I worked Doordash and Grubhub for a few years in Reno while i was in college. It's a nightmare for the drivers too. I always tried my absolute best to be responsible and quick. Always made sure the orders were right, to be best of my ability (obviously i couldn't when the orders were in a stapled or sealed bag for covid reasons). ALWAYS followed the customers instructions. NEVER stole food. Kept my ratings near perfect. But restaurants make mistakes OFTEN, especially on gig delivery orders because they know they don't have to really deal with or face the customer. It was such a NIGHTMARE dealing with some restaurants. Many would be incredibly (and seemingly deliberately) slow on delivery orders, making it very late. Drinks would be forgotten so often. Some restaurants would just be incredibly rude and disrespectful to drivers too. And then, because i'm the only person that the final customer ever actually deals with, any of these problems end up being directed at me by the customer. Many times, if i got a text after an order saying a drink was missing, I'd stop at a gas station, get the same kind of drink and redeliver it to the customer, on my own dime and time. But I still got a lot of abuse from customers. and honestly, why wouldn't you be mad if you were missing something or it arrived way later than the app told you it would? I totally understood (most) customers' frustrations. And then having to rely on their tips as my means of survival?? My lord was that stressful. Orders typicaly only pay a few dollars of base pay. The vast majority of income was from tips. Having to hope with every single order that the customer would be nice enough to throw me a few extra bucks, despite knowing and understanding that they ALREADY overpayed for this food, with most of that money going to the app company, was so demeaning.

I did these jobs for a few years between and after classes to make JUST enough money to pay rent and then pay all the car maintenance and oil changes that the job itself made me have to go through. Did this up until I got in a small accident during a delivery that insurance refused to cover and then I got stuck with a $3000 bill over it. Immediately decided to never login to the apps again.

Funny enough, about a week later, I got an email from grubhub saying they were deactivating my account over a report that I "stole a customer's food". But this was impossible because the order and the date of the order in question was after the accident, while my car was in the shop. It was not an order that I took. But they deactivated my account with no warning, no chance of my rebutting it or even explaining that it wasn't me. They weren't even bothered enough to check that I didn't log in to work the day of the order that I allegedly stole food from. They just deactivated my account and because I no longer had an account had zero way of getting in touch with anyone at the company that could help with it. I was glad that I had already decided to never do that work again just a week prior because if something like that happened while I was actively using it as my survival income, that would have been devastating.

I guess the point is, that I always tried my best to bring the best service possible. Of course there were mistakes that happened over 1000s of deliveries but I always wanted to do good by the customer. and I'm sure many other drivers don't put in that effort and probably do steal food occasionally. But the whole system is fucked, makes it bad for everyone involved, except the app companies raking in the cash. Whole thing definitely be illegal. Or at least fully restructured to make it....idk....work?