Delivery Union: Platforms Use New Law to Raise Merchant Fees, Calls for Fair Trade Investigation

(Central News Agency, reporter Zhang Xiongfeng, Taipei, 8th) The delivery union stated today that delivery platforms are using the new delivery law as a pretext to increase service fees for partner stores, leaving merchants with no real choice. It called on the Fair Trade Commission and relevant authorities to immediately intervene and investigate whether this clearly violates the legislative spirit of the new delivery law.

Earlier this year, in January, the Legislative Yuan passed the third reading of the "Delivery Personnel Rights Protection and Delivery Platform Management Act." This act establishes special regulations for the rights of delivery personnel, consumers, and partner merchants, and includes management mechanisms for delivery platform operators, aiming to promote the healthy development of the delivery industry.

The National Delivery Industry Union issued a statement today, pointing out that Uber Eats recently sent a letter titled "Food Delivery Merchant Service Fee Adjustment Notice" to partner stores. The letter claims that in response to the delivery law passed in January and scheduled to take effect in mid-July, the platform must adjust its fee structure to reflect "significant cost changes" and maintain operational efficiency.

The letter directly announced that starting July 21 of this year, the commission rate for all food delivery merchant partners on the platform will be increased by 2.5 percentage points at once, packaged with a "35% service fee rate cap." The union believes that when the platform already controls traffic entry points, transaction channels, and user data, merchants have no equal bargaining power. If the cap can be set at 35% today, it could be 40% or 50% tomorrow. Without substantial regulation and competitive checks, the rate is determined by the platform.

Furthermore, Uber Eats requires merchants who disagree with the adjustment to proactively send a letter to terminate the partnership by July 7th; otherwise, they are deemed to have accepted the new rate. This means the platform leaves merchants with no real choice, only the options to "accept" or "exit."

The union stated that while large chain systems might be able to bear this, for small and medium-sized stores, exiting the platform means losing a large number of orders. This structural dependency is no longer a free market but a unilateral control over life and death by the platform.

The union emphasized that the purpose of the delivery law is to establish order, correct imbalances, and protect rights, not to allow platforms to profit from the law or bully others. It called on the Fair Trade Commission and relevant authorities to immediately investigate whether this clearly violates the legislative spirit of the delivery law. If the authorities remain silent at this point, it would be tantamount to tacitly allowing the platform to turn the law into a tool for raising prices.

The union also demanded that the Fair Trade Commission apply the strictest penetrating substantive review standards to comprehensively examine Uber's acquisition of Foodpanda via Grab, and thoroughly investigate the data exchange agreements and operations between Grab and sensitive Chinese companies to eliminate all national security concerns. As market concentration continues to rise, merchants will find it harder to negotiate, delivery personnel will find it harder to secure reasonable conditions, and consumers will lose their choices. (Editor: Li Shuhua) 1150608