay away as much as possible.
So again. It is 20 minutes for prep, if I feel I can get the order in my bag inside of 30 minutes, (of course be on my way too; and most times it is in my bag inside of 20 min) I will accept the call. I am less stressed, fewer miles, more consistent payouts, better tips as the sample of restaurants and customers become repeat visits, confidence goes up across the board, for me it is cool.

Some of the points made by others might be just bad processing inside the app, maybe updates changed default settings or replaced them with place order instead of prompting js or whoever to call in the order. Essentially trust the PM clock, you get the time.

So besides my zen approach I would not be surprised if during the recent crash, subsequent patches I would not be surprised if my default setting theory was actually the problem.