Imagine it. You’re in for a quiet night with your partner and don’t fancy cooking so you hit UberEats and order a couple of fresh pizzas and cans of pop from a local restaurant.
You follow the progress of your Uber-delivered dinner on the smartphone app, and notice that it seems to be taking longer than it needs to … a half hour longer. The driver eventually turns up at your door and hands you your meal.
Tummies rumbling, you excitedly open the bag to tuck into your cheesy feast and … the escaping odor causes your salivary glands to pack up for the night and your esophagus to quietly slip away unannounced. Peering into the smelly void, you see not pizza but instead moldy sandwiches — one partly eaten — and two yellow puck-shaped objects that apparently require scientific analysis to accurately identify. Oh, and there’s an old-looking salad inside, too.
This is precisely what happened to Anna Kotlikova and Blake Weinzettl in Toronto on Sunday evening, according to an interview with CBC News. Uber — admittedly a company more familiar with delivering people than meals — says it’s now investigating the alleged incident.
Describing the episode, Kotlikova said, “The smell overwhelmed the whole room. I don’t know where [the driver] got this mysterious big brown bag with an order number, which wasn’t even our order number, or the order number from the restaurant.”
It all seemed a bit odd from the very start when the driver appeared to take much longer than necessary to reach their home. “I don’t know where this guy was driving to, because he definitely did go somewhere. And where is this old food coming from? And why is he doing this?” she told CBC. The fact that the “pizza” arrived at the door in a bag and not a box probably should’ve set alarm bells ringing, too.
After contacting UberEats about the debacle, the couple said they received scripted responses, a refund, and a $25 voucher. But no word on why their delivery was so messed up. Kotlikova said all she wants is for “Uber to have a sense of urgency and figure this out and at least update us on what’s going on.”
The restaurant also complained to Uber, and said that another of its customers reported an almost identical experience on the same night.
According to Uber, the driver at the center of the story has a rating of 4.8 out of a maximum 5.0, with no reports of any other sandwich-based shenanigans on his record.
Hoping to get to the bottom of the bizarre episode, the San Francisco-based company said it’s currently trying to get full accounts from both the driver and the sandwich making restaurant.
