software engineer

senior software engineer

account manager

sales representative

data scientist

Deliveroo

Bear with me on this as it might get long. I've been working with Deliveroo over the past four/five months, and will be ceasing by the end of the month, and like many of the people on here I was sold by the ability to choose your hours and the possibility of making money whilst cycling about that I almost lost touch to the fact that, this is still work, and you are still an employee and the job should be seen as much after all, it is part of your livelihood...

I'd like to preface this by saying, as much as I hold respect for people on here who have taken the time to write reviews, be wary of those who are also plugging their sign-up links. I hold no malice to the fact they are trying to collect their £50 referral fees because money is money, but you wouldn't say your company is bad and then ask people to sign up. In my eyes, these reviews are biased and should be taken with a pinch of salt, though it has to be said it's a clever way for deliveroo to use it's employees to mask it's negatives for them.

So, from my experience once I began to delve into the way the system works I realised just how much deliveroo actually find ways to swindle money away from their employees, and how biased this system can prove to be. It does not reward hard work as well as they say it does unless you live in the busiest of busy areas.

For a start they have a minimum order incentive, which (if it actually applies to the area you're working in) normally will mean that if you work an hour and no orders come through that you will be compensated the equivalent of two orders. Sounds great right? This, however, is not a permanent fixture, and if you're working a location that's not one of the major cities say on a Tuesday from 11:30-18:00 there is a good chance you might only get three orders, meaning that for six and a half hours work you'd be paid roughly £12-15 (depending on the distance). Still it seems like a good idea, up until you find it's actually averaged over the hours you work per week. In real terms let's use a very hypothetical example;

-Say the minimum fee is your area was £4 per order, and the incentive provided you 2 orders per hour minimum. That means, should you have no orders you'd be on £8 per hour. 
-You decide to work two shifts this week, one during a busy evening for five hours, and the other during a quiet afternoon for two and a half hours. During the busy shift you get plenty of orders and work as fast/hard as you can to capitalise on the busy period, and end up making £60 (£12 per hour). 
- You then work the quiet afternoon but you don't receive an order. 
- When you're payslip comes through you will still have only earned £60. Despite taking the time (and possibly paying for travel to get to work), you have effectively been on call for deliveroo for free during that afternoon as the incentive is an average over the week. (Total Hours x Minimum Order Incentive = Baseline Pay, 7.5 x 8 = 60). 
- To earn any more you would have to dedicate your time only to those busy periods when you would earn more than £8 per hour.
- At this point, you might as well have been as slow as possible during the busy shift and tried to average two orders per hour, as it would have made no difference at all to your pay.

Still with me? 

Now bear in mind that this system isn't always in place, it changes month to month with no advance warning (currently at the time of writing in 22 location out of approx 250, so not even 10%). If you were only free during the early afternoon Monday to Friday and wanted to work for deliveroo because it was flexible enough to allow you those hours there's a good chance you might only get one order during the period between 11:30-15:00 depending on where you work. It would mean that, despite working 17.5 hours for the week, you might be looking at  either no pay for no orders, £20-£25 for one order per day, or £40-50 for two orders per day. In my experience, unless you're in a major city (I assume), you would rarely if ever get more than that. At it's best you would be on just under £3 per hour.

So that covers some issues over pay, how about that flexibility? Well, your ability to book shifts is dependent on how you work and when you work. Shifts are released on a Monday at the following times, 11:00, 15:00 and 17:00. You are placed into a group and can pick your shift at one of those times, your placement relies on three factors to determine how early you can book your work - Attendance %, Shifts cancelled within 24 hours %, and Peak Time Participation  (Working between 19:00-21:00 Fri, Sat, Sun), with all stats taken over the previous two weeks. 

So how does this affect you as a worker? Well, despite deliveroo saying it is fully flexible the reality is if you are not in that 11:00 group, you will be relying on people cancelling shifts for you to have work. Equally to be in that group, you can have a perfect percentage for the first two, but you will have to have probably worked four hours out of twelve at peak time to be in. So realistically you won't have that flexibility if you are unable to work those shifts. 

This also ties into booking, you normally book in one hour slots (although the first shift of the day is 11:30-13:00), which can often lead to weird working patterns if one of those hours is fully booked i.e. you might have 11:30-14:00, hour gap, 15:00-17:00, two hours gap 19:00-20:00. Often you will book these shifts in the hope someone cancels, but it's not normally the case so unless you live locally it can be quite difficult to have a consistent day's work. Equally, if you decide it's not worth waiting around two hours for one hours worth of work at the end, and you've waited until the day before in the hope someone is going to cancel then you have a choice, either wait around and work the last hour, or damage your record and risk being moved down a group if you choose to cancel within 24 hours. Most people at this point will probably think "Well why don't you just cancel two days before?" but the reality is most cancellations from other people are within that 24 hour period and there's no use cancelling all your hours just to see the times you wanted come up on the day or the day before.

For a lot of people, especially those who are younger or in uni, this isn't such a big issue, or they don't realise the implications of what is being done. You are classed as self-employed when you work for deliveroo, if you were to treat this like a different self employed job things would be different, say you're an electrician for a music show and you were talking to your employer who says "Well, we want you to be on site ready to work using your time to represent us and fix any issues that may occur during the show, but we're only going to pay you for the time spent actually fixing those issues" you should rightly be annoyed, at the end of the day you are paid for your services and if you are on call for a company on a site ready to work when needed then that would be part of the service. I feel a lot of people miss that point about this job, you are electing to stand around for free on the promise you might be given an order. The only reason the order incentive is there is simply because it's the minimum they feel they need to provide to actually have any staff working at that time. Again, at the time of writing Deliveroo operate in approx. 250 areas in the UK, out of this 22 have an order incentive in operation, it's not even 10% of locations.

There are still more points to be made, but I think this covers the main focus which is pay and availability and I just feel it does nowhere near enough to support it's staff. I can't honestly give anything better than 1* for everything, Work/Life balance is in your hands, but if you go around advertising how flexible it is when the reality is difference then you're lying to staff. Salary/benefits has been spoken enough about. Job security, if you lose that 11:00am shift slot you're going to have to work hard to get it back. Management, they created this system so I can't reward them for it. Job culture, you're pretty much on your own, so the feel of reward from the job stems from the way it works. I'm sure you all know how I feel about that by now.

been working for deliveroo for 9 months. At the beginning, it was ok.. lack of management and difficult to get response.. took me 4 weeks to get a job from application to jobs to be approved.
I was referred by my friend who already worked for deliveroo and he was meant to get extra bonus if I am hired by deliveroo but been told the update says it was rejected and didnt get paid.
Upto now I have been paid about 21 times by deliveroo and about 50% has always been underpaid without any reasons. I always had to catch up and ask for any reasons for being underpaid but, it took me a week to get recovered or get response..
Also on september, I was promoted to become rider lead to train and to do trial for new applicants.. and once on friday I was invited to office for hard work.. which was good feeling.. but been told by some office workers they get free meals every friday.. wished they offer free meals to hard working riders not those clowns in the office who is not working/ responding and not doing a job..
Honestly, highly skilled engineers are worth to get paid and worth to get free meals.. but dont think some of the staffs are doing jobs at least to get paid.. they are costing many riders and people's jobs. I think these management needs to be investigated and lose jobs.
When i was at pentonville road office, I had a chat with supply associate called TJD who seemed to be nice person and he promised to offer some office jobs in two weeks... got his contacts but never received any response or been contacted by him after sending some emails or message. Job promotions in Deliveroo is the biggest lies to be frankly honest.
Also, I had to take two weeks off as I had to fly back to my country and then they decided to kick me out of the job with no reason been told.. and after two weeks.. I have been told it was their mistake and been told that they will let me join back on the team.. BUT... I have worked for two weeks and I was meant to get paid... NEVER BEEN PAID AND TRIED TO CONTACT BUT HEARD NOTHING FROM THEM!!!!
FINALLY.. BEFORE CHRISMTAS THEY OFFERED £50 FOR NEW RIDERS AND COMMISSION FOR RIDERS.. I HAVE PASSED ABOUT 100 RIDERS AND I KNOW AT LEAST 12 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN HIRED AND WORKING FOR DELIVEROO.. EVEN I CLAIMED AND SENT EMAIL TO OFFICE... NEVER BEEN PAID FOR REFERRAL COMMISSIONS.. TOO MANY LIES AND THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO BE SHUT DOWN. 
THIS JOB HAS NEVER BEEN FLEXIBLE FOR ME. WHAT THEY SAY ON THE WEBSITE IS ANOTHER LIES.

So far the work has been flexible, engaging, and refreshing. Often doesn't feel like 'work' because there are no set shifts and when you work is completely up to you. Don't want to work then simply go offline for a break.

In terms of the money I am paid £4.25 per delivery, and have made £10.80 per hour at most for one shift, when taking earnings divided by the hours I worked for that evening. I combine it with doing other flexible food delivery work in order to optimize my earnings. The longer you stay online the more you will make per hour, for example if you have a quiet hour with only 1 delivery, in the next hour you may get 3 deliveries to make up for it, in the evenings this is almost guaranteed as its always busy in my city.

Overall most of the time it feels like a pretty chilled atmosphere, unless you are setting yourself earnings or time targets like I do, in which case there can be some stress in delivering faster. The stress level is whatever you want it to be. But overall there is no workplace related stress, and no personality clashes since you are self-employed and not reporting to a boss.

All of the fellow Deliveroo riders I've spoken to in my city were extremely friendly and helpful people, as were almost all the customers I delivered to. Rider support has been very helpful for the one time I had to use it (customer not answering door or phone). The fact rider support is always available is a huge positive and makes you feel like you're not alone when you encounter a difficult situation.

My biggest negative for the job is when I encounter difficulty finding a house number especially in the dark, and have to go around with a torch checking door numbers and phoning customers to get directions. However this isn't Deliveroo-specific and is an annoyance with any delivery job. Also finding temporary parking in city centres can sometimes be difficult.

Deliveroo treat delivery drivers like dirt. When I started back in September 2015 the job was amazing. The person who was managing us was very friendly, helpful and an overall good guy. The zones ran smoothly and the job was overall great! Once winter came around everything went downhill. Management seemed to have turned into power hungry idiots. Forcing us to work (on motorcycles) in the snow instead of closing the website down for the night, threatening to take pay for that full day if you went home. 
Being forced to ride in dangerous conditions, high winds, strong rain, snow. If your bike is blown over in the wind or you have an accident from being forced to drive like an idiot to deliveries they WILL NOT compensate you and remind you that you are self employed.
NOT FLEXABLE SHIFTS - Forced to work hours that they give you, if not they sack you.
YOUR OWN VEHICLE - You are abusing your own vehicle on a daily basis, all maintaining, damage ect comes out of your pocket.
BAD MANAGEMENT - Do not care about drivers one bit, treat us like rubbish and use scare tactics threatening us almost weekly that we will lose our jobs if we do not abide by their unrealistic rules.
LIES - Use lies such as "free meals" to get new drivers in.
Completely idiotic company. Forcing drivers to get "good stats" by speeding everywhere to rush the process, if you refuse to speed and stick to speed limits they say they will get rid of you.
30+ drivers "sacked" in the past couple months at Deliveroo. Some of them could not pay bills/rent. Do management care?...
DO NOT be dragged into the Deliveroo trap unless you have another job to fall back on!

Absolutely useless management, couldn't organise a banquet in a restaurant. Keep hiring and hiring riders promising them the earth and delivering squat. All the new workers getting all the shifts whilst the long term riders are left in the dark. Introduce and change policy's and practices without telling the riders, eventually the info leaks through. Latest clanger is, no longer can riders be swapped on schedule. Instead if you want to work the available shift, you must work under there log in and hope the rider you have log in as will pay you. 
They bang on about about flexibility yet there is ZERO. Seem to care less and less about sorting shifts on staffomatic each week. 'lead rider' is a complete an utter waste of space, yet gets payed more to do nothing. Multiple times they get the pay wrong, or refuse to pay you because you were not put on the schedule by the useless management. Even though they said they would.  Things I have learnt this is  not a sustainable full time job, maybe I was naive to think it was to begin with. 
Feeding obese lazy people disgusting food is not fun. Waiting 30mins at a restaurant is no fun. Being given massive pizza boxes that do not fit in the bag, is not fun. Waiting 6 hours is no fun. doing 1 order per hour is no fun. Not getting paid because the awful app crashes and logs you out, is not fun. Waiting 10mins to get through to rider support is no fun. 


* I'm sure each city varies, but theses are my my experiences.

I Started working for deliveroo, straight off the bat I will tell you one thing, if you are lazy like me or unorganised this job is not for you. They sell you that this is an amazing job because you have not set hours, but once you get the equipment its up to you to actually go out and do it. See i'm a student and did this part time, so that might be the case but when I had jobs with specific working times its easier to fit my life around it.

DO NOT do this in the winter, it is just too tough and if your thinking of doing it in the summer, hardly anyone orders in food in the summer. 

A typical days work is going out at a time where most people would order food around lunch and dinner time. You get the food from the restaurant and deliver it too the house. Sometimes they advertise it as you can get up to £16 an hour this is complete nonsense. As there are other people doing it at the same time as you your are most likely to only get one per hour. (in cambridge its £4 per drop)

2 more things. They take off money for the equipment e.g. if you do one delivery your meant to get £4 but they take £2 for the equipment and do this until they have got £150

Lastly, when i wanted to quit this was the hardest process of them all. I emailed deliveroo and they reply with "can we do anything to make you stay", I then reply that there isn't and they don't email back. So after a couple of emails you receive a process. You have to arrange a time and a place with the lead biker in your area. And if you miss it you have to go the next day. There was a complete verbal confusion between me and this guy. I went to their office and was told that I was meant to be at this storage facility which was 20 mins away by bike.

Wow.. i started a couple months ago and was given good hrs to work for the first 2 weeks..
Then after the first 2 weeks it seemed almost like Deliveroo riders was fighting for hrs as it is completely over staffed.. the system they have in place regarding statistics is outrageous !! You can not Drop shifts when and if you feel like it.. like everyone is banging on about like it’s flexible work!! If you drop a shift your cancellation statistic goes up meaning you don’t get the shifts the same time as everyone else! Meaning all the shifts are gone and you are going to get left with an hr an half for 2 weeks !! Outrageous !
Everyone should get the same hrs each week.. anyways also.. you are not self employed as you are on the receiving end of ‘’roo support’’ who infact could not care less about any situation you need help with.. 
Roo supports go to words are rider support number please and then followed by ok we will unassigned you from the delivery then quickly ended with have a good day sir .. 
But wait!!! They have only assigned the same order back to you!! Even though you have explained the delivery is a thousand miles from you! .. disappointing! 

Also you can do 4 deliveries an hr depending on how fast the restaurants cook the food.. most wait till you arrive before starting to cook!

Imagine 15 Deliveroo guys fighting for the same 4hrs shift and only 3 of you can get it...  that’s not right mate..

But never the less I loved working for Deliveroo .. I had my own personal reasons 
As to why ...

The job has many benefits: it helps with your health and fitness. You are able to choose shifts which fit your life schedule, it's ideal for students as you can work in the evening for not too long and get your lectures/studying done in the day time. It sometimes gives time for you to read or whatever while your online waiting for orders on not so busy days. Interactions are minimal, which is preferred by some. 
The things that I didn't like was the treatment you receive from the company, the operation time is horrible in so many ways. Their language is poor at times which makes communication difficult, their lack of recording and communicating is very poor (agree to something with one employee then get in touch again and the agreement is not recorded so the new person you speak to doesn't know what's going on) in regards to agreeing shifts sometimes too, but let's say I'm at fault there too. I left for a month and tried to get my shifts back. I agreed on shifts with a man but then I got in contact again and a different person responded and withdrew the shifts the guy gave me and offered me different ones which were very inconvenient in my case, then when I explained to her she ignored me. Meaning it's been many weeks and I haven't received a reply. So I'd advise this job to people, however, make sure that from signing up you have everything set and choose shifts that suit you and understand more,  so you don't have to get in touch with them.

The team and office culture was very vibrant and positive. They  would order food for free and you would get to pick when they would give you. If you worked during the day, they would send you lunch, if you worked at night, you would get dinner. I gained so much weight and working 45 hours a week in an office on the phone didn't help. You will often feel that the applicants you are on the phone with should be allowed more help but feel powerless to help them if their issues are beyond your company policy. I felt that I spent more time telling an applicant their application was rejected and hear their heart breaking which was not easy. It would take so much extra work to help someone who everyone would avoid helping. Working 45 hours a week didn't feel that bad but it did feel emotionally draining when managers would shout at you in a glass room because they weren't happy with your performance about a tiny mistake you made. The managers made the office environment very toxic and uncomfortable with little regard to us. The pay was the most I ever got in any job I had but I spent it on feeling better from the stress of my job. Very corporate managers, very unforgiving of any little mistake you make and will shout at you like you are a child who did something wrong and will overlook anything you did right.

You know how you have managers in life that just don't believe you? You can tell them something over and over and they just won't accept it. Imagine that type of person still being that way when 30 other people are saying the same thing.

Working for Deliveroo started off as a dream, the manager was lovely, she bought us breakfast and lunch during training, we even got credit to use on our work versions of the Deliveroo app. And then, after three days of 'training' which was just learning how Deliveroo works and how to use their systems, we were expected to start doing our jobs, despite not being trained on how to do them.

Several times a day, the manager would harass us for productivity updates or yell across the office to say she couldn't hear anyone dialling, refusing to listen to the fact that no one was picking up the phones. I don't know what she thought we were doing but apparently she didn't think we were doing our jobs.

It also sort of seems like the earlier team members were taught things that we weren't, and how to handle certain situations, as I was sneered at a few times for doing things wrong despite having not been taught the correct process. 

The end result was an extremely short career with Deliveroo which I wouldnt recommend under the current management.

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