Apple Store Customer Claims Uber Driver Stole Their $2,000 Delivery Order and Apple Won't Offer Refund [Updated]

[bunty07]

I tried same day delivery once. It was delivered by Uber.
One thing I did not like was the Uber driver could clearly see what I ordered.
Since an Apple Store receives the order, they just pack it in a a bag and send it for delivery.
Not really a safe way to deliver.

 

[wireless-toyz09]

#1 reason to do in store pick-up.

There’s been reports of UPS stealing iPhones.

Yup! Happened to me with my iphone 7 plus.

 

[Solomani]

I absolutely won’t use any gig-economy delivery service. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash… I don’t trust any of them. They are overly expensive, and you’re trusting your driver not to cause an issue. I’d rather just pay a little extra for overnight shipping.

Hopefully the guy can just do a chargeback on his purchase.

Yep! For a $2000 Apple device... we should be using a real courier service like Fedex or UPS with a Signature Required Upon Delivery.

In fact.... don't even sign until you are handed the box and you open the box, and inspect the content is what you paid for.

 

[mr.datsun]

Without the customer's signature for the goods (and photo of it being handed over), I don't see that Apple can be said to having had delivered the goods.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Yep! For a $2000 Apple device... we should be using a real courier service like Fedex or UPS with a Signature Required Upon Delivery.

I think locally they might be too expensive for Apple. Thus, Apple took the cheaper route for local deliveries. It's so dumb! Imagine Uber eats Delivering your custom-made $50,000 Mac Pro. Wait! Are they going to deliver?

 

[KaliYoni]

This is why you pay by credit card. So that when Apple refuses to refund for non-delivery, you can have the bank reverse the transaction.

I'd assume that if you paid with a credit card you could just dispute the charge if it never actually arrived.

Now if this lucky individual decides to charge back the credit card

The horrible thing is that a card issuer's investigation would consist of the issuer asking Apple to provide proof of delivery. Since Uber's driver marked the package as delivered and Apple orders probably have a higher number of disputed transactions than most retailers (due to criminals and the high fencing value), it is likely that in a lot of cases the card issuer would not rule in the card holder's favor. Bad!

 

[Apple_Tiger]

Thankfully i have an apple store within walking distance from where I live so id just be walking to the store and pick it up myself for such a high value items.

 

[foobarbaz]

Without the customer's signature for the goods (and photo of it being handed over), I don't see that Apple can be said to having had delivered the goods.

Yeah, this is really strange to me. Obviously, a court case would be a slam dunk, right? Why is Apple being so weird about it?

Or is this a case of strange gig economy thing, where your purchase transport is a separate contract with the driver?

 

[Matthew9559]

Unfortunately I’ve read too many of these instances as well to trust the service for anything more than a few hundreds of dollars of product. I’ve used it before and it works great but I’m not going to gamble on a successful delivery of a computer or something of that value.

 

[jz0309]

I used that service in Dec 2021 for my 13 pro max and I had to sign for delivery… is that not required anymore? Must be and that is a stupid move

 

[windowsblowsass]

I don't trust Uber. Overly expensive for no reason. Also, they don't fully investigate their drivers as far as background goes.

Uber should really implement a policy where it is required to have a customer's signature on orders above $50.00. How UPS does it with UPS Signature Required.

I literally have to give Uber a pin for a sandwich delivery. Shocked they don’t have something in place.

 

[london_apple]

This happened to me twice. Once trying to order a Magic Mouse and another time ordering an Apple Watch band using Apple's same-day/next-day delivery service. Luckily they refunded me for both - but still shady af on Uber's part.

 

[Christopher Kim]

I too was surprised Apple uses Postmates/Uber for this... At a minimum, there should be rules where:

1) the Apple bag is completely sealed so the contents can't be seen or bag opened without knowing. Most restaurants started doing this for all their UberEats pickups during the pandemic for food safety reasons.

2) If they won't do signature required, then at minimum a picture of the bag dropped off with the house number / door should clearly need to be shown. Not that a driver couldn't still fake it (take the picture, then take off with the bag, claiming a porch pirate took it later) but that's at least a step in the right direction.

 

[BugeyeSTI]

I know people who've had food deliveries from Uber not show up but were marked as delivered as well as things missing from food orders even though the food provider says the order left the restaurant complete.. Uber drivers stealing expensive electronic products doesn't surprise me at all..

 

[gleepskip]

No one in this thread own a doorbell camera? Footage from that would be all the proof you need of non-delivery, in addition to potentially having an image of the lowlife's face for the cops.

I sometimes order same-day from Best Buy. Your order comes in a sealed package or box. Apple need to follow suit.

 

[macduke]

How this usually goes:

Apple screws over customer
Customer makes a big deal about it online
Apple makes it right with the customer
Apple looks bad

If Apple just skipped straight to the making it right with the customer part, they wouldn’t have to look bad online. But for some reason they keep shooting themselves in the foot. Sure the $2000 isn’t worth the huge PR problem this causes for a company that rakes in untold billions per year.

I’d be pissed too if someone stole $2000+ worth of stuff from me and I wouldn’t take it laying down. And since when is $2000 petty? That seems major to me but I’m not a fancy boy. Inflation is crazy.

 

[platinumaqua]

I absolutely won’t use any gig-economy delivery service. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash… I don’t trust any of them. They are overly expensive, and you’re trusting your driver not to cause an issue. I’d rather just pay a little extra for overnight shipping.

Hopefully the guy can just do a chargeback on his purchase.

They can't really use a chargeback or they risk getting their entire Apple ID locked out

 

[platinumaqua]

I too was surprised Apple uses Postmates/Uber for this... At a minimum, there should be rules where:

1) the Apple bag is completely sealed so the contents can't be seen or bag opened without knowing. Most restaurants started doing this for all their UberEats pickups during the pandemic for food safety reasons.

2) If they won't do signature required, then at minimum a picture of the bag dropped off with the house number / door should clearly need to be shown. Not that a driver couldn't still fake it (take the picture, then take off with the bag, claiming a porch pirate took it later) but that's at least a step in the right direction.

re: #1, The gig economy drivers will just open the sealed package to steal them. They picked it up from an Apple Store so they know it could be something expensive

 

[Lakersfan74]

Hopefully happened to somebody that voted yes on prop 47.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Not sure it's a good idea for Apple to outsource delivery of $2000 products to Uber Eats.

No offense to any Uber Eats drivers.

It’s a great idea! We save on delivery fees, and all fraud is the customer’s problem. This will save us millions!

Oh, you meant for the customers. Whatever.

 

[PauloSera]

Obviously suspicious right from the get go. Who tf is buying both a 14 Pro Max and Apple Watch Ultra at the same time, let alone using a delivery service like Uber Eats to pick it up.

 

[compwiz1202]

I will definitely not use that kind of service, given there is no real recourse.

Every time we ever had an issue with DD or GH, we chatted, and they fixed it. Never ordered $2k though.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Obviously suspicious right from the get go. Who tf is buying both a 14 Pro Max and Apple Watch Ultra at the same time, let alone using a delivery service like Uber Eats to pick it up.

The fact that it’s even an option is the insane part. But this story shows just why it’s a bad idea. Apple is using a shady company with a long history of shady behavior and making errors on their part impossible to prove.

But this is California. The idea of someone ordering over $2000 of Apple merchandise to have it delivered by Uber Eats may be the most California thing I’ve heard in a while.

 

[compwiz1202]

This happened to be with Uber Eats, but with food. The driver arrived, marked the items as delivered, and then left. Nothing was left at the door. The delivery photo was zoomed in on the bag and nothing else.

I contacted Uber and was upset, but basically after a short conversation I was told there was nothing they could do as it was marked as delivered and they are working to improve their service.

I never did UE because their range and hours are poor for us. But just the other night GH delivered to the wrong address, and they sent another for free.

 

[CarAnalogy]

I absolutely won’t use any gig-economy delivery service. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash… I don’t trust any of them. They are overly expensive, and you’re trusting your driver not to cause an issue. I’d rather just pay a little extra for overnight shipping.

Hopefully the guy can just do a chargeback on his purchase.

It’s almost like this whole trend of tearing down established businesses and ways of doing things in favor of taking shortcuts has downsides!

There’s a reason cab companies require licenses and insurance and all those expensive things. Same as delivery companies. Yeah UPS for example has delivery issues every day but they are (mostly) accountable for those as they have whole systems in place to optimize logistics.

Having some random person pick up an expensive package with no accountability sounds like a great idea for Uber and Apple. They don’t have to pay qualified personnel and pay for the overhead of established business procedures.