No Stupid Questions

Account sharing. It's very widespread with these types of gig work apps.

Somebody who is able to get cleared sells or rents access to their account, presumably to people who wouldn't be able to pass even the bare minimum vetting these companies perform on their contractors/employees. I.e. they'll share their account with someone who doesn't have a driver's license or insurance, or is not able to work legally in the country for whatever reason. There may or may not be some exploitation factor involved as well. It's the most dinkum, low-rent form of organize crime you can imagine. The account owner takes a cut of the proceeds and the net result is you wind up as some complete rando as your delivery driver.

From my experience in the industry, these situations are most commonly caused by a driver getting kicked off the app. They're not allowed to sign back up, so they'll buy a stolen identity and use that to register a new account and evade detection from the background checks. Or they may be undocumented and using a stolen ID to work, but this can be harder to determine.

Other times, it could just be that the driver has somebody riding along with them. Which is generally not allowed on most apps, because the friend won't have had a background check submitted, and may now be handling your food.

Those apps often ban drivers for arbitrary reasons and it's near impossible to appeal. So many people will buy accounts or use friends/family to make an account.

While I would probably be ok getting deliveries from someone who's name or photo doesn't match, there is zero chance I'll get in a car with a driver who doesn't match their name and photo in the rideshare app.

I got curious a wondered why on Uber there were so many people named Fnu, turns out it’s what they default to if the name has unique characters or symbols.

FNU = First Name Unknown

It's kind of a shitty job, so lots of people sign up, do it a very short time, and quit

Sometimes they sell the account, sometimes it gets hacked.

But it's a way for people who shouldn't be able to deliver for whatever reason, are able to deliver.

-People who have a record in the legal system (i.e. convicted of a criminal charge) and can't pass background checks

-People who may not have work authorization in the country

-Account under real name was banned (some might be legitimate bans, some might be unjustified bans)

What I really don't get is people delivering with someone else (also an adult) in the vehicle, like that seems like their SO, so why don't they just do their own separate gig so they get double income?

In Japan, they busted a bunch of people working illegally using someone else's accounts for various delivery apps (including the people setting up those accounts for people to use).

Weirder to me is how many of them seem to work as a team or group... I saw one get into the back seat of the car when they left the other day... How many people you got crammed in that SUV making one below-minimum-wage paycheck??

Some of it is that you have to be a legal citizen or have a TIN, so people will use someone's account to deliver under if they don't have those.

Because someone with the proper papers is signing up but their family member is doing the actual work. It's basically working the system. People actually get jobs this way too.

I once had a driver that sent their kids up to the door to deliver.

In France, a lot of workers are (illegal) immigrants who aren’t legally allowed to work in the country. They rent the account and only get a fraction of what the account earns

It is unethical but cracking down on it means some people wiling to work can’t, and so even if they are illegal immigrants, they’re not necessarily bad as they’re clearly willing to work

I've never seen any personal details about the driver at all. Why would you even need it? Sometimes you get a map with their current location and that's it.