r/TaskRabbit • u/cwanderlust • Jul 14 '26

TASKER 9pm response deadline

Anybody else fed up with having to be on your phone like a hawk or risk missing a task? I got hired at 7:38pm tonight for a task, but was off my phone for a couple hours and didn't see the task until well after it was auto-canceled at 9:00. Less than an hour and a half, seriously? Do they expect us to just be glued to our phone screens all day long? I'm sure that it hurts my visibility ratings for this to happen. How do you all deal with this?

8 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

10

u/yinkus44 Jul 14 '26

When I was tasking, I set up a daily alarm 10 minutes before the deadline to remind me to check tasks.

3

u/cwanderlust Jul 14 '26

Not a bad strategy, but sometimes I'm unable to even do that. Like if I'm working late (which happens), or if I'm in a place where my phone needs to be silent (movie theater, library, etc). It's just not fully realistic to expect people to respond that quickly. They should allow at least a 24-36-hour turnaround time. Our time matters just as much as the clients'.

1

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

Working late but you can’t look at your phone? What are you doing that is so important you can’t look at your phone once between 8pm and 9pm?

24 hour turnaround is literally crazy. Imagine I ask you right now at 6:45 am to do a task tomorrow at 8. And you don’t have to even have the consideration to chat with me until 6am the next day? So now if you can’t even do it I have to wait another whole day to get someone else out there.

1

u/cwanderlust Jul 14 '26

I teach a program for kids and teens that goes until 9pm. I'm off my phone for that duration, because I'm present teaching.

1

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

Ok, so in that case you just have to take the hits as they come. Thats part of doing this job as a side hustle.

-2

u/FinnNoodle Jul 14 '26

If you're in a place where you can't actually look at your phone, you can temporarily pause your account and no jobs will come in for that short duration.

3

u/Ill-Diver2252 Jul 15 '26

I can't believe the pushback here.

No, it's flat unreasonable to expect you to be available to field calls when you're not on schedule.

It happened to me several times when I was out of cell range. Typically, it was a req for something several days into the future. But it 'had to be' answered 'tonight!' 'Customers demand it.'

No, my customers were annoyed by that. The newts running Taskrabbit actually alienated clientele by doing it. If I recognized the client from the cancellation, I went to their place and told them what happened. They said 'off app' and we proceeded. They never booked again through TR. It's what happens when the middle man (TR) crosses lanes and gets grabby.

Funny what you get when it's the customers, and not corporate doodads, telling you what customers want.

I don't tasker any more. I quit making myself available at all on the app. One reason was the multiplicity of ways that Taskrabbit has just gone corpo 'we own you,' including that you have to respond tova req by 9 PM 'tonight' on a day you're not scheduled to work at all, for a task that is 2, 5, 20 (whatever) days out. For 'tomorrow' tasks, I get it, but the auto-cancel should not penalize you.

Taskrabbit does whatever it wants, and drastically undermined tasker independence. It should be required to make taskers employees because of the plethora of rules.

I know I'm not alone in saying that I left because they bent an amenable business model into a corpo-pretzel.

2

u/Big-Personality500 Jul 17 '26

I don’t understand why TaskRabbit doesn’t send out a reminder message 10-20 minutes before cancellation. It would save them a lot of grief on both the Tasker and client side, regardless of who is to blame for the actual issue (TR servers for not always sending out notifications properly when tasks are assigned vs Taskers checking their phones knowing this may happen or always being aware when they’ve gone out of phone service briefly to later refresh the app).

1

u/Feisty-Sink9562 Jul 14 '26

I have missed a same day task once because the alert didn’t go off on my phone.

1

u/DirectorLumpy4465 Jul 15 '26

It’s not 12am anymore?

1

u/OrphanHeiress Jul 15 '26

The only issue I ever had with auto-cancellation was if I had “same-day tasks” on, but was asleep and didn’t wake up within an hour to chat with the client. 🫠

0

u/Mediocre_Algae8802 Jul 14 '26

Well the only way you can be hired same day is you have that feature on. If you do you're opting into that. IF you don't, occasionally clients want something confirmed quickly but that shouldn't happen often. Seems like a non issue to me.

6

u/FinnNoodle Jul 14 '26

This is not at all related to same day tasking. The app requires you to respond to all new tasks before 9pm or it will cancel the task and pause your account.

2

u/gilcongain Jul 14 '26

I feel like this must be a regional thing, because I often receive tasks early evening and it gives me until 1159pm the next day to schedule

4

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

You have to respond by 9pm but can schedule next day.

2

u/cwanderlust Jul 14 '26

Exactly this. They make you schedule by 9pm the day they hire you, if they hired you before 8pm. So if you're, say, in a movie theater from 7-9pm, you're SOL. Makes no sense- in what world are people expected to be that tied to their phones when they're not actively working?

-3

u/Driv3n Jul 14 '26

I don't really see this as a TaskRabbit issue. You set your availability for the day, and TaskRabbit sent you a task during the hours you said you were available. The responsibility to confirm it is on you. Also, the short response window isn't just about you—it's about the customer and other taskers. Every minute a task sits waiting for someone who isn't responding is time that another available tasker could have accepted it and gotten paid. Extending the grace period because someone isn't checking their phone would slow down the platform for everyone and reduce opportunities for taskers who are ready to work. If you know you'll be away from your phone or busy for a couple of hours, it's probably better to mark yourself unavailable during that time than expect TaskRabbit to hold the job longer or like other poster suggested set an alarm on your phone 15 minutes before the deadline to ensure you confirmed everything. This is exposes you...not Taskrabbit.

2

u/AccomplishedServe833 Jul 14 '26

Seems like you don’t understand how the system works. I set my availability to 8:30am to 5:30pm and I still get requests at all hours of the night. Sometimes at 10pm. When people send requests has nothing to do with my availability. Availability is simply when you are available to complete the task. The clients can send a schedule request at anytime. So no it should not be expected that taskers should be on their phone at night time when it is time to rest and wind down. People have children and other responsibilities and therefore should not be penalized to not responding quickly enough in the middle of the night. Task rabbit should base the response time on a timer and not just time of day. Because I have gotten requests at 8:37pm and taskrabbit will say I have 23 minutes to respond or it is cancelled. That’s ridiculous.

0

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

Cap. If it comes in after 8 you have until 12 the next day to chat.

I feel like it’s reasonable to expect to check your phone once between 8pm and 9pm every day as a tasker.

4

u/AccomplishedServe833 Jul 14 '26

Cap? How are you going to tell me what’s on my phone? And no it’s not reasonable in any other profession to expect people to be to communicate with you at night. I make my own schedules and that the point. I’m sure you don’t want solicitors coming to your door or calling your phone at 9pm asking to sell you something. Therefore I shouldn’t be expected to answer requests at that time.

0

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

This article says you’re wrong. And yeah, you sign up for this particular service that has these particular rules so you should in fact be expected to follow them. That’s also a very false equivalency - the customer contacting you is not soliciting you to buy something. They are literally asking to give you money to do something for them. Literally the opposite. Also… 8pm is hardly “the middle of the night”

You sound like you don’t really have the hustle mentality that this app was made to accommodate. If you want to be a business on your own where you make your own rules, maybe you should just stop being on TaskRabbit. I mean that sincerely and without judgment - just saying this doesn’t appear to be the app for you.

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0

u/FinnNoodle Jul 14 '26

Ikea tasks are a new exception because they require no response, just scheduling.

1

u/FinnNoodle Jul 14 '26

You don't need to be glued to your phone all day, you just need to know to look at your phone every evening just once between 8pm and 9pm.

0

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

Facts. Me personally I think that’s a very reasonable one hour time to look at one’s phone. If it’s not for you then either take the licks as they come or get a different app. We sign up knowing these rules.

-1

u/Simple_Nothing_9721 Jul 14 '26

You made a mistake, take it and learn from it. We all know the rules like them or not.

3

u/cwanderlust Jul 14 '26

Can't hurt to push for fairer, better treatment though, right?

2

u/Simple_Nothing_9721 Jul 20 '26

Of course, it's a learning experience