Uber Eats fights fraud and disconnects 2,500 delivery accounts

Europe 1 with AFP 9:33 p.m., September 06, 2022

The main meal delivery platform Uber Eats, which has nearly 60,000 active deliverers in France, announced on Tuesday that it had disconnected nearly 2,500 accounts of workers identified as fraudulent in recent weeks.

In the first half "we conducted a thorough audit of delivery accounts using Uber Eats. We identified fraudulent uses of our application and took action by deactivating these accounts while setting up an appeal procedure to which suspended delivery personnel can appeal," a spokesperson for the platform told AFP.

“We have kept all stakeholders informed of our actions. We remain open to any discussion on the subject of fraud and that of supporting people in vulnerable situations,” added Uber Eats, which claims to have held informed the government and trade unions in July.

"It's a low noise scandal", nevertheless reacted the CFDT in a press release signed with Union-Indépendants, one of the workers' organizations recognized as representative recently.

"Uber Eats is thus violently throwing thousands of people into extreme precariousness".

"For undocumented workers who have no choice but to work under an alias to survive, the CFDT and Union-Indépendants are asking for a re-examination of their situation, considering that the activity carried out under independent status, as for employees, must lead to the same rights", write the two organizations.

Weekly checks

Gathered in September 2021 by the government in order to better combat the irregular subletting of delivery person accounts, the four main players in meal delivery (Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Stuart and Frichti) announced in early April the signing of a specific charter.

As all the detection systems and controls put in place are disparate from one actor to another, the signatories, in order to define standards, had undertaken to carry out weekly verifications of the identity of the deliverers.

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Uber Eats recalls having implemented in December 2019 a real-time identification system to control delivery people and, in 2021, a functionality linked to the monitoring of identity cards.

“Today, illegal workers employed as employees see this element taken into account for their regularization. However, self-employed workers do not benefit from this device”, still deplores Uber Eats, which, in addition to the fight against fraud, is in favor of facilitating regularization through work.