05/11/2024
Unfortunately I bare sorrowful news that our pizzeria (Smoko Woodfired Pizza) has recently come under reputational attack in the form of a barrage of 1-star Google reviews (currently totaling 13 in a row). Owing to these defamatory claims we have dropped in rating from 4.9 to 4.6 stars in a matter of days and as a result, I now hope to present a public statement of explanation and spread awareness about a very real threat to our store and industry. Here's it in full, but if you wish to look, I have also split this statement across these relevant Google reviews on our business profile as replies.
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Hello there Mr. UberEats Driver. What a spicy opportunity, my first ever organised defamation scheme. I hope to use this as an opportunity to communicate with our customers some of the unfortunate downsides that small businesses using third-party delivery services face. Taking our store from 4.9 stars to 4.6 stars on Google reviews, this attack does break my heart, truly. However I find solace in that this besmirchment is a reaction to my behaviour - that of protecting the best interests of our customers, our food, our team and everything I’ve dedicated myself towards at Smoko Woodfired Pizza.
My name is Mav and I’m gonna try my best to not simply sit here wasting strokes on generally low quality individuals. Especially when the expectation is me flipping out, enraged and overwhelmed whilst nitpicking inconsistencies in this volley of slanderous reviews seemingly “out of nowhere”. What a head scratcher. Nevertheless, the greater problem persists. Out of all the things I have on my plate at the moment, my hand is forced and I’ll be damn sure I’ll use this as an opportunity to paint the full picture. I appreciate the extra word count these negative reviews have afforded me too.
I will be splitting my extended explanations and direct responses to the relevant reviewers over all recent 1-star reviews (so far at 13 over 5 days) instigated by a delivery driver with the intention of damaging our business’ reputation. These will include the reviews in this recent stunt as well as the first ever 1-star review left by anyone who also happens to be another uber driver. An event I remember vividly too. That event was directly responsible for us initially dropping from a full 5 star rating down to 4.9.
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To begin, I will briefly address this specific interaction as one of the examples of the things we need to navigate with a large portion of our assigned drivers. That being said, there are a lot of delivery drivers who genuinely take their job seriously, that of delivering food to a paying customer. Some are also just lovely people too which is a sweet bonus. Any driver that does the bare minimum of the thing we’re here trying to do, they undoubtedly have my sincere gratitude and respect. It is unfortunate to say though, the good do not make the majority here. Not by a freaking long shot.
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The instance invoving the driver responsible for initiating the latest 1-star reviews - 1st Nov 2024
Driver’s name responsible for this is Qaseem A, assigned to two orders, both for the store to have ready by 11.59am, which they were. To the minute.
Here’s the raw limited information supplied from the back-end portal for the directly relevant order/s;
11:31AM Order placed by customer 11:31AM Order confirmed by shop
12:24PM Courier departs 12:33PM Order delivered to customer
And
11:49 AM Order placed by customer 11:49 AM Order confirmed by shop
12:24PM Courier departs 12:54PM Order delivered to customer
Conveniently enough for an organisation that specialises in their bottom dollar being making access to support difficult along literally every rung of their “employee” and customer base, this data leaves out a lot of the spice. Here’s what it’s like from the kitchen. Please keep in mind this is just one example that has escalated to this explanation and that there are so so many more.
At least here’s my version of events and for what it’s worth, this has been my experience across multiple kitchens I have worked in. Anyone who works in a kitchen that gives a damn about what they produce and all the steps that go into it, JUST to be ruined in an avoidable manner right at the bloody end, we know this feeling all too well.
Order was made on time, I know so because I personally adjusted the order times so they would be prepared together for a batched pick up and I put them both into the oven and out into pizza boxes. I was the secondary person to interact with the driver. I am also able to produce the relevant dockets, unlike how these drivers/reviewers would be unable to produce any receipt of purchase or similar evidence of being a customer.
Here’s the missing info. Both orders are completed by our team on time at 11.59am, Qaseem A is due to arrive at that same time but arrives significantly late by 12.12pm. Alright, that’s fine, the pizzas were kept warm by the oven to mitigate these scenarios as well as our strict heat bag requirement policies. I’ll get more into that later. As the order is being handed to the driver, I routinely look over to the delivery/online device to make sure everything service-wise in general is going smooth. I then spot that the driver has been “Waiting for 2 minutes” despite having just stepped into the store for an order that had now been waiting on pick up for 13 minutes already. So while I am on the oven I squeezed in a moment to ask the driver, while a colleague handed it over, “why does it say you have been waiting for this order for 2 minutes despite only just arriving?” Old mate was aghast. I am mid peak service and this dude wants to defend his honour somehow at the expense of delaying the order further for the customers. The irony, I know. I cop a couple more minutes of poorly constructed reasoning. He continues to stand across the counter asking to see the manager or owner to which I said howdy. I’m still asking him to leave which for some reason he’s still not. I am quite literally begging him to move on and deliver the orders. There’s no cursing or anything from either. Some raised voices sure. When Qaseem refused to move on despite many verbal requests, I went to the other side of the counter to where his heat bag was. Grabbed it (without touching him) and placed it outside on one of our tables for him to retrieve on his way out. As I walk back into the kitchen past Qaseem, again asking him to leave so we can continue with service, he mutters some thinly veiled threat about getting back at me and the business. I go back to the floor and rejoin the team for service and walk past whatever last words he had to get out. It doesn’t stop there though. He now has the order and is quite literally sitting outside in his car as the order tablet relays further that the driver has now been waiting for 13 minutes. And that was the last time I looked at the tablet before he drove off soon after. We get through the service and the next day when I look at our reviews I see the outlandish lies in a volley of 1-star reviews and here we are now.
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Why did I ask that question about “why does it say you are waiting” when he ain’t? Because drivers are compensated at a dollar rate per minute by the shop when they are kept waiting past their arrival time. I wish I could tell you the exact rate and conditions however when I contact the “support” team for information, it can’t be supplied and you need to contact a different team which isn’t supplied despite being told the intention to relay. And around the merry-go-round you go. This is all a common theme. Furthermore, the contracts you get signing up to third-party delivery services naturally are modified constantly and these modifications we aren’t readily privy to. If you are doubtful of the sinister intentions behind this kind of business practice, please, try yourself to find out the precise answer through any avenue you choose. Or just try ask for help for anything in general, really. Even through the restaurant partner online portal you can’t find information on penalties. You only find out when they take out an even larger chunk (30% before added charges) of the weekly invoice. Personally I am of the belief that general business practice becomes sinister when the model no longer is based on monitising convenience but instead on monitising inconvenience. Old mate Qaseem is a product of this and so am I. The part which breaks my heart is that not only are their customers subject to this, but so are mine.
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Now this paragraph is me speaking directly to you, Qaseem. Firstly, just be better in general man. Imagine if you put as much effort into tearing others down and instead into doing the bare minimum of your job, think of all the things you could achieve. If you cannot stand being told how to conduct yourself, conduct yourself in a manner that does not require you being told how to conduct yourself. We cooks get paid to make the food within certain parameters, you get paid to deliver the food within certain parameters and the customer receives what they have paid for within these certain parameters, at minimum. Although we may do everything to fulfil this, if our driver blunders it in a colourful variety of ways, reputational damage from the customer comes back on us. The fact that you organised this defamation scheme displays your understanding of the arterial damage negative reviews have on small businesses. This is the kind of stuff I mean when I referred to you earlier as a generally low quality individual. Be a stain on society in your own time. Not when you’re on my clock. Because when you are on my clock you are on my customers’ clock. That’s not to say I’m not aware and sympathetic to the unfavourable occupational environment that your employer/contractor presents you. Direct your frustrations somewhere productive to solving the grievances you have. I have mates that are and/or have been third-party delivery drivers. I know it sucks for you but I am talking about the bare minimums of fulfilling our mutual obligations here. Truly, I hope things get better for food delivery drivers and they’re appropriately formally recognised as the very necessary cog they are to our hospitality industry. But man, you just dropped that ball even further because not only are you horrendously incompetent at your job, you are also aggressively dishonest. If it is respect you want, behave respectfully. I’m not even asking for respect from you. Literally all I ask of you is the absolute baseline level of work you have signed up to. You are far too old for me to be teaching this lesson of respect not only coming in the form of words. Speaking of, I honestly don’t expect my words to sink in for you and in that event, I am still thankful. Thankful for the opportunity to finally address at length the plight your unfortunately all too common behaviour has on others.
Good luck and good riddance.
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These next couple paragraphs are dedicated to every other person co-opted into this scheme initiated by Qasseem. In this recent attack on my business I have been accused of there being cockroaches on pizzas, producing poor quality food, distributing a product that leads to food poisining, being ill mannered and the most ironic one of all - lacking shame. I really would have loved to be a fly on the wall for how that conversation went before you committed to defaming our small-business. Similar to the call I received from the “safety” team from the third-party organisation today (Nov 5), I’m sure there were claims of verbal and physical abuse. The fact that you would decide to leave reviews to damage my reputation instead of persuading this (I assume) family member, colleague or “friend” to contact the police and press charges is very telling. Willing to go on a crusade at the whim of disinformation and in turn spreading disinformation. I am truly not surprised that such a low quality person is surrounded by other low quality people. If you would like to back your mate, for everyone’s sake including Qasseem’s, should you not try and get to the bottom of it in a rational manner? Or is this what your justice looks like? Jokers. Maybe calling this defamation scheme organised was a bit too nice.
I accept this attack as a challenge of my resolve on what I do here and my resolve for the food I serve is not so easily shaken. And for that reason alone, I offer everyone one of you a completely free pizza. Please come in and eat it fresh from the oven too. I’ll cook for you personally. You’re even welcome to observe while next to me from inside the kitchen if you are suspicious of what I am doing. You may spread lies to damage my reputation, however, I will continue to prove myself on the plate.
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So why do we choose to use a third-party delivery service despite all the issues that come with it such as terrible consistency, lower quality product being received, reputational risk and a huge chunk of profits cut? Choose is a strong word. It’s mainly a choice based on survival. There are certainly benefits to using an already well established delivery platform. As a relatively new small food-selling business in an industrial area of Canberra, our main advantage is the exposure to customers who otherwise would not have come across our store as we naturally have limited foot traffic. If our shop were able to survive without the use of third-party deliveries rest assured, it would be done away in a heartbeat. The extra revenue is definitely not unwelcome at the end of the week too, but it certainly isn’t enough to say that the risk to reputation makes it worth it. Maybe if it were enough to be worth it, then it would be more effective to just pursue legal action on what is quite literally defamation, an illegal act. However, this is a small business and avenues of recourse are few and narrow. Hence why I’m at the very least trying to spread awareness on this threat to us at Smoko and the greater hospitality industry that I love.
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I feel like this won’t feel at all complete if I weren’t to touch upon the heatbag situation too. My passion for food needing to go into a heatbag is famous. Over the years demanding drivers to bring in their heatbag for the food to go into, they even recognise and approach me when I'm out in the wild in public spaces and we have cheeky banter, where they ask me as I have to them in the past “do you have your heatbag with you mate?” And that’s honestly hilarious everytime in a wholesome way because there is now a mutual understanding of why I ask every time. I honestly just want the food I pour my soul into to get to my customers in a reasonable manner. These kinds of drivers who although needed to be reminded the first few exchanges do in time come around and understand what we’re both doing here. The underpinning threat to our business though is not so lighthearted.
The general dilemma of what the right thing to do by the customer given the circumstances is a hard one.
Do I remake the food at my own cost with no guarentee again that it will be picked up correctly once remade?
Do I roll the dice with the next driver to be assigned to the same order? Do I continue to request the bare minimum of drivers and risk false public attacks on reputation from fragile egos?
Do I try communicate with the third-party delivery company for support or avenues of recourse?
Do I contact every customer through these delivery platforms to give a live play by play to absolve our guilt?
Do I just be silent and accept a lower quality product being delivered to our valued customers?
None of these are actionable solutions. This is the kind of environment created by sinister business practice that prompts my accustaion of a service monitising inconvenience along every tier. Then when you add in a generally unhinged individual who can’t rationalise past their own nose, that would rather put effort into orchestrating a defamation scheme instead of simply doing their job appropriately, we get these situations.
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Because I have had enough people asking about an explanation on our first 1-Star review from another driver, here’s the skinny of it:
Old mate who actually uses his real name on his review (which I can respect a bit), is sitting in his car outside the window, literal meteres away after the order is completed on time and marked as “Ready” for pick up. The ordering device then relays that driver has been “Waiting for 14 minutes” despite not even exiting his car let alone entering the store. By the “Waiting for 17 minutes” mark I find a moment to leave the kitchen and approach the driver in his car. I open the door and smoke comes billowing out. Whatever, I don’t care what you’re on as long as you get the job done which isn’t happening. He says “oh come on bro I am just waiting for another order to come through before I come in.” Hell no am I letting this level of professionalism touch my food. I tell him to cancel the order so I can get another driver and I’d be happy to remake the food which had gone cold on my own dime. For the next hour he doesn’t cancel the order and move on to another for some counterintuitive reason. In this time he even calls the customer and says he doesn’t know why I’m “being so difficult”. Eventually I find a moment to call the “support” team to reassign the driver myself. Naturally throughout this I’m asking him to leave the store for what feels like more times than there are stars in the sky. The driver gets reassigned but is STILL refusing to leave the store. He even walks in with the reassigned driver in some strange act of solidarity. Please keep in mind this reviewer is now neither a customer or a driver. I eventually remake the food for the new driver when it can be squeezed in again into everything else going on during service. Hand the food to the new driver and even hand a pizza each from the cold remade order to the drivers. I am told that it’s the “least I could do” for my behaviour and then find our first ever 1-star review from this other generally low quality individual.
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I hope this message reaches our past, current and future community well. For what it’s worth, It does not take long at all to serve every person in a local region once, it is only ever the regular customer base which ultimately sustains longevity. And if anything were to get between that, I genuinely hope I do continue to defend our store and what we are working towards here.
I’ve given my entire life to this pizzeria because I live to serve my community for which I owe everything I have. So much of our store has come from this community. To my friends and family, my cherished team, suppliers, our neighbours, maintenance/tradespeople or our treasured regular customers, in a words I could never dream to effectively articulate - Thank you. The beginning of the list of contributions include tables and chairs, plants, ideas toward improving food quality and diversity, tea towels, shop speakers, kitchen equipment, games scattered around, art, lovely company, memories to hold dear, goals to set, diversified routine, an opportunity to express myself as well as something to dedicate my entirety toward. There is no character limit that this list can fit into. Neither is there any quality or quantity of thank yous that could make a dent in my debt to these generosities.
Instead, with what I have, all I can do is put those feelings into the food I cook.
Thank you dearly for reading everything I have the capacity to share at this moment. I hope this helps illuminate things a bit. If anyone has any suggestions on how I can handle this situation effectively, I am all ears.
Without Regret,
Mav from Smoko
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In the event anyone was wondering about what we have access to from the kitchen. Here’s most of it.
From our online-ordering/delivery tablet we have access to some approximate information and delivery procedures such as;
-How long the driver has been waiting at the store to pick up the order. This particular point was the main contention in the above detailed instances.
-Where the driver currently is (which is unreliable owing to gps spoofing alongside it’s not like it highlights a designated route)
-When the driver should approximately arrive by (which is also unreliable because it is based on the driver’s current location without factoring in what the driver is occupied with)
-The driver’s vehicle car make, model and rego
-Whether the driver is “Arriving Now” and to “Hand over order”
-The shop has the ability to leave default pick-up instructions for drivers before accepting assignment
-We are intially alerted when a customer puts in an order and need to “Accept” promptly or the store gets automatically taken offline
-Then we hit “Ready” on the order upon completetion to alert a hopefully already assigned driver that it is ready for pick-up
Aaaand now it’s time to get back to everything else there is to do.
