The popular food delivery apps Uber Eats, GrubHub, and DoorDash were all reportedly down for a period of time on Tuesday afternoon, frustrating workers and customers alike.
Service on the companies’ websites appeared to be restored after a brief outage, but some customers may have been charged for orders that did not go through.
Uber Eats, GrubHub, and DoorDash all do plenty of business daily: the average American reportedly spends in excess of $37 on food delivery each week.
That might explain why a number of people appeared to notice when the apps were inaccessible.
“Door dash, y’all gone pay us some money since y’all app went down in the middle of us getting orders?” one X user, Jeff, wrote.
Another user appeared in dire need of delivery at just the moment one of the apps was down.
“Ayo, DoorDash going down is the scariest thing today,” another X user wrote. “I’m glad I wasn’t waiting on food because I’m not dealing with disappointment well on an empty stomach.”
It was not immediately clear why the companies suffered outages on Tuesday — whether they all were offline at the same time or for how long. It’s also unclear whether the issue they faced affected both their phone applications and their websites, or just phone apps.
In any case, service appeared to be restored as Tuesday afternoon ticked onward. Each delivery app has faced its share of criticism in recent years for its treatment of workers, who paid relatively low wages for demanding work and often rely on tips from customers in order to survive financially.
Uber’s own CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, recently said he had an immensely challenging time moonlighting as an Uber Eats delivery driver last September — struggling to locate his customers and fill his orders.
“I was trying to deliver food and I couldn’t find where to drop it off,” Mr Khosrowshahi toldThe Wall Street Journal. “Trying to figure out the maze of apartment complexes was a challenge.”
