UberEats has a "guaranteed delivery time" feature that they pretty much never go past in my experience. The delivery usually arrives sooner, but at least you know what the worst case scenario is. They also recently added "priority delivery" which lets you ensure the driver won't make any other stops between the restaurant and your house for a few extra bucks--this seems to drastically improve predictability and is well worth it imo.
I'd love to see DoorDash copy both of those (assuming they haven't already--it's been awhile since I've used it). I've had many similar frustrations with them. Being hungry and waiting on food that is already 45 minutes late, with no indication of whether it will arrive sooner, later, or ever as the driver zig zags all over creation on the map is a special version of first world hell.
Guaranteed delivery hasn’t been my experience with Uber Eats. I almost always pick priority delivery but on many occasions I’ve had food sit at the restaurant for 30+ minutes waiting for pickup. And Uber always was hiding behind we’re waiting for the restaurant to prepare the order when in reality they’re waiting to assign a driver.
After 3 such incidents I gave up and deleted the app. I don’t mind paying $10+ in fees for convenience, but not knowing if the food will show up on time or an hour late destroyed all the benefit.
Problem is they all seem to be flaky. The challenge of working with an unreliable army of independent contractors I guess.
So at this point when I need food to show up on time I go and pick it up myself, and save delivery for when I don’t care if the food is an hour late.
I've found UberEats to be a similarly mixed bag with timing (and the only service where I've had the driver steal the food).
Pre-pandemic eats drivers would also almost never come to the door or get out of the car. Doordash drivers tend to be find the door more reliably in my experience and the service is usually more reliable.
They're all a kind of weird business for me - I don't see how the margins work, but I use them sometimes because it's convenient. Usually if I use something then I'd be willing to buy stock for it, but I don't really want to here.
It feels like the 'we have massive revenue, sure we're losing money on every sale, but we'll make it up in volume' kind of company. IPO, take your cash out and then leave it to die in the public's hands.
I use UberEats fairly frequently, and while there have been a few bad experiences, they are usually fine.
The most common annoyance IMHO are restaurants not honoring the utensils option (i.e. not providing them even though you asked them to, or to a lesser extent vice-versa). The other minor annoyance is that they don't update the status of the order correctly when you opt to pick up (it will often sit in "preparing" even after you actually pick it up, only changing to "picked up" 2 hours later.
The other thing that is weird is that while they make it fairly clear what the price breakdown is in term of food cost vs service fees (which I'd assume is the driver's cut), they also have a mandatory tip for drivers (i.e. is the service fee not going to the driver then?)
I've had a few long delays, but this was because the restaurant was apparently slammed with some huge order, which is understandable. The weirdest one was when I placed an order, and it got marked as picked up before I got there to actually pick it up. Turned out they were a food court shop in a mall which closed for the day 10 minutes after I ordered (it was in some small town I was driving by in a road trip, I had no idea). I was able to get a full refund just by raising an issue in the app, without ever having to talk to anyone.
my wife always tells me to not mess with utensils option (on any delivery services) as we almost seem to not get any.
when we leave it at default, always get atleast 1 pair of cutlery.
when we specify we want more, normally end up receiving none.
i have done doordash pickup.
the estimated wait was 45 minutes.
i called the restaurant after about 20 minutes as i have ordered there directly over the phone before, and its only been 15-20 minutes wait for phone ordered.
they like oh yea, its already ready, we just punched 45 minutes into door dash just in case...
Oh yeah, estimated time for pickups are usually way too conservative. Most of the time, I will show up 5-10 minutes after ordering (basically I hop in my car as soon as I order) and I can almost always walk away with my food right away or within a few mins.
Is this new? My last Uber order was 3? years ago when my order was over 2 hours late. I contacted support and their answer was essentially "<shrug> shit happens".
I'd love to see DoorDash copy both of those (assuming they haven't already--it's been awhile since I've used it). I've had many similar frustrations with them. Being hungry and waiting on food that is already 45 minutes late, with no indication of whether it will arrive sooner, later, or ever as the driver zig zags all over creation on the map is a special version of first world hell.