Driver Tip: A Caution on Early Deliveries 

Oh no. If I get the order and I can deliver it early then I will. Unless you are going to pay me more to wait then I will deliver the order as soon as I get the order at the restaurant. As an independent contractor you can't legally control my time on how I do my time.

The company should pay more what about that lol

Sometimes when dropping off at the designated drop off time, some customers say we are early. Ex: in my app the drop off time is 11:30, I arrive at 11:30. The customer says they requested for the food to arrive at 11:45. Thank you!

The reason for this is two fold. 1.) In my market most of the customers are medical reps and they want to be onsite when the food arrives for salesmanship purposes. 2.) The restaurants have the food ready well in advance for catering orders - which is a good thing. Having said that…the people actually consuming the food (this is usually NEVER the customer) don’t want cold or late food. The people consuming the food are staff. They prefer the food when it arrives. The “rep” doesn’t typically eat it, and 9 times out of 10 are not even on site. So if I arrive too early, I usually wait. The rep (customer listed as the contact) is happy - the people actually eating the food are not.

I can say for me, if I have ever been early it wasn't my fault if the drop off is right around the corner or the restaurant/ezcater has different drop off times from what the customer wants. Cause I have tons of circumstances that this happened with deliverthat

It has happened to me that I have an order going a block away. I don’t want to arrive early so I wait in the car. I get a call from the customer asking if I’m lost because she’s tracking me in the app. Review of driving time specifically in short distances might make a change in these data.

So what is the earliest we can arrive without the need to call you, and without any policy violation?

tighten up the times honestly. If the drop off is 1.5 mile away why do you need a 30 minute gap between pick up & drop offs.

After I posted the following comment, DT asked me to contact them so they could work with me on a one-on-one basis. I did contact them and all I got was crickets. I read one of their forums and many many drivers mentioned the flawed nature and almost impossibility of passing their flawed test. "I hope you fix your re-education quiz. There is a flaw, but you won't help me fix it. I bailed you out of two situations when you asked me to with no thanks. However, when I had an issue and was forced to early cancel (25 minutes) I was immediately suspended and made to take a faulty quiz. I have an MA and have taught at two universities. My IQ is HIGH. I am not an idiot, but I have taken this quiz at least 30 times and keep getting 97.5% You will not tell me what question is wrong, and I have analyzed the flaws in the quiz and videos for your benefit. Obviously whatever the issue is is insufficient to rate me a bad DT driver. I am so frustrated! If I am reading a question other than as intended, how will I know? It seems you could, in the name of fairness and decency help me see where we disagree on the quiz."

Thanks for the advice we appreciate all you do.

I find the best practice is to arrive right on time and pack up with quality. The drive time should be still arriving just a bit early if nothing causes delays. Then the delivery is about right on time.

If were told the actual dropoff time the customer requested with EZCater, this would be much easier to accomplish. It's gotten to the point to where I have to tell customers to order 15 minutes later than they actually want it.

Do you recommend we stop somewhere before our drop off location and wait so we dont get marked as arrived? I deliver in an area where there traffic can vary. Thank for videos.