Are ShopeeFood Drivers Being Shortchanged?
Nam – a ShopeeFood delivery driver – is on his way to the restaurant to pick up a lunch order in Ho Chi Minh City. ShopeeFood pays its delivery staff based on the distance traveled, and according to the app, Nam will earn 17,200 dong to deliver this meal to a customer 4.6 kilometers away.
But when ShopeeFood switched to Google Maps for direction, Nam found that the actual distance to the customer was 5.2 kilometers. This means that he would get paid less for the extra half kilometer.
However, Nam wasn’t surprised.
According to data compiled and analyzed by Rest of World, ShopeeFood, the second-largest food delivery app in Vietnam with over 50,000 employees, consistently underestimates the delivery distance.
Many drivers believe that this discrepancy is due to the app calculating the distance based on walking routes rather than motorbike routes. Some speculate that the app calculates “as the crow flies” or as a straight line between two points.
Shopee is aware of the estimated distance discrepancy and has a mechanism for addressing it, but this process is cumbersome and often ineffective.
Rest of World looked at 48 ShopeeFood orders from 31 drivers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and found that in most cases, the app underestimated the delivery distance compared to Google Maps driving routes.
The app’s calculation “ignores one-way streets and barriers on the median that drivers cannot cross,” said Nam, who requested to remain anonymous, to Rest of World.
Over time, such discrepancies can have a “significant” impact on a worker’s earnings, said Adam Badger, a former researcher on gig work conditions at the Oxford Internet Institute, to Rest of World.
“I often see delivery platforms calculate shorter delivery distances or times, thereby reducing the wages for workers. These errors accumulate, meaning that workers are at risk of losing significant income over a longer period, and the platform saves costs on a large scale,” said Badger.
Sea Group, based in Singapore and the owner of ShopeeFood, declined to comment on the issue.
According to Julien Brun, managing partner at Ho Chi Minh City-based logistics consultancy CEL, delivery apps typically use their own system to calculate routing and delegate driving directions to Google Maps on the driver’s phone to save money.
“Using Google Maps allows Shopee to avoid developing a navigation feature for drivers, as this is expensive to integrate. Google Maps has done that job very well and it comes at no cost,” said Brun.
Difficult Calculation Impact
In Rest of World’s analysis of 28 deliveries covering a distance of less than 5 kilometers, ShopeeFood underestimated the distance in 26 cases, with discrepancies sometimes approaching 1 kilometer.
It’s hard to determine the amount of lost income due to underestimating the distance, as, like most industry competitors, ShopeeFood does not disclose how much they pay per kilometer.
“Delivery platforms tend to be very opaque on how they calculate distance and fees. The price is made up of many components such as the distance to pick-up and drop-off points, time, estimated wait times, demand, etc.,” said expert Badger.
Workers believe that these small discrepancies add up to lower earnings. “This situation affects me because I am losing out on a few kilometers,” Linh, a ShopeeFood employee in Ho Chi Minh City, told Rest of World.
ShopeeFood has compensation mechanisms in place if the app’s calculations for orders over 3 kilometers deviate by more than 2 kilometers. To receive a refund, the driver is required to submit a screenshot of the shortest motorbike route suggested by Google Maps before completing the delivery.
Many find this process cumbersome and often choose not to claim the reimbursement.
“We have to stop by the side of the road, enter the address… and choose on Google Maps… while not every address is listed,” ND, a delivery worker in Ho Chi Minh City, told Rest of World.
However, feedback from 7 other ShopeeFood employees revealed that the discrepancy does not affect earnings for short-distance deliveries, as drivers are paid a fixed rate for deliveries under 4 kilometers.
Given the current technology, an app’s calculated distance should be “relatively accurate” and “comparable to Google Maps,” said Brun.
There are “no major challenges” in estimating delivery distances for Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, except for “small alleyways that are unregistered or registered inaccurately,” according to the expert.
To address the suspicions of many drivers about ShopeeFood selecting “walking routes” instead of motorbike routes, Rest of World tracked Nam for 9 hours as he rode around Ho Chi Minh City on his motorbike, delivering food, drinks, and goods.
The ShopeeFood app’s calculations matched Google Maps’ estimates for only 2 out of the 14 orders Nam received during this time. Eight out of the 14 orders matched Google Maps’ estimate for walking routes.
Of the 48 orders examined, 20 of ShopeeFood’s estimates matched the walking distance on Google Maps, while 12 had a discrepancy of just 100 meters.
“If the proposed routes for drivers match walking routes like these, then there are two core underlying reasons that could occur: Their routing algorithm doesn’t work… or they deliberately bypass these restrictions.”
If this is a technical issue and not intentional, then addressing it is “quite feasible.”
Hung, a ShopeeFood employee in Hanoi who wished to remain anonymous, told Rest of World that he recently skipped an order that displayed a distance of 0.9 kilometers on the ShopeeFood app. According to Google Maps, the actual distance was over 9 kilometers.
Usually, the discrepancy is just a small amount, but drivers have to spend too much time to prove it and wait for it to be resolved in the system.
An, a ShopeeFood employee in Ho Chi Minh City, told Rest of World that he only asks for a refund for an order if it is between 5 and 10 kilometers. He has successfully received a refund for 6 out of 12 claims made.
“The company’s strategy is very effective – they neither compensate the drivers nor suffer reputational damage. Brilliant!” said Nam. He shared that 80% of the refund requests made are unsuccessful.
