The Financial Fallout of Being Deactivated from Delivery Work

Steve McDougall gained about $ 900 per week delivering for Uber Eats and Doordash, darting in the intense traffic of Gloucester, Massachusetts, on E-Bike. The flexible hours have allowed him to tend to his 15 -year -old daughter and two parents with disabilities.

“It’s not great money, but it’s freedom,” said McDougall, 40 years old. “I go home during the day. I can go to the softball matches of my daughter, to the practices, to the doctor’s appointments – everything I need.”

In November 2023, he received an e -mail from Uber that he informed him that his account had been deactivated. He mentioned “fraudulent activity”, but did not develop. He immediately appealed.

“I just wrote a little comment saying:” I work six days a week for you guys, I never did anything wrong, “he said.

Three months later, Uber sent McDougall an e -mail by saying that a review concluded that the activity on his account “was fraudulent” and did not reactivate his account. He had completed 1,720 deliveries on the app for over three years. By relying only on Doordash deliveries, his income dropped to $ 500 in a good week, he said.

According to data from First public, A group of the technological sector, about 7.3 million Americans earn money by working through an app, such as Uber, Lyft, Instacart or Doordash. The way companies decide to suspend a worker is not largely not regulated. For drivers who rely on apps for all or most of their income, deactivation can be a push towards the financial rim.

Some drivers claim to have been deactivated due to technical Snafus, misunderstandings or reasons that are not clear for them, rather than for violations of the serious rules. Others have been removed due to customers’ complaints. In these cases, driving driving companies rarely provide the driver with the customer’s name or details such as the exact moment of the accident due to the privacy concerns. The companies sometimes leave drivers waiting for weeks or months for a resolution.

Mr. McDougall lives with his brother and his parents and began to deliver the apps after the swelling in his legs forced him to leave his job as a clams. His brother, who is on the spectrum of autism, earns the refueling of money in a grocery store. His parents bring less than $ 2,000 through social security programs. Pay $ 100 per week in maintenance of children for a daughter who lives with her mother and contributes to the expenses of another daughter when she can.

Shortly after Mr. McDougall lost access to Uber Eats, the monthly rental of his family in their three bedroom apartment has increased from $ 1,800 to $ 2,200.

He has negotiated lower payments on his credit cards and his daughter’s mother accepted a temporary break on children’s support payments.

The delivery of two apps allowed Mr. McDougall to do a more profitable job than Cherry. With only Doordash at his disposal, he needed to choose more paid deliveries, putting further hours to reach 70 percent of the revenue he had done previously.

Mr. McDougall did not know what was behind the “fraudulent activity” Uber said he had found, but he had a theory.

Pending orders to fast food counters, Peter Calnan has often met a retired Boston police officer who earns extra money by delivering for apps.

A few months before Uber deactivated Mr. McDougall, the company had deactivated Mr. Calnan with an e -mail with identical formant who affirmed fraudulent activities. Mr. Calnan said that the only unusual thing about his business was a client: a woman who ordered Dunkin ‘several times a day. He has always ordered coffee, sometimes with a donut.

Mr. McDougall also frequently handed over to the same woman, who gave him a good tip. “It was one of my best customers,” he said.

Drivers have the motivation to increase the order count. Based on Uber incentive programs, more deliveries could unlock bonuses in cash or discounts on the maintenance of fuel or vehicle.

The customer, Nikki forziati, confirmed that he was working from home while taking care of an adopted son, then ordered dunkin “regularly”. Have Uber algorithms confused his habit of caffeine as a plot to hit with drivers to increase their number?

A Uber spokesman said that Mr. McDougall and Mr. Calnan “initially were marked for fraud after an unusual behavior model and their access was removed. After reviewing again, we decided to be suitable for reactivation”.

Uber spokesman said that in 2022 the company has overhauned its deactivation process and has hired more personal to review cases. Several reasons for deactivation, including security problems, are always revised by a human eye, he said, but some deactivations are still automated. “It depends on the extent that the problem is simple,” he said. He added that 99 percent of appeals is concluded within three days.

Both men resumed delivery for Uber Eats.

Little appeal, a lot of pain

The small research existing on deactivations indicates that they are surprisingly common. A 2023 survey on app drivers Conducted by a coalition of working groups, it found that 40 percent had been deactivated at some point. In Another survey Of over 800 California drivers, two thirds said they had dealt with deactivation.

Uber, Lyft and Doordash did not provide numbers on their deactivation rates for this story.

The organizations of APPLE and DELIVERY APPROCENTS have protested from what they see as random deactivations. Last year, those complaints were a fulcrum of demonstrations At O’Hare airport in Chicago and outside the Uber headquarters in San Francisco.

Some state and local governments are trying to regulate deactivations. As part of a judicial agreement, Mandate of Massachusetts Lyft and Uber provide drivers with a reason when they are deactivated and create a process of appeal. In 2021, Seattle approved an ordinance that required a 14 -day notice before deactivation and establish a driver resolution center.

In most states, there is little use for drivers who think that their deactivation has been unjust. Some pay $ 69 for a package of services from the Gig Rocket website that guides them by challenging their deactivations, including a letter of form that threatens legal actions and instructions for the presentation of a cause in a small court. Torsten Kunert, a South California pilot who manages Gig Rocket, said he had sold more than 7000 deactivation packages in less than three years.

Seattle’s law has created a series of data that a group of researchers from the University of Washington has subjected. They I found that, For a period of 19 months until January 2023, 1,420 drivers sought help for deactivation.

Finally, eighty percent of drivers who sought help were restored, including three quarters of those deactivated for a suspected customer security problem, discovered the study of the University of Washington. The median time before the reactivation was 11 weeks.

Even a temporary suspension of an account can cause a profound financial tension.

“The drivers we spoke with everything, from the loss of the lease contract on their car, distort their merit of being evicted from the house or by the apartment they are renting,” said Nicholas Weber, one of the researchers from the University of Washington. He observed that some drivers acquire or rent vehicles for these concerts. “It is quite catastrophic for drivers.”

Left without a security network

At the beginning of October, Amie Campbell was closed by his Lyft account.

Mrs. Campbell, 55, who lives in Philadelphia, had a long career as a model in New York City. That career slowed down when he reached middle age and started working in fashion and as a certified nurse assistant. So the endometriosis, an ovarian disorder, caused attacks of pain and put it aside from any work that required a constant program.

In 2020, he began to drive for Lyft. He provided over 2,500 races, had an average assessment of five -star customers and, in September 2024, earned $ 4,137 from the app.

An e -mail by Lyft said that Mrs. Campbell’s account was suspended pending a “potential violation of our terms of service”. He sent an answer, “I’m confused … I’m not even telling me what it is.”

According to Mrs. Campbell, a representative called her and said that a customer reported that he was guiding while using his phone but did not say when or how exactly he was using him.

Mrs. Campbell was racked. He said he always keeps the phone in a support mounted on the dashboard during the races.

“They will take the floor of a stranger who wants their $ 8 back for a lap and will disable my account,” he said.

Allison Guthrie, Lyft spokesman, said that the company “investigates the safety relationships through correspondence with drivers and cyclists, third -party declarations, route data, timing details and police relationships”.

Keegan Lee was blocked by his Doordash account last May because he failed a facial recognition test. As a safeguard against the sharing of the account, Doordash sporadically pushes drivers to use the camera of their phone to match their face with an image previously loaded.

“I could have had shorter hair and the beard could have been shorter,” said Lee, 27 years old, who lives in Baton Rouge, Los Angeles.

The suspension came in a bad moment. Mr. Lee had been fired from a job that sold mattresses. He negotiated his way out of a recently signed lease in an apartment and stayed at the budget hotels until he found a constant paycheck.

“I am blocked in a kind of vortex where I need money every few days, so I can’t not doordash or Uber eats 10 hours a day, every day,” he said.

By relying on Uber Eats, Mr. Lee’s earnings off from about $ 350 per week to $ 225. Borrowed money from friends and family and in the end he moved with his father.

He presented an appeal to Doordash, loading his driving license and social security card to demonstrate his identity. After three months, Doordash restored it.

“It’s crazy and cruel falsely remove someone’s ability to feed with false claims,” ​​he said.

“The decision to deactivate Keegan was made by a human agent, not by an algorithm, based on tests that suggest potential account accounts,” said Julian Crowley, spokesman for Doordash. “During the appeal process, the tests were inaccurate and the deactivation was canceled.”

Mrs. Campbell ended up going to the guide to Uber and quickly stabilized her revenue. He said that the rides at the prefedellato age of Uber are easier and rarely send it to the neighborhoods that consider dangerous.

But her deactivation of Lyft reminded her of the precariousness and difficulty of her work. “Sometimes I have to do with illegal passengers and insane in the car,” he said. “I have no security, nobody.”