GrabFood rider injures leg in Orchard, seeks chat support to reassign deliveries, gets asked why he's working when it's raining

On a rainy August day, a GrabFood delivery rider in Singapore was completing his shift in Orchard when he suffered a fall and injured his calf.

He had just completed a delivery at the time and was automatically assigned two new delivery orders to fulfil via his delivery app.

Unable to continue, he decided to contact the platform's chat support to request a reassignment of the orders.

However, the text response from the chat support specialist left him appalled.

Speaking to Mothership on the condition of anonymity, the rider said he did not expect the chat support specialist to reply in an unsympathetic manner.

Fell off bicycle outside condo

The incident occurred on Aug. 17 at around 8pm during "very bad weather", the rider said.

He had just delivered an order to a condominium in Orchard on his bicycle and was making his way out when he fell and injured himself.

When he checked his Grab driver app, he realised that he had been automatically assigned two new stacked orders to be delivered back to back, all within 2km from where he was.

Realising that he needed to tend to his injuries, a 3cm cut on his calf, he decided to forgo the orders and reached out via the Grab support channel to request for a reassignment.

The rider managed to connect with a chat support specialist over text, who introduced himself as Arif.

Provided evidence of injury

Given his circumstances, the rider provided his reasons and photos of his injury.

"I fell down earlier and cannot proceed," he wrote. "It's raining and slippery."

Chat specialist response

However, the chat specialist responded via messages asking the rider why he accepted the job if he knew he was already injured and it was raining.

Shocked by response

This was an "appalling" response, the rider said, since the chat specialist wrongly assumed that the rider accepted the orders when he knew he was hurt.

There was also no concern shown for the injured rider.

Moreover, the orders were automatically assigned through the "Auto Accept" function in the Grab driver app and the rider could not have rejected it.

Delivery riders have the option to manually accept orders on the app, but the function was not utilised in this case.

The rider shared that most delivery riders opt to use the auto-accept function as it is easier to receive jobs back-to-back.

When the rider explained that he had received the orders automatically, the chat specialist responded that they were unable to help with reassigning the orders.

Order got cancelled by customer and rider

Eventually, one customer cancelled the order and the rider cancelled the other order by himself.

The two stacked orders would have earned the rider around S$8.

"It's unbecoming that Grab is giving me this kind of response," he said.

The chat support specialist had told the rider that he would have to cancel on his end if he wanted to not continue with the delivery.

However, doing so would affect the rider's shift incentive, which is dependent on him not canceling more than 10 per cent of his orders during a shift.

While the rider understood why such a rule is put in place, he said the backend support team should be able to exercise flexibility in extenuating circumstances, such as when a rider gets hurt.

Not the first time

This apparently was not the first time that the rider, who has been doing deliveries since 2020, has encountered such responses from the chat support team, he said.

He said: "In fact, I've already feedback to them three, four times already regarding these kinds of responses."

The rider said the frequency of the follow-ups felt as though given enough time, "time would heal" his frustrations.

He added that he had been told multiple times that support specialists had been spoken to and that it would not happen again.

Grab's statement

In response to Mothership's queries, a Grab spokesperson said they recognise the response from their support team was "inaccurate and not up to standard":

"We sincerely apologise for the experience our delivery-partner encountered on our platform. If partners are injured on-the-job, they should stop work immediately and receive treatment as first priority. Under our policy, Grab will assign a new delivery-partner to complete the order."

The spokesperson added that they have spoken to the customer service personnel involved to ensure this does not happen again.

Top photos from Mothership reader