Why UberEats Keeps Blaming Good Drivers for Platform Fraud!

So recently due to current events taking place in my life, I have had to focus more on short term earning opportunities to account for certain costs in my life and one of those incomes, as I have stated on this channel multiple times, is Uber Eats. 

With the holiday season picking up there is naturally a higher volume of orders and I can make some decent money with it while also working with other apps. 

That said, with more orders comes more bad actors that have come into the market and before I arrive at certain stores, and the more I find myself needing to contact support, and now Uber is blaming me for their lack of due diligence. 

So in this video, We are talking about:

• How Uber is blaming good people for their actions

• What they are saying vs How it ACTUALLY is

• Everything in between!

Disclaimer: The content of this video does not contain and is never intended to be legal, business, financial, tax, or health advice of any kind, This video is for entertainment purposes only. It is advised that you conduct your own research and consult with qualified professionals before applying anything you find online. 

I also want to be clear that everything we are going to go over is very market dependent, and what applies to me and my market may not apply to you.

DrivenWyld/YouTube

The Orders I Have Received

Like I said, I have been focusing more on deliveries as of late to offset some of the income issues I have been running into, and while I do not wish to delve into the issues themselves, the point is that I have been more active across all platforms. 

That said, I have had to make a few different reports recently so I am going to rapidly fire a few of them off as opposed to going into the full stories. 

Papa John’s has been telling drivers that the order had been picked up by someone else while their own drivers conduct the orders, especially those with decent tips. 

Ackee Tree Jamaican Restaurant asks me to call the customer about a Jerk Chicken order because it was the second one today and he asks me if I want to wait 20 minutes while he starts it from scratch and I say that I have another order in the car, so the customer says to cancel her order. 

Shah’s of Kabob order delivered to a tip baiting scam customer claiming she never received her order. 

Five Guys tells me Issac’s order was picked up by someone else and asks me to cancel. 

Dragon Tea House actually hands me the order and due to the Pompano Beach boat parade on December 12th, I can’t make it over the drawbridges as the GPS routed me. 

Burgerfi order was delivered, but then reported as never arrived by the customer. 

Little Havana runs out of ½ baked chickens and after calling the customer to ask about substitutions and not getting an answer from myself OR support and order had to be canceled. 

I don’t know if you noticed, but none of these events are due to the control of the driver who is reporting the incidents themselves.

Drivers are not in the control of the restaurant who don't have the items, or haven’t started on the order and caused a customer to have an order canceled, or gives said delivery order to their own drivers without notice to the platform.

Drivers are not in control of the customers who report they never got their food for some refund method and affecting driver pay with tip baiting. 

It is the fault of the platform for not updating during one time events that affect the drivers ability to complete an order at all, therefore allowing orders to be created that are just impossible to conduct giving bad actors an opportunity to game the system. 

When the platform allows impossible orders to exist, it creates fraud opportunities — and then punishes the driver who gets trapped in them.

It is the fault of the drivers before me that were onboarded during the holiday rush or just the bad actors in general who take the orders and unassigns them, leaving the order outstanding until the driver who is willing to make the call to report it. 

That driver is then punished for making the call in the first place, even though the support teams specifically state they will not affect your account or ratings. 

Proving that either support doesn’t know how the system actually works, or they’re instructed to say things that aren’t true. Either way, drivers pay the price.

More Cancellation Fees and Support Lies

Every time I go on the phone with support to have orders canceled, I have to deal with support. Every time they assure me that my cancellations won’t impact my account and they are notating the events that transpire so it stays that way. 

I also make a point to request to speak to a supervisor to get my cancellation fees and some make it much harder than others, it happens much less frequently now to me because I know how to handle their kind, but sometimes you get caught in transfer loops claim that all supervisors work in every department, and get a fake supervisor pretending to claim they can’t do anything, only for me to call again and the call to end and get yet another “one time courtesy”. 

Realistically speaking, this is fraud on a different level but this shows that either no reports are being made on the subject based on the events that transpire, or the reports reflect differently than what they claim proving that the reports are harming us as drivers, not helping. 

Meaning that Uber is not making the reports they say they are, or they are making false reports so that way if they ever end up in a lawsuit, they will have their reports but drivers won’t have access to those contemporaneous records. 

Meaning that Uber keeps contemporaneous records — drivers don’t get to see them. That means when something finally breaks, you’re defending yourself blind.

That means you have to make your own if you ever need to fight back. 

Reporting vs Causing in the Eyes of the Platform

While it seems like an obvious difference to a person with a fair level of discernment, it is not as easy to see from the perspective of the platform. 

• Reporting an issue means you are making the platform aware that there is something happening regardless of whether the behavior was bad or just inconvenient in the moment

• Causing the issue means you are the one conducting the bad behavior that definitely was taking place.

That said, the platform seems to see that the person who reports an order requiring cancellation is the same as the one committing the fraud itself, which is why the earnings activity is labeled as “you canceled” by default, and the “order reported as not picked up” notifications come with tips on how to be a better driver. 

Not to mention that if you do it often enough, it is like they are blaming you for bothering them too much. Like it is your fault that something that is designed to assist in local delivery is expecting them to work too hard. 

Why Reporting an Issue Looks Like ‘Fraud’ to the Algorithm

One thing I have to be realistic on is the fact that these platforms don’t really see intent the way a person would, they don’t see people they see data points. 

• Frequency

• Timing

• Outcome (order canceled / refunded)

While it can be argued that the framing on the platform can be reframed to look less like an accusation, I can definitely see how someone would frame it this way to make it look like the driver was at fault for compliance purposes. 

Remember, these records that they produce protect the company, not you. It is your responsibility to protect yourself, not the companies.

Holiday Season Flooding

The holiday season by nature is the season where more orders come into the system, therefore more drivers need to be onboarded to account for the rising flow of orders. With more orders comes more opportunities for fraud on the platform, but that doesn’t mean you blame the good drivers for doing their jobs correctly. 

While specific data for all gig platforms is limited, related e-commerce and digital transaction data shows fraud attempts can rise by 25% or more compared to normal periods, with some specific attacks seeing spikes of several hundred percent.

And on platforms known for high levels of fraud already that number grows with the volume of orders they receive. 

I don’t know if they are accounting for that and while I cannot prove that they aren’t, this has grown to be more of a problem than people realize. 

Personal Circumstances

During this season of my life, I have had to take advantage of the incoming order volume and even change my upload schedule across all of my platforms due to the rising costs of my life and some events that have been transpiring that require a large amount of upfront capital. 

Therefore the orders I accept across all platforms have fundamentally changed, whether that is for gig platforms in the on-demand delivery space or for scheduled orders on platforms that specialize in catering or preplanned trips. 

I have also been working on some other stuff during my downtime and trying to get as many videos as possible done while juggling all of this to keep my brand growing, while also having conversations with the RMDA about some things that I have worked on. 

Regardless, that means my personal order volume has grown as well which means I would also be required to contact support about these bad actors. That also is not a justifiable reason to blame me for what has been happening on their platforms and what their actions are. 

Final Thoughts

While I can understand to a certain degree that these platforms are going to be working with data points and what they can see on a computer screen, and the information they are working with is limited. That said, it isn’t like the drivers are at fault for what takes place on these platforms. 

It seems like the natural default for all of these issues is to simply blame the drivers in the event that a report is made of any kind. 

What Uber’s systems are actually reacting to isn’t fraud — it’s volume. And when you’re a high-activity driver during peak season, volume alone becomes a liability.

While it is 100% possible that you can just unassign and let the next bozo take care of it, that can also be punished as well, as I explained in a previous video talking about this exact subject on UberEats. So it is a lose-lose situation no matter which way you look at it. 

Some drivers believe if the payout is high enough, they can just pay to have it made and deliver it that way, but I don’t think it is worth the time sink personally, at least not in a day and age where these platforms are trying to push costs on everyone else and timely delivery is being heavily pushed on all sides. 

That said, I think that it is going to be more and more important today to not become too reliant on this part of your income long-term, because wrongful deactivations on this platform are coming.

Regardless, the way to protect yourself remains the same:

• Diversify your gig portfolio

• Develop an exit strategy

• Build your saving and investments

• And keep records of the events that are taking place on these platforms

While most people aren’t going to become content creators, or listen to the things I said about having an exit strategy as well as the savings and investments, Here is a quick action list for when you need to create a record for yourself. 

• Screenshot order IDs before cancellation

• Save chat transcripts or record the calls you make

• Log date/time/location manually or make the notation in your mileage tracking app

• Note special events (holidays, closures, parades)

As platforms lean harder on automation, these systems aren’t getting safer for good drivers — they’re getting harsher. In an economy where trust is at the lowest levels they have ever been, it is vital to protect yourself and not depend on anyone else to take care of you except for yourself.

If you would like to add some other perspective to how good drivers get hit with platform fraud, feel free to email me: drivenwyld@gmail.com and who knows? Maybe your email or perspective and be featured in a post as well!