Uber Eats hiding upfront Info from delivery drivers? Here’s why

One of the biggest perks about delivering for Uber Eats is that you have the freedom to accept or decline any order offer that comes in.

If you don’t like the estimated payout, the restaurant, the distance to the customer, or anything else about the order, you can skip it and wait for the next one.

But Uber occasionally takes away information that helps drivers make an informed decision.

Sometimes you can only keep upfront info if you maintain a minimum acceptance rating.

Other times, Uber removes upfront info without explanation, either as an experiment or due to an app error.

Read on to learn what happens when Uber removes upfront info, and why that information is so important to delivery drivers.

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JULY 2023 UPDATE

Uber is still experimenting with hiding upfront info. Drivers in different cities are seeing different approaches.

The exact information that gets hidden varies from area to area, and Uber sometimes removes the acceptance rate requirement without notice.

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The exact upfront info that you lose depends on the city you’re in, and the experiment that Uber is currently running.

Sometimes, you will still see an estimated payout and the total estimated distance and time for the order. But you will have to bring your acceptances back up to 5/10 to get full info again.

In some cases you can lose all upfront info. You won’t see the fare, destination, or the distance.

Here’s an image from a driver who was blocked from receiving full upfront details.

As expected, drivers are not happy about this update. Restaurant and customer drop-off information are both critical factors when you evaluate whether an order is worth your time or not.

Related: Upfront pricing is finally here for Uber drivers

“Next request won’t include upfront details”

The Uber app tracks your acceptances and declines on the home screen of the driver app. If you accept less than 5 out of your 10 most recent orders (or 3/10 in some areas), you’ll see a warning screen that lets you know that you will no longer see certain upfront info.

The upfront info that you will lose: You will no longer see the restaurant name or the destination address on the order acceptance screen.

You will still see this info: Estimated payout, estimated delivery distance and time.

After you accept the order, restaurant name and customer destination address will be revealed.

You aren’t losing all upfront info, and the ability to see estimated payout means that you can still filter out the lowest paying orders.

But without restaurant and customer destination, you won’t be able to skip restaurants you don’t like or pass on customer locations that you don’t want to go to.

How order acceptance tracking works: The home screen of the app will track your order acceptances in real time. Your accepted trips don’t reset when you go offline, so acceptances and rejections will carry over to the next time you drive.

Which cities have this update?

So far this feature has rolled out in several cities across the US, but Uber has not published a list of active cities.

It’s not clear if changes to upfront info are only a temporary test, or a permanent change. Based on past unpopular updates, it’s likely that Uber will tweak these changes as driver feedback comes in.

Uber is still tweaking this update. Some drivers are now reporting that Uber has dropped the required number of rides to 3 out of 10.

Why does Uber take upfront info away?

Customer experience seems to be the biggest motivation for this change.

Here’s how Uber explained their reasoning in an email to drivers:

“When couriers repeatedly reject trip requests, everything slows down. Restaurants wait longer for food to be picked up, customers wait longer for their orders to be delivered, and other couriers often have to travel further on each trip. 

Couriers who accept most of the requests they receive help improve the Uber Eats experience for everyone on the platform.”

Why restaurant info is so important to drivers

Any delivery driver who has been working for more than a few weeks has a list of restaurants that they prefer to skip.

Check out the quotes from our article about the restaurants that delivery drivers don’t like, and you’ll see how opinionated drivers can be.

For example, if you know that your local Popeyes is too slow, you may want to skip every Popeyes request that comes your way.

But now that Uber might hide that that information away, you’ll be forced to deliver from places that you think are a bad use of your time.

You’ll either have to go to Popeyes to keep your acceptance rate above 5/10, or you’ll have to go to Popeyes without even knowing it after Uber hides the upfront info.

Why customer location is so important to drivers

Knowing the customer’s drop-off location is info that drivers won’t want to give up. Without that info, you might get sent to the opposite side of town when you’re near the end of your day, ruining your commute home.

Or sometimes there could be a complicated apartment complex or high-rise that you don’t want to deliver to.

If you dip beneath 5/10 acceptances, you won’t have enough info to skip bad locations anymore. Or you’ll be forced to go to unfavorable areas just to boost your ratio high enough to keep upfront info.

Uber Eats drivers aren’t happy about this!

Drivers are always unhappy when information is taken away from them. Before this change, you could always rely on knowing the payout, distance, restaurant name, and customer destination before you took on an order.

Without that info, you’re forced to take orders that don’t meet your criteria. Some might say that non ideal deliveries are part of the job, but until now Eats drivers had a lot of information to work with.

You might think that a 50% acceptance rate is a reasonable request from Uber, but base pay on Uber Eats can drop as low as $2.50 on some orders.

It’s not unusual to reject more than 5 out of 10 recent orders when you’re on an unlucky streak of low paying orders, so it’s likely that many drivers may end up losing upfront info.

• See the Highs and Lows of Uber Eats Driver Pay

Driver reactions:

“Ya, I’m done delivering for Uber if they implement this.”

“MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! THIS IS A HARD NO!”

“They shouldn’t be able to coerce us like this”

“It’ll be 10 bucks an hr at this rate”

“If they do this to me, I’m going full Karen on them”

“So instead of increasing drivers pay…they withhold clarity and transparency in a threat to make their jobs more difficult”

“Bruh are they kidding right now?? Most of the offers are garbage”

All quotes from Reddit, thread 1 and thread 2