u/Heavy-Extension-3870

Yesterday. Lunchtime. Dark kitchen.

This dark kitchen seems to be operated directly by a restaurant chain that has maybe 10 branches in the London area. It only makes orders for that brand. I've seen the CEO of the restaurant chain at the dark kitchen, accompanied by two flunkies with clipboards.

The chain has a new branch ready to open, around 2km from the dark kitchen. Signs already up, shopfitters well into the task, but it's not open yet. They don't have a branch close by, so maybe they'll close the dark kitchen when the new branch opens🤔.

Anyway, there are normally 3 staff in the dark kitchen at busy times. I'd say they do 200 orders per day. Yesterday there was one guy😳.

All the orders came with "The restaurant has asked for more time to prepare this order." As I was on a string of 20+ rejections, all going 4+ miles, with Albert Bridge & Hyde Park Corner Underpass closed and "Polo in the Park" causing chaos around New King's Road, I decided to wait for a double order. Both locals. I waited almost 20 minutes for one and cancelled the other. Most of the guys waiting when I arrived cancelled and left. A string of riders arrived and departed, as the impressively chilled guy doing all the work informed them all orders would be 20 minutes.

I hit "end chat" after the last screenshot. Pointless, but I thought the restaurant / dark kitchen needed to be reported. So long as Roo and "partner restaurants" don't have to pay waiting time or cancellation fees, this situation ain't gonna get any better😡.

Until recently, if we arrived to see an order was 30+ minutes late, we could be pretty sure it had been stolen. Maybe there was another screw-up (restaurant realised they'd made the wrong order) but there was almost certainly a screw-up.

Now I'm getting anywhere up to 10 offers per day where the order is getting on for an hour overdue. Sometimes well over an hour. These are usually going stupid distances - either across the middle of London or down a main road out of town in rush hour. We all know that most of these orders being late is due to Roo "cheaping out" on the fee - trying to cover them as a double order - while the food gets cold.

It's now reached the point where I immediately check how old a dodgy-looking or well-paying order is, then unassign myself if I see it has a beard - sometimes after sending a pointless "How is this order an hour overdue?" message to Rider Support. I've had a couple of angry customers on my case, so I don't do late orders any more.

Question is, why does Deliveroo do this?

I'm in the middle of London. Apart from a very occasional "stand alone" ethnic restaurant, every one of these orders is for food that could have been obtained at several Roo "partner restaurants" within a couple of miles of the customer.

I did a 9-mile order on Sunday for 12 x 300ml glass bottles of Perrier (3 packs of 4 bottles). They're maybe £1.89 per bottle at the Apu's Kwik-E-Mart store I collected from. I got £14. So where does the money come from? I did a Chinese also going 9 miles on Saturday. Food cost £27. I got £13. Customer thought she'd ordered from their branch 2 miles away, but that's a different problem. Again, "Where's the profit?"

The "Who's paying?" question isn't the main one though. I know Deliveroo's customers are used to poor service, but surely they're not going to order again if their food takes two hours to arrive🤔. I can understand allowing someone out in the sticks to order from a small town 8 miles away, down a motorway or dual carriageway, but allowing people to order from that far away in London makes no sense. As I say, this is happening to me up to 10 times per day now.

In the example in my screenshots, the problem is lack of communication. Every taxi, courier and delivery company in London knows the Hyde Park Corner Underpass - running beneath Central London's busiest roundabout/gyratory - is closed... Except Deliveroo, who have no means of informing anyone of road closures, demos, events, etc. It's bad enough trying to get past Harrod's, through the tunnel, along Piccadilly and up Shaftesbury Avenue normally!

It's probable that the office worker in Soho had no idea that the Underpass is closed. (But he/she does know they're in Soho and there are 1,000 restaurants within a mile🙄, so why order from Chelsea?) But every Roo rider in the area knows and they're not going to accept orders going through the closed tunnel. Either going south of Buckingham Palace or north of Hyde Park is a huge diversion. Any other delivery company would've given the customer that information.

I was offered this order six times. I checked the "time due" on the 3rd offer and took screenshots on the 5th and 6th. The first offer was below £5. The 3rd was lower than the first😳.

At what point will a customer refuse to pay? What is the point in Deliveroo continually offering higher rates on one order, in an attempt to get a rider to accept it, when the order is 80 minutes old and the customer won't pay? (Not that Roo greatly increased the fee on this one😂)

I had two of these where the customer has cancelled when I've collected and I'm on my way, after not replying to my initial messages & voicemails on pick-up, meaning I arrive at the customer's door to find the job has disappeared from the screen and I don't get paid for a 9-mile, one hour journey😡. I delivered both anyway, as I remembered the address - telling the customer not to pay, explaining why their order was late & advising them not to use Roo again. Another reason I now cancel when I see the "time due"

I don't understand where the profit comes from in allowing customers in London to order from more than 3 miles away. At least while there's no communication system to give accurate food prep times or traffic updates and while Roo insist on bilking everyone with cut-rate double orders.