Uber Eats tells couriers to get a bike, then kills biking mode

On April 8th, couriers who delivered by foot received an email. The subject line was: Walking? Try delivering by bike instead.

In their apps, couriers saw also saw a notice that said: Courier pro tip; bike don’t walk.

Here’s the email:

They sent an email to thousands of workers basically saying, “If you get a bike, you will get more work.”

This is not the case. In fact, bikers are getting less orders than ever before. This is due to a change in the algorithm that assigns orders to drivers. On Wednesday April 20th, less than two weeks after sending the email, Uber lowered the priority of bikes compared to cars.

This means that if there is a car even remotely in the area, the driver will get the order instead of the biker.

This is bad for multiple reasons. Exhaust fumes, street congestion, but most importantly, speed. Have you ever visited New York City? If you’re near Times Square it can take your cab 20 minutes just to go a couple of blocks. In many downtown areas, it’s physically impossible for a car to deliver a parcel faster than a bike.

Bikers can breeze through traffic using bike lanes. Bikers can legally go the wrong way down one-way streets. Bikers can sneak past a line of cars at a traffic light. Bikers don’t need to find parking. Bikers can hop off their bikes and use sidewalks. Bikers can go through parks, alleyways, and parking lots.

It makes no sense whatsoever to give short trips to cars over bikes.

How do I know the priority has been lowered? I have tested this extensively over the last week. If you have a bike account, you can test it as well. Just head to a busy area at lunch or dinner and turn the app on. Before you would be flooded with delivery requests (which couriers call pings), now a biker can go hours without getting a single order. Any biker can confirm this. People have reached out to me on Twitter confirming the change to biker mode in multiple cities. This isn’t a case of certain markets. It’s all the markets from Toronto to Texas.

Once the drivers are finished with the lucrative dinner shift, they start to log off. This happens around 8PM in my market. Order frequency and quality begin to drop, so car drivers call it a night and go home. And that’s when the bikers start to get pings now. The off hours. Bikers are only getting delivery requests when there aren’t enough cars available.

This means the thousands of Uber bikers relying on this app for full-time work, will have to find another job. Some people were earning $200/day. Now it’s closer to $20, or even zero.

While other businesses are trying to lower their carbon footprint, Uber is trying to increase it.

Nobody is delivering food in a Tesla. The job doesn’t pay well enough. To deliver people in your car, it must be relatively new. Newer cars make less pollution. But food can be delivered in a rust bucket. It can be delivered in cars that are barely road worthy. This makes business sense for the driver since a cheaper car loses less to deprecation.

Going back to the email Uber sent out. That was the one we received here in Canada. Bikers in the United States received a slightly different email. Their email also included a link to rent an e-bike through Uber’s partnership with Zoomo. (I wonder if even Zoomo knows about these changes. Why would they partner with Uber Eats if Uber was planning to nuke the biking mode?)

How many people went out and rented an e-bike thinking they would get more work? Some did. I’ve seen their posts on Reddit and Twitter.

But Uber knew in advance that they would be de-prioritizing bikers.

This is the level to which Uber does not care about their workers.

Not only has Uber has drastically reduced the bikers’ incomes, but they actively trying to manipulate the bikers into increasing their expenses by renting or buying an e-bike.

Imagine if a grocery store fired all their cashiers with zero notice. On the way out the door, they told them that if they bought a $2,600 meat cleaver using the grocery store’s connection and discount code, they could work in the meat department. Then two weeks later they eliminate the meat department.

Some people who received that email from Uber went out and bought or rented an e-bike. They bought an insulated backpack. They made expensive adjustments to their lives expecting they would be able to work.

This is not the case.

In fact, if someone went out and bought a bike and backpack, they are unlikely to have paid off these expenses off before Uber killed the biking program. There was only a 12 day window from when Uber said “Get a bike,“ to when they killed biking mode.

Although technically speaking they didn’t kill it. They reduced the workable hours down to practically nothing. Just like they did to walkers. They did this for two purposes. One, it never looks good for a company to lay off staff. Two, Uber doesn’t want their contractors classified as employees and has fought lengthy court battles to try and prevent this. But they also don’t want to treat their couriers like humans either.

If a normal employer did this to someone, it would be called constructive dismissal, and the employee would be entitled to compensation.

To bikers now, Uber is a like a bad friend who only wants to hang out with you if everyone else is busy.

Uber can legally say they didn’t end the walking or the biking program. They didn’t fire anyone or lay anyone off. But only technically. In reality, Uber has fired the walkers, and laid off most of the bikers.

At least the walkers got a minor heads up that the program would be changed. Bikers received no such email. One day they could make enough money to pay the rent, the next day they could not. These workers were laid off through no fault of their own. Biking orders is quite fast. The average walker takes between 10-15 minutes to complete a delivery. Bikers get most of their deliveries done in 8-10 minutes.

Do you think a car can deliver a package faster than eight minutes from one downtown location to another during rush hour? I don’t think so.

The change to the walking program was dumb, the change to the biking program is downright moronic.

Uber hasn’t even admitted anything is wrong. If a biker contacts the support line, they say it’s a demand issue. Or nothing is wrong.

Uber: Stop lying. Let the bikers know what’s happening with the program. Is it going to return to normal, or are they going to have to find another job? Your lack of transparency on this issue is truly despicable.

April 27th Update: The moderators of the /r/UberEats subreddit are no longer deleting posts about this issue. Most discussion can be found in this pinned thread.

Here are two interesting posts.