My First Postmates Delivery on Bike
A few short hours after going live on the Postmates platform as a courier, I received my first ping: Trader Joe’s! Someone wanted me to pick up some ingredients for dinner.
Being a 1st time bike courier, I was nervous. What if I couldn’t fit it all? After all, the customer probably assumed this would be carried out by someone in a car and I hadn’t fully optimized my bike for grocery delivery yet.
I rode over to TJ’s, my grocery store of choice, and proceeded to shop for the customer. There was no difficult search for a parking spot, the bike rack always has a spot for me.
If they had ordered eggs, beans, $4 bottles of Malbec or my other weekly staples, I would have been in and out in less than 3 minutes. However, they had a chocolate biscotti order, so the kind folks at Trader Joe’s showed me where to go.
Surveying the load at checkout, I realized that these 7 items would easily fit in one side of pannier (or easily would have fit in a backpack). I paid*, packed up my bike and was on my way.
4 miles later, I was at the customer’s doorstep, ready to make the drop. Honestly, I was nervous* — what if they weren’t home, what if they recognized me, what if I got the double chocolate biscotti and they wanted to chocolate chip biscotti?!
I rang the doorbell, and they answered. I quickly handed them the items saying “Here’s your Postmates delivery!” then explained in detail how I chose the biscotti. The customer smiled a little quizzically, then quickly said ‘That’s perfect. Thanks!” and closed the door.
Success! I marked the order complete in my Fleet app and felt good for bringing someone their groceries.
I quickly checked the app to see how much my tip would be*, and was surprised to see a “Pending” sign where my tip was supposed to be. What was wrong? Was I too slow? Was the customer secretly mad about the biscotti?
They probably just didn’t have time yet. It had only been 30 seconds. I was still in their driveway. I’d check later.
I got on my bike, hauled it back home smiling about how I was just paid to shop at my favorite grocery store and ride my bike.
For the rest of the evening, I checked and checked that tip. Pending!? What was wrong? I’ll save you the rest of the drama — about 4 days later I checked and the customer left a solid $10 tip on there. I spent lots of time / stress worrying about something that I couldn’t control at the point.
My Mistakes (denoted by * asterisks)
I made a series of mistakes, none of which had serious consequences. I am fortunate…but this is a demonstration that mistakes are not the end of the world.
Vehicle Selection mistake: I was in “Scooter” mode! I would later realize that the distance limits on “Scooter” mode are basically the same as the “Car” mode. This could have been a bad situation — forcing me to cancel my first delivery. Fate smiled on me and my bike that day and gave me one only 4 miles away.
PEX mistake: I didn’t have my PEX card (a credit card Postmates gives you to pay for deliveries), so I paid with a personal card. I had to get reimbursed by Postmates. WARNING — they are not reimbursing for this silly mistake anymore. If you don’t have your PEX, don’t accept an order.
Being nervous at the Delivery mistake: This is natural for people. Meeting new people is always exciting and nerve-racking, let alone allowing them to judge you on a 1–5 scale and give you a tip. However, the customer almost never cares much about the deliverer, as long as the order is right, and the courier is normal. I don’t think anyone is out there ordering Postmates to make friends with the couriers. I remind myself to lighten up before every face to face interaction.
Checking my Tip mistake: Checking your tip after delivery is not necessary. It does not make the tip exist, not exist, or increase or decrease its value.
In fact, checking the tip can distract you from enjoying the feeling of a job well done. You delivered someone’s food / items, etc. when they needed it. There are many important factors that determine a tip size (see Freakonomics podcasts) and your performance on the delivery is not a good determinant. Most factors are out of your control: customer’s cultural upbringing, your gender, customer’s financial status, etc… These things are definitely out of your control after the delivery is complete.
Also, the Postmates app is notoriously unpredictable in showing the tips to couriers. On Postmates Reddit thread, there are many complaints where couriers watch the customer assign a tip and they still don’t see those tips in the app for days. Don’t waste your time stressing about those.
I recommend checking your tips dispassionately after the work is over, maybe days later. There are interesting trends to glean from the data (restaurant by restaurant perhaps), but you don’t need to do that until later.
When doing deliveries, I like to focus on anything but tips in the past. Here are some suggestions:
- Your next delivery
- The beauty of the bike ride
- My next bike gadget
- A podcast
- Music
