When a restaurant makes a mistake, do they pay for it or does the food delivery app?

Asked by LifeQuestioner (4249

) 1 month ago

In this case, I’m specifically talking about GrubHub. I had a busy night tonight and so I treated myself to some Taco Bell and I used the GrubHub app. I like GrubHub and I have the added bonus of getting the premium service because I have an Amazon prime account and that’s an added benefit.

When I got my order, my taco meal was correct, but I had also put in an order for their loaded nachos. I’m very picky about what I want on my nachos, plus, if you get all the available ingredients, it really makes them soggy and hard to eat. So I asked for steak, not beef, no beans, no sour cream, no guacamole and no red sauce. I like the red sauce and guacamole but they just help make it too soggy. So when I got my order, I opened up the nachos, and not only did they give me beef instead of steak like I requested, they dumped all the other ingredients on too. I absolutely will not eat anything with sour cream on it.

I quickly went on the app and got the money that I had paid for the nachos plus tax refunded. GrubHub doesn’t give you a hard time about that or make you wait. But I got to wondering after the fact, who has to cover that refund? Because obviously it was the restaurant, where I guess the people working tonight didn’t want to be bothered to look at the details of the order, so I really hope it wasn’t GrubHub that had to pay because they shouldn’t have to.

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3 Answers

In a case like this, it is the restaurant that pays for the mistake. The app only pays when the restaurant can make a strong argument that the mistake happened after they handed off the food. In the case of an order that wasn’t made correctly, no such case can be made. And to the credit of most apps, they almost never make the driver pay.

The reason it works this way is that the apps collect all of the money and typically pay restaurants on a weekly basis. So they subtract the errors before paying out, putting it on the restaurants to appeal when they think a mistake was not their fault.

Zounderkite (1422

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^^ Good to know…thanks!

smudges (11253

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@Zounderkite thanks! I was hoping that was the case, because although I definitely deserved a refund on the food item, I was worried that the delivery app would have to refund the money which wouldn’t have made sense to me.

LifeQuestioner (4249

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