Uber forced me to take the train back to Châtelet
Two apps. Same company. Completely different rules about what your address means.
I was starving. I placed the order and immediately saw it: Forum les Halles. Not my home.
I had ordered from Uber. Not Uber Eats. Two separate apps, same company. I assumed they worked the same way for delivery.
Uber Eats always defaults to my home. It remembers. Uber defaulted to where I was standing when I opened it: Forum les Halles. I did not notice until the confirmation screen, and by then a driver was already heading to the restaurant. The address was locked. Cancel: full charge. Do nothing: also full charge, plus a meal sitting on a sidewalk I was now some kilometres away from.
Two apps. Same company. Completely different rules about what "your address" means.
I got off at the next station. Took the train back.
This is not a UX edge case. It is a predictable failure: a user who switches between two products in the same family inherits no shared context, no shared defaults, no safety net.
Some things that would have prevented this:
A visual flag when the delivery address differs from your usual one. Cross-app address memory. An editable address field after checkout, at least while the driver has not moved. Or just: ask once, when the address looks unusual.
None of this is technically hard. The business risk of letting someone change an address before pickup is real but small. The cost of locking it is that I went back to Châtelet.
The worst UX is not confusing interfaces. It is the one that makes the right action impossible and charges you for it.
The driver arrived before I did. He waited fifteen minutes on the sidewalk while I watched the map from the train, unable to do anything. I felt terrible.
New posts, straight to your inbox.