An UberEats customer recently encountered an unusual situation when their delivery driver asked him for petrol money in order to deliver his food.
The driver explained to Exavier Pope, from Chicago, that was running out of petrol and hadn't realized how far the delivery was.
The situation escalated when the driver called Pope multiple times, leading him to express his frustration on Twitter.
Pope's tweet about the incident quickly went viral, receiving 7.5 million views and sparking a divided response from the public.
In his tweet, Pope wrote, "This Uber Eats Driver just asked me to CashApp him gas money to bring my food to me. He has now called me five times.
"This is harassment. I am about to call the police on this dude."
Pope, a lawyer from Chicago, shared a photo of the food once it arrived, placed "in the alley with the trash."
Uber Support responded saying “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Behaviour like this is definitely not okay.
“A member of our team is on top of this and will follow up with you via in-app as well as to the email address associated with your Uber account.”
However, opinions on the incident varied among Twitter users. While many sympathized with Pope's frustration, others criticized his response and suggested that he had overreacted.
One said "I wonder how many other people he's done this too.”
Cameron Seeby added: “I’ve had zero good experiences with Uber Eats.”
Ryan Septim said: “Got to add Uber Eats drivers withholding my food for more money to the list of reasons why I don't use that service anymore.”
Megan Lyle said: “The request was unprofessional, but you handled the situation poorly. It was not necessary to escalate to the point of threatening to call the police on your Uber Eats driver.”
However, some users felt that Pope's reaction was excessive and argued that the driver's request for petrol money was due to the low income earned through the app. They believed that Pope's public spectacle on Twitter could have resulted in the driver losing his job.
Uber Eats has been contacted for comment regarding the incident.
