Uber Testing Massive Merchant Delivery Service

An anonymous reader writes: TechCrunch has obtained documents showing that Uber is testing out a delivery service that would allow shoppers to buy something online and have it delivered on the same day. "Sources say that Neiman Marcus, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany's, Cohen's Fashion Optical and Hugo Boss are all in talks with the Uber Merchant Delivery program, and one source in particular said that there are over 400 different merchants currently in talks (or already testing) with Uber for same-day delivery. (Cohen's Fashion Optical and Hugo Boss are both used as examples in the training presentation.) ... From what we can gather from the manual, it seems that Uber drivers and couriers are currently taking merchant orders through a different app (and even a separate phone) than the one they use to receive regular UberRUSH orders. Eventually, however, Uber drivers will be able to take both human passengers and Uber Merchant orders at the same time through an intelligent routing system, all from a single driver-side app."

Comments

flashy, but risky too.

[nimbius]

Im sure most of these companies feel like its worth the PR, until they realize shipping through an unregulated, unlicensed, un-insured third party is a great way to watch $12,000 worth of shoes and purses go from the back of a prius to a roaring bonfire on youtube.

Re:flashy, but risky too.

[tmosley]

You know, you should probably lay off the libel there, friend.

Uber already carries insurance on its passenger service. What on Earth makes you think they wouldn't insure parcels? And why do you think that people who are being electronically tracked would destroy their parcels, thus getting themselves fired/deactivated, and having charges brought against them?

Do you anti-Uber people just not think? Because it seems like you just throw out any kind of garbage that sounds like its an argument against it and see what sticks, even if they are outright and blatant lies.

Re:flashy, but risky too.

[Dutch Gun]

Oddly enough, Massachusetts has just introduced a bill to ensure that Uber drivers are not "unregulated, unlicensed, or uninsured".

Re:flashy, but risky too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, regulations are why nobody speeds, after all!

No, regulations (speed limits) are why people stay within 10-20 mph of the posted limit, and assholes that drive recklessly and exceed it by a rediculous amount don't stay on the road long endangering the rest of us.

Just because some people break laws doesn't make the law pointless. There is still a measurable restraining effect, and recourse when some jerk steps way out of line to the detriment of the rest of us.

Regulations aren't the problem. Bad regulations are, and often, no regulations = bad regulations. So instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, maybe you should be pushing for well-thought out, good regulations, rather than just waving your hands and abdicating public policy in favor of the magical market.

Re:flashy, but risky too.

[Minwee]

Because, depressingly, Uber drivers are more accountable, better trained, and better supervised than TSA agents.

They are also slightly better baby sitters than a pack of starving, rabid jackals.

Re:flashy, but risky too.

[gstoddart]

And you're going to continue to pretend that insurance companies haven't cancelled the policies of Uber drivers?

It is true that the insurance situation and legality of operations is most decidedly NOT what comes out of the reality distortion field Uber tells people.

Re:Economy of Scale

[gstoddart]

Yeah, right.

FedEx/UPS are bonded, insured, and reliable, and have global logistics chains.

Uber is some guy with his mom's car, no commercial license, possibly improper insurance, and quite likely operating as an illegal commercial vehicle in many places.

I just don't see that happening.

Uber's magical thinking that laws don't apply to them tell me they're not what I'd call trustworthy.

Re:Can't wait to steal stuff!

[tmosley]

I know right? We all know that FedEX, UPS, and USPS workers are all physically incapable of theft thanks to regulations. Now if only someone would set some regulations on our everyday lives so no-one else could steal or murder. That would make things so much nicer, don't you think?

Re:Economy of Scale

[gstoddart]

I don't have an irrational hate for Uber ... I have a well reasoned dislike for a company who says "la la la, we're not listening, your laws don't apply because we're awesome".

I heard one of the founders/mouthpieces defending their position once ... he sounded like a self entitled ass who deemed himself special and covered under a different set of rules.

Uber can't simultaneously say "we're not a transport company, we're a tech company" and also pretend to be a transport company.

Having an app doesn't exempt you from laws. Only in their delusional, self important heads.

They're a greedy tech company, they're not some fucking saviors of the world.

Home or Phone?

[quantaman]

The article is kind of vague on the dropoff but it seems to be the real benefit isn't in the speed, it's the dropoff location.

As someone who lives in an apartment getting a parcel looks like me checking the main entrance (which I don't use) for delivery notices of parcels they tried to deliver while I was at work then heading to the parcel depot during the 6 hours window on Saturday when I'm not at work and they're open.

But Uber can get the current GPS location of its customers, so could do the dropoff directly to the person and skip the game of depot tag.

The traditional delivery companies might have a real hard time responding to that.

a new dystopia

[swell]

We all know the dystopia of 1984 in which humans were dehumanized by their own actions; and the Terminator movies where smart machines set out to kill us like cockroaches. The Matrix reduced humans into sleeping energy generators. Uber has advanced a new method of dehumanizing us by sending us on chores to serve a superintelligence (OK, just a central computer now, more or less managed by humans- but are those humans necessary?).

We do have a similar concept in Taskrabbit and the Amazon Mechanical Turk in which humans do tiny chores in response to requests delivered by their devices. Uber seems ready to take this concept worldwide at a grand scale. People will be scurrying about like ants, rushing from one chore to another in a frenzy of blind busy-ness.

And you, mister smarty pants programmer, you think you're off the hook? You'll be lucky to find work writing snippets of code that will be inserted into some diabolical software that doesn't even have a name.

Is this the beginning of a world where nobody has a job, a health insurance plan, a steady income; but instead performs chores when they can be found? Will we compete against each other to do menial tasks? Will we be graded like schoolchildren for our skills, timeliness, reliability? Will future humans be the cooperative slaves of a central computer?