u/jroberts67

Been doing web and SEO since 2003 and as SEO has evolved, actually spent more time just focusing on web. Even at my age (58) I no longer use Google search for anything. But my radar really went up yesterday visiting my son (24) and a group of friend he had over. They were talking about what I do - mainly web, mentioned Google and their reaction was "Google! lol...ok boomer." None of them use Google search.

So, obviously Google has owned search for decades, but now Gemini has some powerful competition - OpenAI, Grok, etc...I just have to wonder where all of this is gonna end up. You cannot simply throw money at this. Ask Meta.

Been doing food delivery for 8 years, DD, UE, GH and PM. I see these questions posted incessantly so I figured I'd answer them.

"Is it slow in the summer....the fall....in the winter? Is it slow in January? June, December? It is slow on Monday? How about Saturday? It is busy on "insert any holiday?"

Answer: Just log on and see.

It's exhausting just how many interactions I need with the app for every order. How many should I need? Two. One to accept the order (taking pic of the receipt is useless, UE doesn't require it) - Take a photo at drop off, done. Two is all I need. No, I don't need a popup when I get close to the address reminding me of anything, no I don't need to click yet another button after the drop off to continue dashing.

Blacklisted them over two years ago. How bad are they in my area? 1.2 rating. Employees have horrible attitudes, make it very clear by their mannerisms that customers are an annoyance, forcing them to work when they want to order something. Rot at the drive thru speaker, wondering if it's working until an employee yells "hold on!" Employees see a delivery driver walk in, they all go to the back, bags on the counter....

So after 2 years of declining every offer, I got a unicorn offer yesterday, peak lunch time, 12:30 and gave it a go. Total ghost town. Zero...and I mean zero customers. No one in the drive thru, no one in the restaurant. I walk in, same attitude; "oh great, a customer." Manager says "we're working on it" walks away, no smile, no greeting.

Hands me the order and I get my shot in; "Seems like a few years of trying to drive all of your customers away has finally worked."

Is it just me? A while ago PIN required deliveries where kind of rare. Maybe a few a week. Now it's like 25% of all of my deliveries are PIN required. All it does is jam up my time, waiting for people to come to the door, surprised like "oh yeah, now I remember ordering food, sorry I was out back watering my plants." And customers who take a long time to come to the door in their 900 sq ft apartment? Please.

Hotel, 6th floor. No issue for me except a "meet me outside note." Get to the hotel around 8:30am, ghost town, no one outside or in the lobby. Went to the breakfast area - nothing. Texted/called. Nothing. So I delivered it to his room, texted him "could not find you outside/lobby so left food at room 623." Get back downstairs, he's there by the desk asking where his food is. I said I looked for you, texted/called and didn't get an answer so put it at your room. His reply? "Well that's a lot, I already checked out but I guess I'll go get it" and storms off. Some people are just unreal.

Been at this a long timer, Mother's Day typically rocks - easy $300 for me. Just be careful of any order that's a gift. In my area, it's Nothing Bunt Cakes, Edible Arrangements, Crumbl....all will be nightmares and instant declines. If it's shop and pay, be careful about flowers. Customers will be choosing specific arrangements that of course will not be available.

Jimmy Johns, it showed .1 miles total distance which was odd. But heck I've delivered in a plaza where the drop off was two stores down, cellular store where the only person there couldn't leave.

Pick it up, drop off is the store. Called and he answered, older guy, say he's at (address) lot 82 (I'm in the south, tons of trailer parks) and he sounded very distraught about not being able to enter his address. The address? 8 miles away. He was super nice and I took one for the team. Chatted with support for the address change, they said no worries. He got his food.

I don't like to accept more than two and I think over three really gets to be a bad customer experience. But I wonder if their algo is changing. I had 2 stacked last night and said screw it and took a third. It was super close, both the restaurants and drop off and typically it has me pick up at all the restaurants first, then deliver last. Nope, I took that third restaurant and it had me drop off the first two orders, then go to restaurant three. I like that a lot. I'd keep stacking (and they kept trying) if that was the method. What's the most food orders you've stacked?

I only do Wendy's orders early in the morning since they're dead as a nail. Typically, no problems with them, I understand they don't make orders until I arrive which is fine when they're dead. Regular orders, 1 breakfast combo, $12 going 5 miles - claim they don't have the order on their screen. Show them my phone, manager doesn't care. Call the customer, put them on speaker, they confirm they placed it, manager tries to stick to her guns saying she's not going to make it, customer says "if I have to drive there to talk to you let me know" - all pissed off, she agrees to make it. Honestly, it shouldn't be this hard. I told her it's likely just a tech glitch in her screen - the order is valid so they'll get paid.

Getting back into this after a hiatus and really want to focus on scalping which needs fast execution times. Any recommendations?

Shop for me: Customer will be able to order anything, from any store even if the store isn't partnered with Uber. Eats on the way. While for rideshare, customers will be able to order rideshare, oh and food they want their rideshare driver to bring.

8 years doing this as well as other gigs, Roadie, Flex, IC, GH, and UE. No one's app crashes like DD. In fact, I've never had a crash on the other apps. DD has a very long and embarrassing history with this, giving them the well earned nickname "DoorCrash."

Years back it actually went down for almost two full days. Beyond that, I've lost count of how many times I've been on a run and boom...app goes down - no ability to drop off or pick up orders.

That is continues is beyond insane. They have serious server issue or simply a very poorly coded app. Crazy as hell that it hasn't been solved.

Although I've been doing gig apps for years, I'm relatively new to UE, doing well but still learning. Had a stacked last night, one restaurant and two drop offs. Dropped off the first, almost at my second drop off (like half mile away) and took another offer. Figured "cool, drop this off and head to another restaurant."

Nope, took it and it routed me to the restaurant. Unbelievable. What a terrible customer experience to not only see your driver just about to get to your house, but now have your food get colder as UE decided the other restaurant took priority over me going 3 more minutes to drop off their order.

DD at least lets me rearrange the orders so if the same thing happened I could still choose to drop off their food first.

I can't believe this is still thing, somehow tech has to advance to the point where it's more difficult to steal orders over just grabbing the bag, unassigning and leaving with it. Until that day, it's the bane of my existence. Happened this morning, stolen Starbucks. And while the restaurants certainly don't care about us, they care about the customer. They initially refused to remake it, I called the customer and as soon as they heard they didn't receive their order, they re-made it. For now I'm at about 80% effective rate getting them to re-make it.