The other day, I had a sudden need to have an envelope delivered to an office in Burbank. Never mind what it was; I just had to get it there in about an hour.
I'm still not driving on account of my knee so I decided to try a new app that's supposed to be like an Uber for deliveries. I'll leave its name out of this because I think what's wrong with it is that its founders released it without adequate testing and they'll have it fixed soon. Either that or it'll be out of business.
Anyway, the way it works is that if you have a package you need to have delivered, you enter your address and the destination address. For some reason — probably so they can send them advertising — they require the e-mail address of the recipient. You estimate the weight of your package and take a photo of it. The specs and photo go out to their network of freelance, roaming delivery folks who are looking to make some extra bucks like people do with Uber or Lyft. They bid on the job and you select the bid you like — presumably the lowest one.
I haven't used Lyft but I've had great luck with Uber. I've also been utterly satisfied with two services — Caviar and DoorDash — that pick up orders from restaurants and bring them to your front door. Both have worked precisely as expected. This delivery service didn't.
I sent the info and the photo and waited for the offers to roll in. The delivery was to an office ten miles from me and it was 3:00 on a busy afternoon. So I was thinking that a price of $20-$30 was about right.
It took a few minutes but I finally got an offer. For $1400.00. And yes, I typed that right.
A minute ago, I got a second offer: $800.00. Okay, so it's $600 less but it was still ridiculous.
Then came what turned out to be the final offer I received. This one was for $14. Quite a range of prices there, wouldn't you say?
Since time to get the package there was slipping away, I didn't wait for another offer…which was a good thing because there wasn't one. A page saying the deal was on gave me the cell number of the person with whom I had entered into this deal and I copied it down. Then I noticed that the same screen told me that the trip would cover an estimated 310 miles. Something was clearly unclear.
I went to a screen that was supposed to tell me the current status of the little mission I had just launched and couldn't find any trace of it. In fact, I went to every page I could access of the app and couldn't find my task mentioned at all. Quickly, I called the phone number of the delivery guy and got him on his cell. "Oh yeah," he said. "I'm sorry I had to cancel the delivery." The app had not informed me had done this.
I asked why and he said, "I'm in Las Vegas." He really was over 300 miles from me.
"They don't have all the bugs out of the app," he explained. "My phone is registered in Los Angeles but I live now in Vegas." How did this app get out of Beta-testing without that coming to someone's attention? He went on: "Your package is going to an address on a street with the same name as a street here in Vegas. I thought it was a local delivery so I put in my bid…then I realized it was another city so I canceled."
I told him about the two bids he beat out. He said, "Those guys are probably in other cities and they're using some sort of automatic bid thing that doesn't notice you're thousands of miles away and it just quotes you a price based on sheer mileage. Good luck finding someone who's local and I hope they get this app working properly."
That was the end of the call. By now, there wasn't time to look for alternate delivery services so I summoned an Uber car which was here in two minutes. I ran out, hopped in and rode out to Burbank where I had the driver wait while I took the package in. Then the trip continued and he brought me back home. Total charge, since there was a lot of traffic and a major "surge" on, was $66.
Oh — and we didn't get it there in time, officially. I was supposed to have it there by 4 PM when the office was closing for the day. We got there at 4:20 but one person was still there and just locking up. So they accepted it and I felt that enormous sense of relief you get when you can suddenly stop fretting about something that you've been fretting about with a clock ticking.
On the ride home, I adopted my new philosophy for when something doesn't go right: Oh, well. At least I have something I can write about for the blog. And I wondered how such a flawed app made it onto the Apple Store and my iPhone.
Still, it's a good idea. Sometime when time is not such a vital factor, I'll probably try a couple of other similar services. I may even try this one again. Like I said, they're either going to get the insects out of this thing soon or go outta business.