Deliveroo

Does anyone have any expeirence of working for them?

It looks as though you have to be self-employed when working for them, any disadvatanges to this?

Edit - I’ve signed up and having been doing Deliveroo and UberEats for 2 years now. It’s been going well.

Use my Deliveroo referral link to sign up and you will get a £50 bonus.

https://roo.it/AA55209 or code AA55209

If you want to sign up for UberEats: https://www.uber.com/signup/drive/deliver/?invite_code=58sny4hua

Being self employed is the disadvantaged.

I imagine there's a whole load of disadvantages to be a self employed delivery driver - I assume this is the position you're looking at?
You'd probably be held personally liable for any accidents, not Deliveroo. You'd probably also have to buy and maintain your own moped. They might try and not pay you for sick days and holidays too, though as a freelancer you're as entitled to holiday pay as anyone else - it often comes bundled up in your rates though.

It is a delivery driver position but on bicycle rather than moped. So I am not sure if courier insurance is required? Is having to pay your own taxes/national insurance a ball ache?

being self employed is very advantageous if youre smart about it, if youre a bit of a dafty then you best forget it and stick to being employed by someone else who knows what theyre doing.

paying your own taxes is easy enough with self assessment tax return but a bit stressful when the time comes. even easier if you get a good accountant but bike courier money probably wouldnt warrant it.

you can write a lot of your tax expenditure off on your tools for work - a new bike/scooter for example would come in to this.

ultimately a self employed person will have a bit more agro to deal with in terms of paper work but the money is better. its a good life skill regardless of what you do

Cycling skills certainly are not needed if the one I saw yesterday is anything to go by. He swooped out of a side street near St Paul's nearly taking out a few cyclists, straight through a red light and then onto a pavement to stop outside the door of an office.

I was considering this as way to earn some extra cash / do more exercise in the process. Those backpacks do look pretty unwieldy though.

to order food from them only costs £2.50 so god knows how much they pay their deliveroos

did it for a while, I loved riding, really getting to know london roads, but the rest of it was crap, and that's when the weather was half decent. they were employing a lot of riders when I was there and I ran some of the trial shifts. many couldn't safely ride a bike. That said, many could, and were decent enough guys. Whilst I was there, most riders were looking for other work.

that said I know the pay structure and hours were altering just as I left... for better or worse I don't know, as thankfully I found something that suited me more!

I'm looking at doing this, scooter instead though just for a few months to tide me over the winter. However pay is not the best, but it is as and when you want it, and its a no brain job, and it doesn't involved looking at computers or dealing with folk in shops.

Not sure exactly how their business is structured, though imagine customer pays £2.50 on top of any order and restaurant pays at least that = £5 per order, 2.5-4 hours per hour and they will make money from you, not huge, but right now they have ~3000 riders across the UK so adds up.

Locally our city does not have an office, they use a starbucks, so nowhere to 'be' when the weather is bad and no deliveries to be done. However vs. other courier/delivery type jobs you are paid by the hour regardless of work load, advantageous it should be but I'm struggling to find commerical/courier/delivery insurance that will work.

MCE insurance do a flat rate of £825 per annum (25% apr on top if you can't pay in one go, so £1100 near enough) however thats based on the London system of £7 per hour + £1 (?) per delivery extra, which is hire and reward, the most expensive kind of insurance. Up north they will just pay a flat rate regardless, which should mean insurance is cheaper, but unfortunately all the insurers I've contacted try to default you to their flat rate scheme for deliveroo staff*. So for a 16 year old riding a rancid 50cc blating the streets hire and reward style do as many in an hour as you can, £825 is a good price, but for folk who've realized being alive and not in hospital is a good thing, £825 is a joke.

*I'm beginning to get increasingly aware that this is tied back with the company themselves, i.e. for every rider (self employed entity) taking out one of these policies a finders fee is making its way back to Deliveroo. Certainly smells like thats happening.

What I'm getting at is - new company loading ALL the risk and significant costs onto folk they are approaching as 'consultants', thus attempting to absolve themselves of all risk. The more I look into it, the more I'm convinced its really not a good idea.

Bit of a dead thread, but I started with them a week ago, feel free to ask away if anybody wants to know about my (limited) experience with them.

What's it like?

How you getting on with that massive square box in todays wind?

How bad is it?

How messy was the food when you finally arrived to customer destination?

How often did you get lost?

I would imagine not too much. Navigation-wise, Sheffield is pretty easy. Nice big radial roads to work from and a clear choice of rivers and hills as landmarks.

@Ok123

But how are you going to find the chef in a field that's also a jungle?

How messy was the food when you finally arrived to customer destination?

This is what I always wonder.

Them great big square boxes on the bony backs of bicyclists must make the food jiggle all over the place. Or is there some clever suspension system inside?

The work is actually alright. It's fairly mindless, you haven't got a boss breathing down your neck and once you get used to that stupid f'ing box, it's essentially just riding around central as fast as possible for 3 hours at a time (They're making everybody do a month in central when they join, then you can pick your own area).

The box isn't as bad as it looks and it barely weighs anything, but yeah, it's horrendous in the wind and about as aerodynamic as you'd imagine, which is really fun going across the bridges. You can almost tack with it, and that isn't an exaggeration.

The food is intact when you arrive. The restaurants tend to pack it pretty tightly in the bag and it goes inside a smaller thermal bag inside the f'ing box (as it will henceforth be known).

Not sure about the other areas, but in central I've never earned below £10p/h, with tips included in that. Which isn't amazing, but for brainless courier work it could be worse. I would imagine this could go down if you were in quieter areas.

According to the Garmin, I end up doing about 100 miles per week for work, split between 5x 3hr shifts, and that's including the commute from SE15 to central. So not too bad overall. They make you do 2x evening shifts (6.30 - 9.30) on the weekend, but they're the only mandatory ones and you can choose your shifts the rest of the time.

Let me know if you're intrigued about anything else.

@edscoble - If you know central reasonably well (Which I do) and have Google Maps and an A-Z, it's hard to go too far wrong

A fairly typical shift for illustration

I work for them and have done for about 6 months as a cyclist. The big thing that really gets me is to do with insurance. As a cyclist courier, it's not possible to get public liability insurance. No one is willing to insure you on your bike if you're a courier. I have insurance as a normal cyclist, but it's invalid as a courier.

Because we are "self employed" (I don't think we are) Deliveroo refuse to provide insurance for their cyclists. So their cyclists are uninsured and are completely unable to get insurance. I assure you, 100% all of their cyclists are out on the roads without insurance. I raised the issue with them, and took it to the head of driver operations. I was basically laughed out the door, and was told that cycling without insurance is "just something you have to do" and I need to be braver. Madness. Their cyclists are out on the roads unprotected, and I feel sorry for any motorists a cyclist runs into, because they're not going to get any insurance money.

After I had raised my concerns and complaints, I had my hours reduced and didn't receive any more online tips from customers, something I don't feel is a coincidence. This is a terrible company, and they treat their staff like dirt. I really hope they start treating their staff better, and sort out their insurance because at the moment the way they operate is awful, and I think probably illegal.