“The delivery rider who took on his faceless boss”

On the morning of August 12 2020, the day he decided to fight the Uber Eats algorithm, Armin Samii woke earlier than usual. He dressed, made coffee and sat down at his computer where he remained for the next 16 hours, coding a web application and filming videos to show other couriers how to use it. He called it UberCheats, published it online at midnight and made it free to use…

UberCheats was able to extract GPS coordinates from receipts and calculate how many miles a courier had actually travelled, compared to the distance Uber claimed they had... Because, at the time, Uber generally hid exact delivery locations from couriers after they’d completed their trips, it was hard for them to confirm how far they’d gone…

…About 6,000 trips were logged on UberCheats in total, 17 per cent of which appeared to have been underpaid…

An Uber spokesperson said: “The Uber app reviews real-time information to provide the best price to appeal to the drivers or couriers in the area, helping to minimise waiting times for customers and maximise earnings…

…a competitor app, Ola Cabs, had used an entirely automated system to make deductions from one driver’s earnings…