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When Javier Rojas’ phone buzzed with an order for a packet of tablets this past July, nothing seemed amiss at first. In Argentina, delivery apps Glovo and Rappi allow users to send and receive all kinds of things, and couriers like Rojas are accustomed to delivering takeaways, documents, and forgotten keys across the city. But when they say you can order anything, that —in practice—can really mean anything, as Rojas would find out.
The address was a regular house, but alarm bells rang as soon as he saw the package. It was supposed to be a box of Berocca vitamin supplements, but the box was battered and old, and he could feel there were no tablets inside. It also reeked of cannabis.
He stopped his motorbike five blocks away and messaged Glovo support to ask what he should do. At first, they asked how he knew what he was carrying. When he told them he’d opened it, the support desk called him and told him to take the box back to the dealer. “I was like, am I going to say to him, ‘Hey, mate, here’s your weed — I’m not delivering it for you’?” he says. “He’s gonna shoot me. He’s gonna cut me up. Do you realize what you’re exposing me to?”
After that, they suggested he just deliver it. Rojas wasn’t keen on that either. “For all I know, it’s a trap,” he says. “I deliver it to the person, and there are two police officers waiting. It’s me that bears the responsibility, not the company. The company washes its hands of it.”
After more than an hour of refusing to deliver or return the drugs, the company finally allowed him to throw the box away. “The funniest bit was the next day, I got another order from the same place.” He rejected it.
Rojas’ story is far from an isolated case according to Gonzalo Ottaviano, an auditor at Argentine couriers’ union ASIMM who specializes in these cases. The first reports emerged in 2018. There have been around 10 cases so far, virtually all using the Glovo app’s “Anything” category.
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