Bearing in mind that the Federal Trade Commission’s No. 1 strategic goal is to “Protect the public from unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the marketplace,” the FTC should investigate the business practices of major food delivery apps such as DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats.
The problem with these food delivery companies is that of recourse when an order goes wrong. The offer of goods is presented, an order is made, then accepted, then delivered. Sometimes everything is fine: the food ordered arrives on time, at the right temperature, and of acceptable quality. But other times, the food arrives late or at the wrong address, with wrong, missing, or poor quality items.
The question then becomes whether the customer will be provided adequate compensation. Sometimes DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats do so. But often they offer inadequate compensation relative to the price point of the item in question (DoorDash appears to apply this same standard to its restaurant partners, refusing to provide due compensation even where the company admits it is in the wrong). Sometimes these companies refuse to provide any compensation at all. Sometimes, when a supervisor is requested, all supervisors are said to be busy and a promised follow-up call/email never arrives.
Until recently, I was unsure if my negative experiences with these apps were an aberration from the norm. But speaking to friends and researching online, I’ve found that the opposite is true. DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats regularly refuse to provide customers with due compensation when they fail to deliver what was promised.
Often, the excuse offered for failing to provide compensation is that the user has been unlucky enough to have had other recent order issues that led to compensation. Put simply, these companies will compensate for some failings, just not all failings. If you keep having order issues, well, you’re out of luck. I’m sure many readers will already be nodding in agreement here, but a cursory social media search points to significant related issues with DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats.
The issue for the Federal Trade Commission is whether what these companies are doing comports with basic contract law and expectations of fair trading.
True, these companies blame restaurants as being responsible for providing the goods as advertised. But these companies act both as agents and business partners for these restaurants. If food is delayed and thus cold, it’s often because the app drivers haven’t been able to deliver that food at speed, for example. But these companies also charge restaurants high commission fees, receive customers’ money, and establish terms of delivery-resolution. They don’t simply facilitate a restaurant-user transaction. These companies are direct business partners to a very different transaction than would be the case were a takeout/delivery order only to involve the customer and the restaurant.
That distinction matters because basic contract law requires that a promise to exchange funds for a specific good or service requires the provision of both the funds and the specific good or service as promised (good/service quality is implied).
Asked for comment, Grubhub told the Washington Examiner that “The vast majority of our orders are completed without incident or complaint, but when things don’t go as planned, we work hard to make things right with both the customer and our partners.”
Uber Eats did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
DoorDash stated that “We want every experience to be exceptional, and that means if you don’t get the item you ordered, we’ll refund you. We work hard to make things right for our consumers. It’s also important to note that we have safeguards in place to detect and prevent fraud, including from customers misusing our refund policy. We will take action if frequent misuse of our credit and refund policy is detected. If a consumer ever has questions or concerns regarding a refund policy, we encourage them to immediately contact support. Our support team evaluates each case individually and provides appropriate solutions.”
This sounds good, the problem is that it just isn’t true. Missing items are not always refunded. And when I raised the concern that the anti-fraud/misuse excuse is used to defray legitimate complaints, DoorDash did not respond. Moreover, the idea that the support team provides “appropriate solutions” in all scenarios will surely cause laughs from anyone who has dealt with these issues. DoorDash agents regularly end chats without user agreement or any resolution.
But it’s unfair to single out DoorDash here. All these firms are doing much the same thing.
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Top line: The public seems to be getting a raw deal.
The Federal Trade Commission did not respond to a request for comment but it should take a close look at these companies’ business practices.
