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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Not surprising. Deliveroo cared too much about end-users:

1. Uber switched to delivering multiple orders per driver trip and then charging extra if you wanted priority. I imagine this would've helped their unit economics immensely and allowed drivers to make more money.

2. Deliveroo had a functioning customer service who would often refund orders and give discounts in order to deliver a great experience. Uber deliberately didn't. No support = more profit.

3. Uber would charge multiple tiers of fees. Service fee. Delivery fee. Eventually they were charging twice as much on top of the order as Deliveroo and it took a while for them to do the same.

And then Uber One subscription likely did them in the end. The ability to save on both home delivery and trips was pretty compelling.

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Australia also has Menulog (now owned by just eat) which was developed locally that had a head start and fills a similar segment to Deliveroo, often cheaper.

Easi (now owned by HungryPanda) is also big in cities for Asian food.

Its by no means an uber eats monopoly. There are others also

Menulog has been around in Australia for years (far before handling the delivery service part)

I remember working in a pizza shop 10 years ago and Menulog's business was taking online orders then having an offshore call center call the restaurant to place the order. They would just invisibly mark up the cost to consumer to cover this.

(It was always a pain to take these orders as the callers english wasn't great and the call audio volume was low making it difficult to hear when busy causing incorrect orders, missed items etc.)

Here in Belgium it's quite the opposite: got unlucky with 3 bad meal in a row, was told by customer support that I exceeded some threshold and that they would not refund those (and nothing else for x months). So missing part of the order, incomplete meal (burger with only the meat and bread), problematic situation (found a piece of glasses in one meal...): no action on their end - because you know, as the customer it's your fault.

So no, they don't care here in Belgium. At all. But none care.

Also Uber and Deliveroo cost quite often way more than local platform.

Beyond Uber not refunding you (which is not nice). I would also blame the restaurant (WTF, pieces glasses in your meal)...

Small point, I took it that the parent was talking about his experience with Deliveroo, in contrast to the post about Deliveroo’s service being good.

While not good for you, I understand this from a business view. There are bad players that will complain for the free meal regardless of quality.

The platform has to manage against people that seek to abuse relaxed customer service. A third in a row seems reasonable threshold and I would hope you are an outlier of this happening to a genuine customer.

So I dont feel this is 'they don't care', more a sad reality of the world that some people abuse systems if they can, and you unfortunately got caught up in that.

That's also the beauty of the internet and customer reviews. If a restaurant is that bad frequently, reviews will end their business so they can't survive on churning people trying something new.

In Belgium, in recent months, take away delivery fees have increased and unless you order multiple meals it's not worth it anymore (like, 25 or 30% of the total price when ordering for a single person).

Huh. Didn’t get any of that with Uber in my local market. In my local market, the only difference between the two is that Deliveroo would require telling the delivery person a code to get your food, it’s cheaper, and sometimes the menu is out of date. Also, getting a refund from a messed up meal was harder than Uber eats. Uber eats refunds were 9/10, no questions asked, while Deliveroo usually required chatting with a human.

Uber Eats works like Uber where they calculate the LTV of you as a customer and just give you a refund regardless of the situation.

Typically works great but the edge cases are where real customer support helps.

Uber Eats sometimes uses the "delivery code" system too, but not always. I've noticed this in multiple countries. I think it depends on what address you're delivering to.

I almost exclusively use Deliveroo (Italy) because their customer support is top notch, their monthly plan works well for me and every other delivery service treated me like shit[1]. I also have heard from a rider that they're the least worse we have when it comes to treating riders.

If they were to quit I probably just switch to a local service (we have one and it's based on Facebook Messenger, ugh). Uber One has no appeal here cause there's no Uber in Italy anyway.

[1]: Glovo in particular I had experiences where I was outright left without any food after long delays because of the rider's ineptitude and was told "oh that sucks, well better luck next time :P"

> Deliveroo cared too much about end-users

My experience with Deliveroo in Ireland has been completely the opposite of that. I was a Deliveroo Plus subscriber, but now I don't use Deliveroo at all.

Customer service was non-existent, orders would vanish and no one cared. When I cancelled Deliveroo Plus there was no attempt at retention.

1.Uber switched to delivering multiple orders per driver trip and then charging extra if you wanted priority.

Sure they charge extra, but they still don't give you priority.. or even complete your order mostly. I get like 95% reliable delivery with deliveroo, but not more than 50% with uber.

I can never actually pay for anything on Uber eats - nothing unusual...Australian banks all the way and yet still impossible to order.

Menulog and DoorDash appear to work pretty well. Sad to see Deliveroo go.

Here in HK, uber eats folded partly because of those reasons. Customer support from Deliveroo was so much better in case of issues.

All in all fewer middle-man the better.

Not really sure economics agrees with you there.

Edit: to be clear, I’m not suggesting the business model/treatment of ‘contractors’ is ethical, but fewer companies will not solve that, regulation will.

didnt use deliveroo at all as i didnt know they were this good

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