Index – Domestic – The Wolt couriers in Pest were shocked when they read what was happening at their place

Referring to Világgazdaság, the Index dealt with the practice of the food courier service called Wolt, according to which they typically employ employees who do not know Hungarian, and who do not speak any foreign language other than their mother tongue, with whom communication is impossible.

Of course, they did not deny that they employ foreigners, but they emphatically emphasized: “We also constantly monitor the feedback of our customers, and if someone receives a large number of complaints, we will take the appropriate steps – first in the form of a conversation, but in some cases this may also lead to the termination of the contract.”

Couriers see it differently

Contrary to the statement of Wolt’s representative, we obtained information that there are quite a lot of guest workers:

do not speak any language other than their mother tongue,
their work ethic and hygiene leave much to be desired,
they make it impossible for Hungarian couriers, as they can get by with pennies,
they occupy the rest rooms of the restaurants!

The content of the reader’s letter received by our editors does not, to put it mildly, agree with the statement of the representative of Wolt:

“Dear editors! I read your latest article about Wolt. To be honest, even reading it was bad. I was a courier for three years in a large rural city. From the first word to the last, what I have experienced is at odds with what I have read.”

The letter writer explains that the foreign “colleagues” appeared two years ago (the quotation mark comes from our correspondent), whose number is increasing month by month. They work in a different structure and for a different salary, and since they obviously earn less, it is worth more to Wolt. The mentioned “colleagues not only don’t speak Hungarian, but they typically don’t speak English either, and they communicate their order by showing their phone to the restaurant employee.

They are very undemanding in terms of both work and hygiene, we don’t stand by them when waiting in a restaurant because they don’t smell very pleasant, and they also treat orders in a way that I, for example, never do. There has been a noticeable increase in contactless delivery, which means that the food is simply placed in front of the door. Even during Covid, there were not as many contactless pickups as there are today!”

Our letter writer calls the typically Pakistani and Vietnamese couriers only “slippers”.

Overall, at least 90 percent of foreigners are so-called guest workers, even if they are not listed as such on paper. Fleet companies are formed, which employ these foreign colleagues as a group with different contract terms than the Hungarian ones, i.e. for half the salary, and then they collapse the fleet company and establish a new one, thus avoiding the payment of contributions.

“In addition, the icing on the cake is the decrease in our salary, for the same work we receive 30-40 percent less money today than a year ago, when there was considerable inflation. In summary: in a very short time, there will be only guest worker couriers who do not speak any language – that is, other than their mother tongue – because we, who used to work 10-12 hours a day, can no longer live on our ever-decreasing wages, while guest workers are willing to pay any low wages to work,” said our letter writer, adding that the new management is completely focused on profit, and since guest workers can be hired for any amount of money, they can reduce wages to the extreme.

And the signature: “Sincerely, a Wolt courier”

We went out and looked

After reading the thought-provoking letter, we ourselves visited a fast food restaurant in the city center, whose store manager showered us with a flood of complaints almost without asking:

The restaurant has been full of Asian couriers every day for half a year, they come to our place every half minute, take the lemonade from us in their water bottles without asking (for which the guests pay – ed.), and about thirty of them park their bikes in front of the restaurant. But not those who take food from us to the kunch trees, they just hung out there and used our infrastructure. I’ve gone to them fifty times, none of them understand what I’m saying, they don’t speak English or Hungarian… I’ve told Wolt at least twenty times, I’ve also talked to the contact person, but they still don’t do anything…

Out of curiosity, we stayed at the counter for about three quarters of an hour. The food couriers arrived one by one, including one or two Hungarians, with whom it was not a problem to communicate, but ninety percent were South Asians and Vietnamese.

I myself tried to communicate with two Vietnamese, but they did not understand a single word of Hungarian or English. Their order was placed as our letter writer indicated: