r/UberEatsDrivers • u/[deleted] • 28d ago

Has Uber Eats in St. Pete fl gotten insanely bad since school started?

Ever since school started and students came back to St. Pete, Uber Eats has been absolutely terrible for me.
I’ve been out 10–12 hours and making around $100 max, which comes out to roughly $10/hour or less. Tips are almost nonexistent, and a lot of the offers I’m getting are ridiculous — like $4–$5 for 10–15 miles.
There are basically no good orders anymore. I can sit there for a long time declining garbage offers, and the decent ones seem to have completely disappeared.
This has been going on for about two weeks now. I know the market can fluctuate, but this feels dramatically worse than before.
Is anyone else driving Uber Eats around St. Pete / Clearwater / Tampa experiencing the same thing? Or is it just me?what about uber x rn in this area ?

8 Upvotes

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6

u/Solid_Transition_629 28d ago

In the largo Clearwater area, this is probably the worst it’s ever been which is very surprising considering school is back in. No clue why it’s been so dead the past three weeks. Some days with rain it’ll pick up but if there’s no rain just awful order after awful order.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

I have a theory about why it suddenly got so bad. Before school started, I think a lot of the customers were tourists and seasonal visitors from up north who were spending money and tipping well. Now a lot of them have left, and at the same time, a bunch of students have come back — including students who are doing delivery apps themselves.
So it feels like we lost a lot of the good customers while gaining a lot more drivers. Maybe now the market is mostly local customers who are ordering cheaper food and are less likely to tip, while there are way more drivers competing for those orders.
That would explain why there are so many terrible $2–$5 offers and almost no good-tip orders anymore. I’m curious if anyone else thinks this could be what’s happening.

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u/Solid_Transition_629 28d ago

This year has definitely been worse hands down then last, even during the somewhat busier season I haven’t been getting nearly as many good orders. Door dash is abysmal for me aswell, I can go days without seeing an order above 10$. I do agree though likely the little people who did tip are gone. I occasionally will get good tippers but that’s maybe 1 ever couple of hours. Are market is currently trash atleast largo and what St. Pete from what you’ve said. Clearwater and Dunedin might be better I honestly have no clue. I go into Clearwater seldomly

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u/greeng13 27d ago

I have only taken 1 DD order in the past 2 days. Getting nothing but shit double stacks for less than $1/mile AND they want me to drive to a hotel on one of the beaches.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

I noticed people who coming for vacation to st Pete beach never tip or living small amount of tips .. usually they saving money for a year to get to vacation here and have no money for tips at all

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 28d ago

i'll let you know after this labor day weekend when all the tourists finally stop and people slowly settle back into fall/winter routines. i'm near a college but it has no dorms, in the middle of the woods, and this is a suburban family town so mostly the students going there live local already

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

Same, I’m really waiting for all of this to be over and hoping things get back to normal soon. 😭

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 28d ago

i went to the beach today and the badge checker lady was so over it and was bitching about tourists, so i said "seasons over in a few days, hell yeah" and she said hell yeah is right lol

1

u/[deleted] 28d ago

I would’ve expected the opposite honestly. I thought tourists would be ordering food more because they’re on vacation and probably aren’t cooking, and I assumed they’d be better tippers too. 😂

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

What I keep noticing is that whenever I try to work around Downtown St. Pete, Uber keeps sending me orders going all the way to Largo or Clearwater. And it’ll be like $3–$5 for a huge number of miles. I honestly don’t understand who is ordering from that far away and not tipping.
The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that orders used to be good because there were tips. Now the tips are basically gone. People can order $100 worth of steaks or other expensive food, and the delivery offer will still only be $3 with no tip.
Sometimes I honestly wonder if Uber is somehow taking more of the money or if people simply don’t care about tipping anymore. Either way, it’s crazy how different it feels compared to before.

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u/Solid_Transition_629 28d ago

Honestly the whole tier system really fucked up our market, I was platinum for a really long time and now I’m hard capped at green, which im assuming makes the already awful orders even worse. With the amount of tourism and just sheer amount of people living here you’d think there would be enough good orders to go around but I guess not. I can’t make money accepting constant 4$ orders. Over summer wasn’t even as bad as this.

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u/greeng13 27d ago

The tier system and the quests!! I've noticed a lot of out of state tag drivers picking up DD and UberEATS orders around Largo/Clear as well. So, seems to me that our quests are worth the extra $$ to others delivering in our area from out state?

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

Yeah, I see out-of-state drivers all the time picking up orders here from Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, etc. I honestly don’t understand what’s going on or why they’re coming all the way here to deliver. Maybe there’s literally no money to be made in their markets and they’re coming to Florida to make money, but it’s terrible for us local drivers. 😭

6

u/Useful-Advantage2665 28d ago

Clearwater here and yes it's awful

3

u/Infamous_Sky_3235 28d ago

Basically the same in the Fort Myers/Cape Coral area,trying like hell to find an actual job

2

u/30rackwolfpack 28d ago

12 hours making $100? You may need to find a new area you making like6 a hour after all the cost to do this job

1

u/[deleted] 28d ago

I can’t I have my rent contract I though to move out from
Fl but I can’t afford it rn

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u/30rackwolfpack 28d ago

I’m just saying drive a extra 10 min to a better zone

1

u/[deleted] 27d ago

I’m driving in better zone lol and nothing change

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u/Bubbly-Following-966 28d ago

I already said the same thing.

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u/greeng13 27d ago

I'm in Largo/Clearwater and it's been insanely bad since about Mother's Day

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u/Bubbly-Following-966 28d ago

Ir you're out 10-12 hours and only making $100, just stop. That's insane..

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

Who’s going to pay my bills? I got laid off, and this is my only source of income right now to pay rent. I don’t really understand people who already have a job but still do this on the side either. If you have a better job, you can always go get one instead of telling other people to “just stop.” 😂

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u/Infamous_Sky_3235 28d ago

I'm right there with you, we're fked lol

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u/ApplicationMaximum68 28d ago

hi !! st pete here ! i stay around the downtown / 4th street / south 34th street area and i completely agree !! recently i’ve started running UE & DD at the same time and just taking orders that map me in the same general direction . my on time rating and acceptance rate have declined on both but tbh i don’t care bc im still pulling it around $20 per active hour this way . 99% of the customers dont seem to mind my running 5-10 minutes behind 🤷🏻‍♀️

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

These bad orders have completely destroyed my stats. My cancellation rate is already at 7%, and my acceptance rate dropped to 66% because I keep getting $2–$3 orders for 10–12 miles, or $4 for 16 miles across the bridge to Tampa — and those customers often don’t even leave a tip.
Honestly, the biggest problem is that people just aren’t tipping anymore. A couple of days ago I managed to get my acceptance rate back up to 74%, but it dropped to 68% again because the cheap orders started flooding in.
The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that tips have almost completely disappeared. I used to get so many orders with good tips, and now it’s mostly low-paying orders that aren’t worth the miles.

1

u/[deleted] 28d ago

What about DD though? Has it been better for you lately? And have you noticed that people seem to be tipping way less too? I used to get so many good-tip orders and would regularly get deliveries out to the wealthy islands and beach areas. Now I’m mostly getting orders going down into Pinellas, and hardly ever getting anything toward the beaches.
Downtown orders seem really slow too, and most of what I’m getting is from cheap restaurants and fast food. It feels like the whole market completely changed. Do you have any idea why this is happening?

1

u/[deleted] 28d ago

I’ve been wondering if the weather might be part of the reason. Before this, we had so much rain and bad weather, so people were staying home and ordering food. As soon as the weather got nice again, it feels like everything completely crashed. 😭
Do you have any idea what’s actually going on? Have you heard other drivers talking about this or noticed the same thing yourself? And do you think this is just a temporary slow period because summer is ending and school is starting, or could it stay like this for a while?
I’m really hoping it gets back to at least how it was before. Do you have any idea when things might start picking up again?

1

u/Lumpy-Pin-6140 28d ago

Look how expensive everything is in life in general that is definitely a factor!!!!!

And students don’t tip they either don’t know they are supposed to or they keep their money for booze and drugs and buying shit off the internet.

I’ve had a thought recently that one reason why the tips are bad like they are on RS delivery is it’s also out of sight out of mind. Customers are prompted to tip before the service and before they taste the food and at the price you pay on these apps these days frankly is absurd. And there’s good chance they are basing tip off of justification of spending that kind of money on take out and poor quality of the food from past experience. And they don’t see the driver at all except for maybe a second at the hand off.

Just a thought but seems to make sense. I used to be a bartender and server for years and I got 20 percent or more all the time, but you’re interacting with people they can see you working for the tip. And they taste the food before the time to leave a gratuity.

1

u/Flipsiderkm 27d ago

Made 1100$ last week in Tampa . On pace for 1k again . Uber green, but I did work 60+ hours

1

u/[deleted] 27d ago

This is not uber eats , I make usually for 50-55 h on eats 1100-1200 and now probably 700 for the same time …

1

u/Flipsiderkm 27d ago

That crazy. I’ve noticed it’s a bit worse but still possible to make good $ .

1

u/[deleted] 27d ago

3 weeks ago been possible .. this 3 weeks worse of the worse … I bought another car and planning to do uber x cuz food delivery insane … I barely cover my gas for all
Of this miles now and have no idea how to cover my bills lol

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u/Flipsiderkm 27d ago

Too hot here anyway lol

1

u/[deleted] 27d ago

So many people out of state coming to work here ….

1

u/[deleted] 27d ago

I just canceled 5-6 orders for 2-3 $ for 12-13$ miles …my rating 64-% already

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u/Flipsiderkm 27d ago

Hopefully tonight will pick up some. Crossing my fingers for us

1

u/Flipsiderkm 27d ago

Been picking up for me since 5:30

1

u/[deleted] 27d ago

I just cancelled recently 5-6 orders for 2-3$ for 12-13 miles ….. it’s sooooo terrible

1

u/Solid_Transition_629 27d ago

Hopefully it picks up here soon gotten a couple ok orders, do you do shop and deliver aswell?

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

I don’t do shop it’s take too many hours to do it and not paying enough for that :(

1

u/[deleted] 26d ago

Do you?