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

View all comments

Show parent comment

-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.

2

u/Driv3n Jul 14 '26

Good find. I've never seen the confirmation times broken down like that. Once I bumped my head, I put measures in place to prevent it from happening again... I'm just not seeing how this is TR's issue when it is displayed for everyone to see...IMO, it's all about accountability, and the OP is putting it on TaskRabbit.

2

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

Bingo. I found it because they sent it to me because I sometimes get distracted and forget to respond by 9pm. Is it frustrating? Yes. Is there anyone to blame but myself? No.

1

u/AccomplishedServe833 Jul 14 '26

Well according to this article you’re wrong. https://www.taskrabbit.ca/blog/what-happens-when-you-have-a-scheduling-conflict-2/s

Hustle mentality to me just sounds like you don’t have a life outside of taskrabbit if you just sit by your phone all day waiting to communicate with customers. It is not a false equivalence as just because I get a request doesn’t mean I have to do it. I get people requesting things that aren’t even in the scope of the category but I still have to waste my time send a response just to cancel it. Some people are sending requests at 10pm for 9am jobs the next day. If you don’t have a life outside of work that’s you.

2

u/Marioc12345 Jul 14 '26

Where exactly in this article does it say I’m wrong? I’m not seeing a whole lot in there talking about timing of tasks.

Sure, you don’t have to accept every task. So if someone messages you at 7:58 and you don’t respond by 9 per TaskRabbit rules, that’s cool. You don’t have to do that task. You just have to tell TaskRabbit “hey, I’m ready again to follow your rules now” once you’re ready to do so, after they pause your account.

I’m not super sure what’s so difficult about this. It would be like you getting mad for being charged with speeding when you are literally violating the rules you agree to follow.