Dealing with late deliveries can cause enough frustration among food delivery customers, but what happens when your rider throws a tantrum instead? This was apparently what a GrabFood customer experienced recently.
In a Facebook post yesterday (30 June), Mr Asher shared his unpleasant encounter involving a seemingly indignant rider.
Source: Asher Ashvin on Facebook
Unhappy about having to deliver to his location, the rider who had to proceed with the task anyway allegedly threw his food onto his shoe cabinet.
Believing the action was done out of spite, Mr Asher reported the incident to Grab.
Summarising the events, Mr Asher wrote that he placed an order on Grab from the McDonald’s outlet at Serangoon Ave 3 sometime before midnight on Thursday (29 June).
Source: Asher Ashvin on Facebook
“Almost immediately” after his order was confirmed and a rider was assigned, he received a message from the rider.
Screenshots of parts of their conversation showed the rider informing Mr Asher that he wanted to “relocate” his order to another rider.
Apparently, he felt that the distance he had to travel was “too far”. The rider even suggested that the outlet in Potong Pasir was nearer.
Moreover, the Serangoon outlet was supposedly receiving a lot of orders, so Mr Asher would have had to wait. To this, the rider said, “Good luck waiting”.
After reaching the Grab hotline and learning that the restaurant was within range, the rider appeared to continue chiding Mr Asher.
Source: Facebook
Claiming that he couldn’t cancel the task, he told Mr Asher to “see properly” the next time he ordered from McDonald’s.
The rider explained that he was on “auto accept”, which apparently assigns riders jobs at random.
Source: Asher Ashvin on Facebook
Since he allegedly had no choice but to complete the delivery, the rider described his situation as “very suey” or very unfortunate.
With the template Grab alerts indicating that the rider had picked up the order anyway, Mr Asher anticipated its arrival.
When he heard footsteps approaching, he proceeded towards his front door but heard the sound of items being thrown onto his shoe cabinet.
True enough, when he opened the door, he saw his order in a mess, with a stray plastic bag on the floor and tears in the McDonald’s paper bags.
The drinks had spilled everywhere and the food boxes toppled, exposing their contents.
Taking in the entire scene, Mr Asher concluded that the rider had likely thrown the food out of spite.
Source: Asher Ashvin on Facebook
He told MS News that he then called out to the rider, asking how he could deliver food to people in such a condition.
The latter allegedly replied multiple times, “I deliver already ah.”
Having put on his slippers, Mr Asher was ready to go after the rider but said that the latter kept moving quickly towards the lift.
Since his 16-month-old son was sleeping, he decided to stop the pursuit to avoid making a scene.
Meanwhile, he and his wife had to clean up the mess outside their home, pouring water along their corridor to wash it. The fizzy drinks had also spilled into their shoe cabinet, making it sticky.
Understandably upset, Mr Asher raised the matter to Grab, who contacted him the next day.
After seeing what transpired from his social media posts, the Grab employee apologised profusely.
Mr Asher shared with MS News that the employee immediately processed a full refund for the food order and promised to escalate the issue regarding the rider to another department.
As they often resolve such problems internally, he expressed concern that he would not know the outcome. Therefore, Mr Asher requested for a chance to speak to someone from that department in question.
Later, a representative from the Driver Experience department called to apologise and explain that the rider has had previous complaints.
The incident involving Mr Asher was apparently the last straw, and Grab had no choice but to ban the rider from their platform.
Revealing that he had also contacted Grab’s help centre during the delivery debacle, Mr Asher said that he requested support when he felt that the rider was texting very rudely.
The Grab support staff, who was the same employee who called him the next day, was thankfully very helpful.
He apparently tried to contact the rider early on, when the food was still being prepared, to inform him that he could cancel the order if he wasn’t comfortable.
However, Mr Asher told MS News that the rider refused to do so. The order eventually arrived late as the rider spent too long trying to check with Grab if they could reassign the order without him having to cancel it.
Mr Asher and his wife subsequently re-ordered their food, this time directly on the McDonald’s app. But they only had their meals the next morning as they had no appetite after the incident.
Though the incident occurred late at night, Mr Asher noted that Grab’s support staff responded promptly and were very helpful.
They also took swift action, banning the rider the very next day. A Grab spokesperson confirmed this information with MS News, saying,
The delivery-partner has been banned from our platform following a thorough investigation.
Seeing how quick the follow-up was, perhaps this incident proves to customers that they can get necessary assistance from Grab in times of need.
But hopefully, nobody else will have to face a similar problem in the future.
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Featured image adapted from Asher Ashvin on Facebook.
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