In the past, all gig workers were working unfairly, being exploited in their work environments. However, our government introduced Bill 48 to bring fairness to all gig workers.

Though I am pleased that the provincial government has legislated a minimum hourly wage for gig workers. This is what everyone was looking forward to, and we all hope to benefit from this bill. Unfortunately, the company I work for uses legal loopholes to deliberately avoid this act, taken from the diverse but overall unanimous opinions of many practitioners, merchants, and customers on its online platform. This continues to harm the interests of practitioners, merchants, and customers after the implementation of the bill.

Starting from the third of September this year, this bill states that the company responsible should be clear about each worker’s engaged hours and mileage. This implies a lack of transparency between the corporation and the individual, resulting in the latter being cheated of their pay after being gaslit into believing they didn’t work enough for high pay due to the absence of substantial reasoning. I believe this is an illicit act, and I hope that my criticism can be reviewed and swiftly dealt with as my company’s shady actions continue to hurt its workers and many more.

The bill also states that before the termination of a worker’s account, the company needs to give a reason. Be that as it may, Fantuan seems to do that without an explanation, shifting more onto the legally dark gray side. While not in violation of the bill, this is still a dirty act done by corporate officials which should be addressed, as it creates unreasonable lost jobs for many workers who find themselves in this place.

I would like to use my anonymous identity to showcase Fantuan in care of Just Order Enterprise Corp. on how they deal with this bill.

Practitioners:

(1)   On our delivery app Fantuan assigns orders to drivers. When the order is assigned to you, it is impossible to decline the order. You can either not do anything and leave the order idle for five minutes, and it will be dismissed, although you will not be allowed to receive a new order during this period. As a result, your acceptance percentage will be deducted. Or you accept the order then you reassign the order, which lowers your reassignment rate, which you can only do four times in a day. Either way, the management will review your effective percentage. If your effective rate is low, they will suspend your account for three days as a punishment. If you don't improve the effective percentage, your account will be indefinitely suspended. During the suspended period, no orders will be routed to your account, and Fantuan will not process “termination of a worker’s account” anymore because the bill restriction is applied. In other words, you can understand this action as forced labor, and Fantuan uses legal loopholes to deliberately avoid the “termination of a worker’s account” rule.

(2)   Fantuan is being unfair when handling late delivery orders, because of a maximum time limit set to 1 hour to complete your trip account for the vendor making the food, you driving to the vendor and then to the receiver. It sounds reasonable but it is unrealistic, since when the driver delivers the order later than the expected delivery time, your punctuality percentage will be deducted. You will receive the same punishment as stated above if you are late. Fantuan does not care what the situation is, as long as you’re late you’ll be reprimanded.

a.      If the merchant had been making the order for 50 minutes, it leaves only 10 minutes for the delivery driver to make a full trip, which is entirely out of the window.

b.     Usually during rush hour, Fantuan will assign more than one order to you if across regions delivery. For instance, Fantuan will assign two, three, or four orders to be picked up from Richmond and delivered to Vancouver during rush hours. There will be at least a few kilometers away from the customer endpoint to another. You still need to complete all orders within an hour, leaving a high probability of late orders.

(3)   Most drivers do not receive the mileage and active hours guaranteed pay and I am one of them. On the third of September this year, the Fantuan delivery app released a message to all the drivers stating that Fantuan would release the guaranteed pay to drivers in half a month. Yet, to the 21st, we still have not received the mileage and active hours guaranteed pay. We asked the regional representative (Bryan, last name unknown) about the pay. He replied that if you didn’t see any payout on the delivery driver app on the fifteenth of September this year, it indicates you have fulfilled the bill requirements, and no payment will be made. However, they have not provided any reasoning or evidence as to why this may be the case. On the other hand, we have to calculate our active hours and mileage manually, showing us eligible for the guaranteed pay. Nevertheless, they have still silently and continuously ignored our request for supporting data.

a.      A small portion of drivers received their mileage-guaranteed pay. They have stated that Fantuan converted the km to miles and used the miles multiplied by $0.35 as mileage-guaranteed pay. Fantuan takes more than a thirty-five percent discount on the expected mileage-guaranteed pay.

b.     The small portion of drivers who received the minimum rate-guaranteed pay have also stated that there is no way to audit the active hours. Fantuan only provides lump-sum active hours from the third to the fifteenth of September but doesn’t provide any information on your daily active hours.

(4)   Drivers must wear their green commercial vest and put their sticker logo on the vehicle. Before the bill was applied, Fantuan paid a small “advertisement fee” to the drivers. After its passing, Fantuan removed the “advertisement fee”. We questioned the regional representative about not wearing the vest and not putting the sticker on the vehicle. He told us if we do not wear their green commercial vest and put their sticker logo on the vehicle, Fantuan will likely suspend your accounts indefinitely because it will lower your percentages of effectiveness. To me, this is a threat made to keep us in line even though we’re being paid less.  

(5)   Fantuan dismissed the tipping option on the app. They put 1%, 2%, or 0% award for the replacement. Especially, on the 0% award selection, they highlighted as a popular choice.  After its passing, most drivers only receive less than $1 tip a day. Fantuan uses legal loopholes to deliberately limit drivers’ income and lower their compensation pay to WorkSafeBC.

Customers:

Fantuan is playing wordplay on the Fantuan app. Many customers complain more than ten present extra fees are added when checkout. The description of the extra fee is “Driver Award”. According to customers, they asked the delivery driver about the fee. They learned that no driver had collected the relevant fees from the order.

Many customers think this is a mandatory tip. Customers pay the fee as a “Driver Award” and customers expect the money to go directly to the driver. Unfortunately, the money went to a black hole.

Merchants:

Many merchants complain about the commission fee. One merchant has signed and agreed to pay 25% commission fee on the agreement with Fantuan. In the end after calculating, Fantuan took more than 35%. The other merchant told on the media that the order was $46.83 but they only received $16.63.

Data source: https://lahoo.ca/2024/09/20/717234