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Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

Moreover, you can't even phone Uber Eats!

I had a huge delivery of Chinese food left on my doorstep (it was still quite hot). Obviously, delivered to the wrong address. The bill was fully itemized and stapled to one of the Uber bags and it came to just short of $200 but there was no correct address and no telephone number to be found on it anywhere.

Anyway, I did my best to contact Uber Eats to get the delivery person to collect it but to no awail. Checked everywhere for a telephone number including searching the internet and found nothing except the number that explained how to place an order. When I rang it, it had a recording - no hunan to be found anywhere.

I couldn't log in on online as I didn't have an account.

And no one reappeared from Uber to reclaim it.

Anyway, I gave up. There was so much food I couldn't get it all into the freezer. It lasted several weeks. Saved a lot on food bills over that time.

Damn fuckwits!

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> no hunan to be found anywhere

Ironically, that's exactly what the intended recipients were complaining about too!

Even if the bag was sealed, I don't think they could take it back once it left the delivery person's custody. That's usually how these operations work (but not sure about Uber Eats specifically). Too much risk of food tampering or other mischief.

Very likely. But he couldn't have gone more than a couple of minutes. I'm surprised I didn't hear him.

What I'm still unclear about is that someone nearby ordered the food, as I didn't answer immediately why didn't he ring hone to base or to the planned recipient for an address correction?

This kind of situation is fixed by pin verification like there is for Uber rides and other services like some package delivery companies.

Believe me, they save more on call center bills than you did on food bills.

Exactly!

In that sense they're not fuckwits but their ethics are in the gutter.

> No way to escalate review to a human. None at all.

> Moreover, you can't even phone Uber Eats!

Uber Eats does have human phone support.

https://gethuman.com/chat/UberEATS

UberEATS Phone Number: 800-253-9377

OK, fair enough. Trouble is, at present I'm living outside the US, it seems those rules don't apply here. Apologies for not making that clear earlier.

Next time try calling the restaurant!

The restaurant had its name on the bill but no telephone number. Presumably, this done to stop or reduce telephone complaints direct to the restaurant. Seems that everything must be done online.

I was a very slow adopter of Uber rides many years ago. When talking to some evangelist at that time offering me codes for free rides, one of the reasons I gave for not using Uber at that time, was that it was completely dependent on smartphone apps, therefore being unusable to certain portions of the population (old non-technical people, those who lost their phone, those who use an OS other than Android or iOS, dead battery and no charging cable, etc.). I foresaw that should it outcompete traditional services to the point of bankruptcy, those people would be left unserviced. I proposed having a web UI and a phone line.

It is sad to see that prediction coming true in various fields. This strong bias against having customer service people, against customers having any way to talk to a person, is noxious to society at large.

I guess in the same line of thought, I find the abandonment of the public phone system to be sad. Instead of replacing old phones with newer terminals with internet capabilities, we abandoned the entire system. Therefore making the world a bit more unequal and a bit more dependent on personal devices.

Related anecdote: last time my smartphone battery died and i had to make a phone call, i walked into the nearest café just like i did many years back, and asked to borrow their phone. They were very suspicious and unfriendly, to say the least, despite having ordered a cup of coffee first. This was a very normal practice not long ago...

>therefore being unusable to certain portions of the population (old non-technical people, those who lost their phone, those who use an OS other than Android or iOS, dead battery and no charging cable, etc.)

FWIW uber has had a web app for years now, and before that there were a plenty of unofficial clients. I remember calling Ubers from my laptop in 2016.

That dialogue happened at an early enough point in time when that was not the case.

Glad to hear they have a web UI now. Even if I use the phone app, the web app is an important backup to have.

Not so outside the US where I live.

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