Cases of order cancellations and bogus orders have long been problems for delivery service providers and riders. This is one of the reasons why the House Bill (HB) No. 6958 or the Food and Grocery Delivery Services Protection Act was recently filed in Congress.
This has yet to be passed into law as of this writing, though, which means that there’s a good chance that these issues continue to prevail without violators being penalized. Grab Philippines’ new system, however, just might be able to mitigate the situation at least for the meantime.
In this new system that’s set to be launched soon, GrabFood riders will no longer have to shoulder the advance payments for delivery orders. This was announced by Grab spokesperson and lawyer Nicka Hosaka during a recent online hearing of the House Committee on Trade and Industry.
“Moving towards August, we will be implementing this model whereby pagdating sa restaurant, the delivery partner will not need to pay any cash,” said Hosaka. “He will simply pick up the order, and the restaurant will receive the payment straight via the app.”
Once the rider receives the payment from the customer and completes the transaction, Grab will simply deduct from the rider’s ‘digital wallet’ the amount that he collected for the transaction. This digital wallet is where Grab reimburses its riders for bogus or canceled orders, and this new system is somehow like a reverse process of the company’s reimbursement policy that it has in place.
The hard part about this reimbursement procedure—in spite of Grab riders supposedly being reimbursed 100% of the time—is that riders tend to lose what would have been capital for their succeeding delivery orders, resulting in potential downtime and overall reduced income for them. This new system that’s set to be rolled out soon will help avoid these kinds of scenarios. Do note that Hosaka clarified in a text message to CNN Philippines that this new model will not immediately cover all Grab merchants and partner restaurants by August.
What do you think of Grab’s new system? Tell us in the comments.
