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Uber Eats Acceptance Rate – And Why It Doesn’t Matter

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If you’re delivering for Uber Eats, you might be wondering if your Uber Eats acceptance rate matters. Should you accept most of the orders that Uber Eats sends your way? Or can you be strategic and only accept better orders? 

Here’s the short answer. Your Uber Eats acceptance rate doesn’t matter. Indeed, Uber Eats makes it clear that it doesn’t matter. Anecdotally, I’ve also been delivering with Uber Eats for over 5 years and have consistently maintained a low acceptance rate. Usually, I accept 25% or less of the delivery requests I receive.

In this post, we’ll look at how the Uber Eats acceptance rate works and further explain why it simply doesn’t matter. We’ll also talk about another issue related to your Uber Eats acceptance rate – canceling orders and how you can do that without hurting your standing on Uber Eats.

Uber Eats Acceptance Rate – What Is It And How It Works

Your Uber Eats acceptance rate is based on the number of Uber Eats delivery requests you receive that you also accept. Every time you receive an Uber Eats delivery request on your phone, you have the choice of either accepting it or rejecting it. 

uber eats delivery request
If this order looks good to you, you can accept it by clicking the accept button. If it doesn’t you can click the X and reject the order.

When you reject an order, you lower your acceptance rate. By contrast, when you accept an order, you increase your acceptance rate. For example, if you’ve received 100 delivery requests and rejected 50 of them, your acceptance rate would be 50%. 

One thing to note is that if you reject too many orders in a row or let a bunch of orders in a row lapse before you accept or reject them, Uber Eats will automatically log you out of the app. However, you can immediately log back in and keep getting delivery requests, so this is more of an annoyance than an actual issue you have to worry about. 

How To Check Your Uber Eats Acceptance Rate 

Uber Eats used to show you your acceptance rate, but a few years ago, they removed that feature. Recently, however, they seemed to have brought it back. Now you can see your Uber Eats acceptance rate in the profile section of your Uber driver app (click the top left corner of the Driver app, then click on your profile picture). 

Here’s what my stats look like in the Uber Eats driver app:

uber eats acceptance rateAs you can see, I maintain a low acceptance rate, only accepting orders that are profitable to me. I reject far more orders than I ever accept (I also have a high cancel rate, which is a subject for another post).

In the past when Uber Eats showed you your acceptance rate, people who didn’t understand the app were convinced that your acceptance rate mattered and could get you deactivated if it got too low. In reality, it’s a scare tactic that Uber Eats uses to get less experienced drivers to accept more orders. I’ve been delivering for Uber Eats for over five years and have never had issues getting orders or working with Uber Eats. If the acceptance rate did matter, I’d have noticed by now.

Your Uber Eats Acceptance Rate Doesn’t Matter  

The definitive answer is that your Uber Eats acceptance rate does not matter. They make it clear in both your independent contractor agreement, as well as on the website. For example, for promotions and quests, Uber Eats states: “As of August 21, 2017 Uber is no longer tracking acceptance rate or cancellation rate against Quest promotions.” The fact that they are no longer tracking your acceptance rate in the app at all is also an indication that it doesn’t matter.

That being said, Uber Eats isn’t afraid of using scare tactics to make it seem like your acceptance rate might matter. For example, on the Uber help page, they state this:

“It is important to maintain a high acceptance rate to provide a reliable service to restaurants and customers.” 

That might seem to imply that your acceptance rate matters, but it’s really empty language meant to scare new drivers into accepting more orders. 

And again, I know that your acceptance rate doesn’t matter because I maintain a low acceptance rate, cherry-picking orders that make sense to me. Despite this, I’ve been consistently delivering for Uber Eats for over half a decade.

If you think about it, Uber Eats has a vested interest in avoiding anything that makes Uber Eats drivers look like employees. Requiring drivers to accept a certain percentage of orders would undermine the independent contractor relationship between Uber Eats and its drivers. So the best they can do is try to scare drivers into accepting more orders, but they can’t really do anything to punish drivers that are strategic about which orders they accept.

Canceling Uber Eats Orders – That’s Okay Too

Related to accepting orders is whether you can also cancel orders after you accept them. The answer here is that you can cancel orders without any issue so long as you do so before you pick up the order. 

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to cancel an order after you accept it. First, it’s easy to accidentally accept a delivery request. The app makes it stupidly easy to click accept. I guarantee you’ll find yourself opening the app and accepting an order by accident. 

The second reason you might want to cancel an order is if you arrive at the restaurant and find the order isn’t ready or there’s a long wait. Sometimes, you just need to cut your losses and move on. 

Finally, you might also cancel an order because it’s not going in an ideal direction. If you’re multi-apping (which I recommend everyone does), you might get an order from Uber Eats, then realize that you have orders from DoorDash or Grubhub going in opposite directions. In those situations, it might make sense to cancel an Uber Eats order you already accepted to focus on other orders. 

The most important thing is to never cancel an order after you’ve picked up the food and marked that you’re on your way to the customer. The reason you don’t want to do this is that Uber Eats or the restaurant loses money if you cancel an order after you’ve picked it up. When you cancel an order after you’ve picked it up, you keep the food and no one else can deliver the order. If you do this too many times, I’m positive that Uber Eats will eventually deactivate your account.

By contrast, if you cancel an order before you pick it up, there’s no harm to anyone. Uber Eats can send the order to someone else and they’ll still make their money. 

Final Thoughts 

So, if you’ve made it this far, you hopefully have learned why your Uber Eats acceptance rate doesn’t matter. When you’re delivering with Uber Eats, you’re working as an independent contractor, which means you are your own small business. As such, you need to act like one and be strategic about the assignments you accept. No business would ever accept an unprofitable bit of work. And the same should be true for you. 

More Recommended Ebike/Scooters

Check out these other ebikes and scooters I've reviewed:

  • Urban Arrow Ebike – Last year, I made one of the largest purchases I’ve ever made – I bought a $9,000 electric cargo bike from Urban Arrow. In my Urban Arrow review, I will discuss what it is and why I decided to buy this bike, as well as discuss how impactful a bike like this can be on your journey to financial independence.
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  • KBO Flip Ebike – The KBO Flip is an excellent bike. I’ve had a great time riding it and think it’s a versatile bike that can be used for a lot of purposes and can fit a variety of lifestyles. It’s worked out great for me as a general commuter bike and as a food delivery bike. Check out my KBO Flip Review.
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  • Upgrade ($150) – Upgrade is a free checking account that’s currently offering a $150 referral bonus if you open an account and complete a direct deposit. These bonus terms are easy to meet, so it’s well worth doing this bonus as soon as you can. Here’s a post I wrote with more details: Upgrade $150 Referral Bonus – Step By Step Directions.
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financial panther

Kevin is an attorney and the blogger behind Financial Panther, a blog about personal finance, travel hacking, and side hustling using the gig economy. He paid off $87,000 worth of student loans in just 2.5 years by choosing not to live like a big shot lawyer.

Kevin is passionate about earning money using the gig economy and you can see all the ways he makes extra income every month in his side hustle reports.

Kevin is also big on using the latest fintech apps to improve his finances. Some of Kevin's favorite fintech apps include:

  • SoFi Money. A really good checking account with absolutely no fees. You'll get a $25 referral bonus if you open a SoFi Money account with a referral link, and an additional $250 if you complete a direct deposit.
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  • US Bank Business. US Bank is currently offering new business customers a $800 signup bonus after opening a new account and meeting certain requirements.
  • M1 Finance. This is a great robo-advisor that has no fees and allows you to create a customized portfolio based on your risk tolerance. You also get $100 for opening an account.
  • Personal Capital. One of best free apps you can use to monitor your portfolio and track your net worth. This is one of the apps I use to track my financial accounts.

Feel free to send Kevin a message here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    Uber notified me that they was fraudulent activity with my account yesterday, and I could not continue delivery until the issue is resolved.

    Today new day, I doticed that I have been deactivated, without any justification.

    The only way to contact Uber is through their chat message portal

    I I was told that my rating was to low.

    I could file an appeal they validated.

    I admitted that I declined about 3 of a few $3 offers where I had to drive about 25 min to deliver etc.

    This is unreal, what Uber is doing.
    Your car, your gas money, and milage that you are using and not theirs.

    It seems like manipulation!

    Fair is fair!

    Reply

  2. Kari says

    I’ve taken this advice and now since my acceptance rate is lower, would it prevent me from getting the benefits in the next tier? For example, I’m in the blue tier and UberEats is showing me if my acceptance rate doesn’t go up that I’ll not be able to use the Gold tier benefits.

    Reply

    • Financial Panther says

      You might think that, but I can counter and say I’ve never noticed any difference. Of course, how orders are assigned is a mystery, but I’d bet it’s probably more in your head than you think.

      Reply

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