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Delivery agent injured in rain, company asks ‘Why did you accept order?’
A delivery driver was left shocked and disappointed by his company’s response when he informed them of an injury and requested that his orders be reassigned.
A delivery driver in Singapore was left shocked and disappointed by his company’s response when he informed them of an injury and requested that his orders be reassigned. The driver – working for Grab – was completing his shift on a rainy day when he slipped and injured his leg.
Here’s what happened
The driver, named Arif, had just delivered one order. Two new orders were automatically accepted on his behalf by the Grab app, according to a Mothership report.
When Arif realised that he would not be able to fulfil the deliveries due to his injury, he reached out to Grab support. The delivery driver assumed that his two orders would be easily reassigned to other agents after he showed pictures of his injury.
However, the support executive refused to reassign his orders, saying the driver should not have accepted them if he could not deliver them. He was told that he would have to cancel the orders himself if he could not deliver them.
Speaking to Mothership, the rider said he had not expected the chat support to be so unsympathetic.
What the chat support executive said
Screenshots shared by Arif show that he requested Grab support to reassign both the orders. He shared pictures of the injury as evidence too.
The chat support specialist, however, asked the driver why he had chosen to accept the jobs when he knew of his injury and the rainy conditions.
“Thank you for informing us about your situation. However, if you were already aware of your injury and the rainy, slippery conditions, why did you go online and accept jobs? I sincerely apologize, but we are unable to reassign your order. If you wish to cancel,. you will need to do so on your end,” the customer support executive told Arif.
Driver ‘appalled’ by response
The Grab delivery driver said he was “appalled” by the unsympathetic response. He said that the chat specialist did not understand that the two orders had been automatically accepted.
The orders were assigned automatically through the Grab driver app’s “Auto Accept” feature, leaving the rider with no option to decline them. Although delivery riders can choose to accept orders manually, that feature was not used in this instance.
According to the rider, most delivery riders prefer the auto-accept function as it allows them to secure back-to-back jobs more efficiently.
The rider also noted how the chat support executive did not seem at all worried about his wellbeing.
Grab’s statement
Eventually, one customer cancelled their order. The Grab driver canceled the other order himself. "It's unbecoming that Grab is giving me this kind of response," he said.
A Grab spokesperson, in a statement to Mothership, acknowledged that the chat support executive’s response was "inaccurate and not up to standard".
“"We sincerely apologise for the experience our delivery-partner encountered on our platform. If partners are injured on-the-job, they should stop work immediately and receive treatment as first priority. Under our policy, Grab will assign a new delivery-partner to complete the order,” the spokesperson said.
