Do Rappi and PedidosYa charge you more?: They are accused of “abusive practice” in shipments

Defense of the Rights of Consumers detected that the shipping cost added a “service fee” that would be an “abusive practice”

The Buenos Aires government accused the delivery companies Rappi and PedidosYa for the collection of compulsory additional charges in shipments, in violation of the National Consumer Defense Law, and applied fines for more than 400 million pesos, the Ministry reported today. of Production, Science and Technological Innovation of the province.

A survey of the Provincial Directorate for the Defense of the Rights of Consumers and Users, dependent on the provincial productive portfolio, found that both companies, through their digital platforms, in addition to the shipping cost, charge an extra charge called “service fee ” that it would be a priori an additional business “cost” that is passed on to consumers.

The companies do not provide detailed and precise information regarding the reason or the composition of this fee for service and force users to pay it to complete the purchase, since they do not allow rejecting the charge.

As specified, this additional charge would be an abusive practice on the part of both companies, which increases the price of products and services and transfers, to consumers and users, business costs and expenses, typical of the activity that must be carried out by the respective platforms.

The companies were notified and now have 5 business days to file their defense.

Rappi, accused of money laundering and overbilling

The delivery unions have been waging a battle against the applications for months, which they describe as “uberizing” the labor system. The nickname serves to depict what happened with Uber to the detriment of taxis (loss of jobs and sharp drop in units without improving service) to low cost (the so-called “revolution of the skies” by Mauricio Macri in a advance against Aerolineas Argentinas).

For its part, the Union Association of Motorcycle Messengers and Services (ASiMM) headed by Marcelo Pariente, has been demanding the labor regulation of delivery companies, in a dispute that has more setbacks than progress.

Along these lines, Gonzalo Gabriel Ottaviano, a worker in the sector and member of the union’s board of directors, filed a criminal complaint against RAPPI Arg SAS, before the Public Prosecutor’s Office, so that “anyone who is responsible, participates or conceals” is investigated. “, for “using the workers registered in its platform for maneuvers that have a scope on the Commission of the Crime of Asset Laundering.”

Among the documentation presented as evidence, he maintains that the firm “imposes its users / workers to generate billing through the Gestorando firm.”

The complaint filed in the offices of the Early Intervention Unit (UFE) has the number 2551/DGPDH/07, file number 6402, and maintains that both RAPPI and Gestorando “use a mechanism where an over-billing is generated, on behalf of the users /workers, and that in all cases these are derisory amounts that are unknown to them”.

For the union known as “motorcycle riders”, today there are some 20,000 employees in RAPPI and some 35,000 in Pedidos Ya, all monotributistas in a labor model where job insecurity seems entrenched. In dialogue with i Professional, Pariente indicated that “the profits of these companies are immense but they have the workers outside the system and without any type of rights.”

Complaint against Rappi: for the union, there were “misleading movements”

Ottaviano has been carrying out a detailed investigation into job insecurity on the platforms in general and on Rappi in particular. He explained that one of the maneuvers of the app is that workers are “required to pay negative balances through the Pago 46 application”, estimating that it is “a manipulation maneuver” that leads staff to cooperate in “deceptive movements”, since “there is no way in which workers can filter or control the payment method of the orders they receive”.

He explained that “upon reaching the maximum of 10,000 pesos, the application suspends the worker’s account and does not allow the continuity of the labor task until the debt is settled,” while at the same time it is imposed to settle it “by depositing the money to through a bank transfer to one of these registered agents”. He maintained that “this situation is extremely serious, because RAPPI tax exposes the workers”, for which he demanded a “prompt investigation and clarification of the facts, in order to reach an evidentiary instance”.

In his investigation request, Ottaviano stressed that both ‘Gestorando’ and ‘Pago 46’ are companies of “dubious provenance”, since they propose a WhatsApp number or an email “that rarely works” as the only way of contact, adding that “there is no visible physical address, as indicated in the formal document.”

In the criminal complaint, the leader indicated that “tax fraud, precariousness and labor exploitation, is the registered trademark and the true reality hidden by the platforms that with a strong lobby act on officials and take advantage of blocking any action that regulates them” and pointed out that “those responsible for controlling and legislative representatives look the other way, under the false premise of modernization. This network of complicity and corruption that is in full view must be combated.”