I’m disabled and rely heavily on food delivery apps and stopped using uber/postmates about a year ago. I somehow got tricked into paying $40 on a $6 order. I went back through the flow to see where I messed up, the screen did show my order amount that I expected, but after many many emails and messages with support, this discount didnt apply because I didn’t hit some “minimum” on the order, so they went ahead and charged the full amount (not what was displayed, or if it was, was done in an extremely dishonest/obfuscated way).
I am far from a novice computer/device user. you’re already making a decent amount of money off me and the slave labor wages you pay your workers, why try to aggressively milk every penny I have? I stopped using it after their joke of an outsourced customer support would not do anything but run me in circles. How much did losing my business cost them in revenue vs. the blatant petty theft in dark patterns would have gained? There has to be a day where all these user hostile apps triggers some response from people like “no, enough of this.”
For us the line for several of those companies was when we had several massively late orders where they lied and blamed the restaurant rather than the fact that they were trying to keep their costs down by underpaying drivers. I think the underlying problem is that companies like Uber pitched themselves as tech companies like Google or Facebook and locked in expenses like compensation at correspondingly high levels, but there just isn’t that much margin in food delivery or unlicensed cabs not matter how hard they squeeze, and it’s an inherently local service so they’re always vulnerable to competition in their most profitable markets.
I am far from a novice computer/device user. you’re already making a decent amount of money off me and the slave labor wages you pay your workers, why try to aggressively milk every penny I have? I stopped using it after their joke of an outsourced customer support would not do anything but run me in circles. How much did losing my business cost them in revenue vs. the blatant petty theft in dark patterns would have gained? There has to be a day where all these user hostile apps triggers some response from people like “no, enough of this.”