Uber Eats Priority Delivery Not Available? Here’s why…

Uber Eats Priority delivery is obviously one of the pioneer steps by any food delivery company to let customers have control over how early they want their order to arrive.

The idea is simple.

Pay more to get your delivered relatively faster.

And for the “No Rush” service, get a discount for intentionally having your order delivered relatively late.

But what happens if you want to use any of these services and can’t find them?

The worst is if you’ve been using them before and can no longer find them. Definitely frustrating, but here’s what you should know.

Uber Eats Priority Delivery Not Available? 4 Reasons

Depending on your location, and how well you use the service, the benefits of priority delivery can be interesting, overweighing the initial cost which is usually off-putting.

Now imagine, you want to make an order as you normally do but can’t find the priority service.

Frustrating right? Here are 3 reasons you can’t find the priority delivery option on Uber Eats:

Your Location has a limited amount of drivers

We have this, listed first, as it’s one of the big players to why most people don’t have access to prioritize delivery on Uber Eats.

You see, the number of drivers available in your area significantly influences the Priority Delivery option as well as most features on the app. If there aren’t enough drivers to manage the existing workload, Priority Delivery would be temporarily disabled.

But why?

The idea behind Uber Eats’s priority delivery service is to have drivers deliver a customer order first in a list of stacked orders. We explain how the priority delivery service works extensively in a previous article.

However, drivers can only do this once per delivery. In other words, each driver can only handle one Priority Delivery at a time.

Now what happens when there’s a good demand for the priority delivery service and there are little to no drivers?

You can guess why Uber Eats would choose to pause the service when there are not enough drivers.

This is also applicable when there’s a high demand for orders at a time unlike usual.

Fix

Since the priority service is likely to be down during busy times (depending on your location), it’s safe to say that you should have a good chance of using it during less busy times.

Busy times in food delivery companies are usually around lunch and dinner or 11 AM to 2 PM and 5 PM to 9 PM.

However, keep in mind that this may be only applicable if the priority service isn’t entirely shut down at your location.

But then, it doesn’t hurt to try.

You have been blacklisted

While not 100% verified, we’ve had stories of people being blacklisted from using the priority service.

This usually comes as a result of them making weird refunds (especially ones that were delivered with the priority service), and several complaints about the priority service not doing its work.

For instance, here’s a comment from a man who can no longer find the option to prioritize his delivery while his wife’s account can.

This is a good example of the blacklist theory.

You’d be sure this is what happens to you if the following statements align with your experience:

1. You’ve gotten several refunds recently (especially weird ones), you’re consistent in making refund requests, and most of your refund requests are orders with priority delivery service.
2. You’ve been using the priority service and it vanishes sporadically
3. You’ve used your friend’s or partner’s account in the same location to prioritize a delivery while you can’t.

If your answer to these questions is “yes,” you’ve likely been blacklisted.

Fix:

Actually, there’s almost nothing you can do in this case.

When it comes to issues like this, Uber Eats is quite stringent and doesn’t revert their actions easily. However, if you have a good reason why this shouldn’t be happening to you, contacting the company could solve the issue.

They may also be able to give you the specific reason why you can’t prioritize your delivery.

The Priority Delivery Service is not global

Uber Eats priority delivery is not a global service. It was initially launched in the US, with plans of being available at other locations.

However, there were never any official announcements about its coverage across the US or the actual depth of its US coverage.

If you just moved to a new location, or it’s your first time trying to test out the feature but can’t find it, there’s every possibility it doesn’t work in your location.

Temporal Blackout

Now, it could also be possible that the issue you’re having is global, perhaps a bug. We can’t tell.

Like any other digital platform, Uber Eats can have its share of bugs and issues that may temporarily disable certain features.

While these are usually fixed in a timely manner, they can affect the availability of Priority Delivery.

Final Thoughts

Why you can’t find the priority delivery service on Uber Eats can be accounted to several reasons, logical and illogical. However, from our research and experience, this 4 mentioned reason are the major things to look out for.

Before we take our leave, here they are:

1. Your Locfation has a limited amount of drivers
2. You have been blacklisted
3. The priority delivery service doesn’t work in your location
4. There’s a temporal blackout