Sadly, seeing stories on social media about GrabFood drivers encountering problems due to customers canceling orders has been pretty common, especially before the pandemic started. These stories never failed to catch the outrage of netizens, who sympathized with the wasted effort and cash of GrabFood drivers.
While Grab tightened its policies in 2019 by saying that abusive no-show customers would have their accounts suspended, the company announced another measure to make sure that drivers won’t bear the burden of canceled orders during the House Committee on Trade and Industry’s hearing on June 25.
According to Grab spokesperson and lawyer Nicka Hosaka, Grab will be using a new system where they will be shouldering the advanced costs of food orders instead of their delivery riders.
“Moving towards August, we will implement this model whereby when the delivery partner reaches the restaurant, [he] does not need to bring out any cash or pay any cash. He will simply pick up the order,” said Hosaka.
In this new system, Grab will send the advanced payment to the restaurant via the Grab app, and all the driver has to do is pick the order up. Upon delivery to the customer, the cash collected will go straight to the driver. Through this system, drivers’ digital wallets won’t have deductions should the customer be a no-show.
This is a change from their current process of riders usually shouldering the payment to the restaurants first and only being reimbursed by GrabFood upon delivery, which becomes a problem when encountering no-show customers.
Currently, a bill is also being pushed in the House of Representatives where those who make unnecessary cancellations of orders through apps like GrabFood may get penalized by law. Aside from at least six years of jail time, violators will have to pay a P100,000 fine along with paying the food and delivery service provided for their canceled transactions.
A provision from the House bill also seeks to penalize those who shame, demean, embarrass or humiliate delivery riders with at least six months of jail time.
Header photo from Inquirer.net
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Writer: YANN MAGCAMIT
