The woes of GrabFood walker months into Phrase 2 of Circuit Breaker

 

I've to make it clear that whatever I write in this posts are personal experience and judgement. They're not official and could be wrong.

So here goes ... 

1. Higher competition, decreased in orders

I think it's no secret that an astonishing number of riders joins GrabFood during the Circuit breaker. This increased the competition between riders, more so now that the Circuit breaker is over and people are allowed to eat out.

The problem now is, demand is much lesser than the supply, so riders will face lesser jobs. I think the "golden age" whereby you can earn a decent amount by working "office hours" or lesser is over. Now you slog and still may not earn as much as before.

I've personally tried this out over a period of time. For walkers, the peak periods are almost always out of our league.

But why? I thought peak periods = more orders? You may ask.

Well, since it's an equation everyone knows, that's why the competition is even higher! Imagine everyone logging on during the peak periods!

Also you've to take into account that with the new "pay more for further distance", customers are indeed paying more just to get orders they prefers from somewhere further. Which means, more orders that is out of the range of walkers.

 

So just head down to those hot spots areas! You say.

Well, once again, this is just another equation everyone knows about, so what makes you think competition will be lesser in the hot spots?

I've personally been to the hotspot area during the lunch and dinner peak hours. On the worst day, I've 0 order for the lunch peak hours and 1 for the dinner peak hours. On better days, 1 order for both periods or 1 order for lunch and 2 for dinner.

But of course, I have only camped there for about 4-5 days during the past few months, I just don't see any benefit from travelling down there as orders aren't that much as well. And while I was there, I saw many green and pink shirts idling around, waiting for orders. That is just how competitive that area is.

2. No Compensations

I know I've ranted about this. But I would like to touch on this again. 

GrabFood used to be very prompt and fair on paying their compensations. If you've waited for more than 30 minutes at a restaurant, you get compensation. The same goes for large orders.

Now?

They're just very prompt with rejecting compensation requests. Seriously, I don't know if there are people gaming the system but I don't think anyone can game the system for large orders since Grab will know what is being ordered.

That's why I don't see why a quantity that qualified for compensation previously doesn't qualify for compensation now. Did they expect riders to evolve like Machop and end up as Machamp with 4 arms?

As for the long waiting time, well, that could be gamed. I mean someone can really just rot at the restaurant for 30 minutes to claim that.

But I don't think anyone would be doing that because time = money for GrabFood riders. The longer time you take to complete an order, the longer you're added to the pool of available riders. I don't see what benefit does that do, as the compensation is not much, just $2.50 I think (correct me if I'm wrong). But even if it's more than that, you're just wasting potential chance to earn more.

I can't help but think this is another of the "bait and switch" tactics by GrabFood because riders do not want to accept orders from certain restaurants due to long waiting time or will cancel heavy or difficult to carry orders. (It's not easy to rider or walk with 5-6 large drinks without spilling even a little). Pray hard you don't get a fussy customer.

So are all these compensations just to bait riders into taking these orders, after which, you end up fulfilling the orders only to get your compensation requests rejected?

Updated: I've gotten one of my long waiting time request approved recently. And guess how long I waited? 1 hours 12 minutes and it's during peak dinner hours. They compensated me $6.

Anyway, just a reminder, if you received order from a Certain "Tall" ramen, you might want to consider cancelling as they are super slow... like so slow that I waited for more than 1 hour!

3. Decreased allowance for Cancellation and Rejection of Orders

Before I go on, I think I need to explain once again what are the Acceptance and Cancellation Rates. (You can skip all the explanations if you already know)

Acceptance Rate (AR) = Number of Accepted Orders/Number of Orders given to you.

Cancellation Rate (CR) = Number of Jobs you Cancelled after accepting/Number of Jobs you accepted.

I know it maybe confusing for some, but take orders as calls. So when someone calls you, you can either answer (accept) or reject it. This is the Acceptance Rate (AR)

After you accepted the call, maybe its some annoying insurance agent call, you can either end call (cancel) or let them finish talking (complete the order). This is the Cancellation Rate (CR).

These rates are highly important if you're working to get the Quest Incentives. I believe they also affect other things like the number of orders given to you or even temporary freezing of your account.

Anyway, Grab have increased the Acceptance Rate to qualify for the quest incentive. It was previously 80% and now it's 90%. 

Which means you can only reject 3 orders (3.5 actually, but you can't do half an order) out of 35 orders. (35 is the minimum number of orders you've to complete to qualify for the Weekday Quest bonus of $30)

For cancellation rate, it has dropped from 20% to 10%. Meaning again, you can only cancel 3 out of 35 orders. So if GrabFood decided to be evil and give you many large orders, then you'll eventually have to

accept at least one of them, unless you're prepared to do more orders to make up for the percentage or forgo the quest incentives. 

Now, I think these changes put the riders at a disadvantage positions and are practically forcing them to take whatever orders thrown to them, ignoring their ability to complete them. Also the high rejection rate of compensation requests is just very demoralising for the riders who waited a long time for an order or took the risk of spilling drinks and withstand the muscle aches and picked up a large order.

Times have been difficult for most of us and I wish GrabFood isn't just showing care in the form of words but also actions. Empty talks is cheap, don't make yourself cheap, GrabFood.