Being on the other end of this sucks hard though. It’s super frustrating to order food and have it turn up with half the order missing.
One of the problems is because the delivery company is a complete middle man that takes on zero accountability for the order. For example, if an Uber eats or Deliveroo driver turns up with the wrong order, they can do literally nothing about it. If a company that employees it’s own delivery staff (eg Domino’s, supermarket chains, independents restaurants etc.) shows up with a bad order, they will go back and fix it, because it’s cheaper for everyone to do that.
Outsourcing delivery to another company works for restaurants that have limited delivery orders and no marketing channel, but is it really sustainable? If they have consistent volume it would certainly be easier for them to have their own drivers, as has been the case since the telephone was invented.
My favorite part of the process is that they only refund you for the part of the meal that is missing as if they didn’t just ruin your entire meal by leaving out your kid’s cheeseburger.
On that note, we had a driver eat our entire meal and not deliver it at all. The sad part was we’ve ordered some nice meals and this one was just fast food. We had to contact them to find out why our food wasn’t arriving.
We’ve watched drivers clearly go about their own business and show up whenever they feel like it and then our food is cold.
These delivery companies have all this data and yet there are still constant shenanigans...
Isn't this just a case of "we get what we pay for". These delivery services are extremely cheap - the people who are doing the delivery are paid peanuts and worked half to death (actually they are sometimes worked to death!) The business is created and developed with the single intention of creating a monopoly or near monopoly by out capitalizing/advertising/recruiting the opposition and then later raising prices to cash in. This is what we all want - you can tell it is because we are all using it - so we shouldn't complain about it. Rather we should praise our overlords of startup/venturecapital/unicorns-with-no-IP-or-technology.
The thing is that it’s not even cheap. The prices you see as a customer already include a hidden commission that the restaurant pays, but on top of that there’s a delivery fee and even a “service charge”.
They are extremely cheap for something that is so labor intensive. Even with all of those ways of hiding the cost, the driver is often barely making minimum wage after paying their expenses and the delivery company is often losing money on the hope that they will eventually grow enough to make it back.
Its literally not getting what you paid for. If a company offers you something for cheap, they still have to give it to you. Sure they can compromise on quality, but if they literally don't deliver the product, its fraud regardless of how little they charge.
These services are not cheap at all. Many of them are tacking on over 10% in just service fees, and still expect you to pay surcharges and tip the driver on top of that.
It's not inexpensive. They mark up individual food items (which has the added bonus of increasing tax and increasing tip if you pay by percentage), charge a percent service fee, a delivery fee, and an assortment of other fees; and encourage you to tip (which for awhile, they were deducting from the amount they promised the driver).
No, we are not all doing this. Over the last year, we have done pick-up on all our restaurant meals, along with nice tops for the staff. We are cutting out the sleazy middleman, and ensuring the margins on our meals go 100% to the restaurant.
Maybe the delivery companies should datamine the drivers and not the customer. Or someone should start a service that supply delivery companies with stable drivers and charge them 30% of their 30%?
Seriously, why aren’t the resturants demanding some level of insurance from the apps who take the order? E.g if more than 3% are fraud, the app company has to pay 75% of the cost of all the fraud above those 3%. There needs to be an insentive to the apps to reduce fraud.
Right now during COVID delivery apps may be their lifeline.
That being said, I imagine that once indoor dining operates normally again, and consumers are willing to eat outside, we are going to see a stampede off these platforms. The margins aren't very enticing.
I assume the restaurants often don’t have any choice (it costs the platform near nothing to drop a restaurant unless it’s a major nationwide chain, on the other hand a restaurant not on the platform will get out-competed by those who are). This problem is big enough that some consumer protection agencies should take action - at the end of the day the platforms are most likely breaking some laws by blaming restaurants for issues that are outside of their control.
Because you get your food as described 9/10 times, and the 1/10 times you don't, you can report the driver who messed up and they will, most likely, lose their job. (One of the benefits of the new "gig economy.") It's very much against the driver's best interest to deliberately mess up orders.
The thing is in the late 90s early 2000s if you complain to Domino's about a bad Pizza you just got another one for free it's called slippage. It was one of those college hacks to eat for free.
> as if they didn’t just ruin your entire meal by leaving out your kid’s cheeseburger
I'm sorry for your kid they missed a cheeseburger. But i'm not sorry for you because you feel entitled to exploit so many people in the kitchens and for delivery. Food delivery is a rich people's fantasy and should not exist at all except as a public service for disabled folks.
By maintaining/supporting an economy based on wage slavery, you're not ruining a kid's meal. You're ruining actual lives. I hope you realize that.
Re Cold food: I've had curbside pickup before and even then orders get sent out with some components not even warming lamp warm. Like if someone orders french fries during a non-rush time. Only you also can't reliably order during rush times, because then the place might be too busy to do it properly at all.
I hope we all get vaccinated and deliver the finishing blow to this pandemic so that I can safely eat hot fresh food inside again.
Heck my local McDonald’s drive thru is hit or miss. Cold fries, no fries, smashed burgers, missing nuggets all too common. The reviews of it are in the toilet too. there’s basically no competition nearby except for a Dairy Queen which is just as bad. This location is staffed by teenagers because we live just outside the main metro to get any labor that would care about doing a good job.
There have also been documented cases where delivery drivers for 3rd parties will eat part of your meal. There are many potential nodes of failure throughout this entire chain.
I imagine stapled bags are a fairly standard practice.
And if a driver is willing to eat people’s food, I wouldn’t put it past them to buy a staple remover and stapler and purposely target those orders for the plausible deniability
> For example, if an Uber eats or Deliveroo driver turns up with the wrong order, they can do literally nothing about it.
No, I would blame the people comitting the fraud rather than the app. The driver can't turn up with the wrong order as the order is faxed to the restauraunt from the app, and when the restaurant is done with the order, then the driver shows up and is given an order id to pick up. The driver can't change the order the restaurant was given.
What could go wrong in this process:
* The app sends the wrong order to the restaurant (highly unlikely. You are talking cosmic ray bitflips or DB corruption)
* The restaurant fails to update an order that is no longer available -- in this case, the consumer is notified that the order is cancelled
* The delivery driver picks up an order not belonging to them, in which case the restaurant should check the order id with the order id the driver asks for. It is very unlikely that drivers will ask for the wrong order
* The driver picks up two orders, and switches them, delivering them to the wrong address. In this case, Uber eats the refund, not the restaurant.
* The restaurant fulfills the wrong order. This does ocassionally happen, as anyone knows who dined at a restaurant when their order was gotten wrong. But it shouldn't happen in the quantities described. Then the restaurant eats the cost.
* The driver fails to deliver the order. One time, I got an order and when I looked inside I saw a strange bottle of juice and a plastic container with a rice dish. Not at all the sushi I ordered. I called the driver and he showed up and apologized. He was fasting during Ramadan and carried food with him to eat after sunset, and he gave me his own food bag instead of the bag he picked up. We exchanged foodbags and everything was fine.
* The restaurant gets the order right and the customer lies about it -- e.g. commits fraud to get a free meal. Hence why this article calls it "dine and dash". This boils down to a dispute between the restaurant and the customer. Here, Uber could start cutting people off the platform if they dispute too many orders, but then you will have a lot of outraged complaints that during a pandemic people are not being allowed to eat, etc. Basically those stealing are putting everyone else into a difficult position as by definition whenever you steal, someone needs to bear a cost that they shouldn't have to bear.
There's also the issue of faulty menus on those delivery platforms. DeliveryHero for example appears to be using generic stock photos to illustrate the dishes, I presume based on keywords. The result is that your food very rarely looks like on the website.
Also, the support staff from those platforms obviously don't know how a dish is supposed to be, so they'll just apologize to the customer even if everything was correct.
In combination, the led to me one time accidentally report a dish as missing. I had ordered something called a "burger inspiration" and the picture on the website was a regular burger. But I received a soup instead. So I called to ask what happened. The support guy apologized, confirmed that it should have been a proper burger with bread and stuff, and offered to fix it. Later, another soup arrived. With a bit of research, I found a PDF of the restaurants in person menu and indeed the dish is supposed to be a soup. It's just that neither me nor DeliveryHero knew that...
I'm guessing there's little incentive for them to improve their online menu listings or to fix confusing images, because the restaurant, not them, will pay the price.
> The reason for the dispute was listed as “other fraud card absent” (the real cardholder said someone else used their credit card number).
That is a regulation problem. If a card was used fraudulently, but the restaurant correctly delivered the order, then the restaurant shouldn't be held responsible for the fraud. The bank, or Visa, should be.
Refund the customer, let the restaurant keep the funds, have Visa take the fall.
That is what the 3% is for! It’s the point of the fees! The whole reason for everything is fraud and points
By the way fraud at current levels are covered by like a few of 0.25% IIRC
I imagine that whatever app isn’t using 3D secure like it should be, cuz then the bank/card processor is liable in fraud cases. But this is far from a new problem in principle.
3%?! Wtf America? That's double what the rest of the world is paying. I've seen 1% for some industries in the UK.
This is home delivery. Why isn't there an AVS layer to acknowledge fraud risk? Or 3DS to better authenticate payments? If either fail, let the restaurant refuse it.
Taking trusted payments can't be this hard. It's bad for everyone.
If you’re getting 2% or more cash back, it’s other people’s money who aren’t getting that cash back. Also, merchants are free to not pay the processing fees and just choose to accept debit cards and/or cash, and/or charge 2% more for credit card purchases.
In fact, many merchants do do that. Typically, I see surcharges at governments, utilities, large commercial supplies merchants, etc.
But general retail/restaurant merchants have calculated they make more money from people spending with credit cards, so they want to incentivize it even though the processing costs are higher. Otherwise, there’s no reason HomeDepot or Dollar General or the grocery store doesn’t charge an extra 2% for credit card purchases. But they know people paying with credit cards will spend more, canceling out the card processing fees.
I was actually surprised to see Aldi, the famous low cost grocer who used to only accept debit cards and cash start taking credit cards. The only reason they would have done that is if they figured that they will earn more money accepting credit cards even after paying the processing fees.
More specifically, yes, I get it, customers pay for cashback - but if I don't use my credit card for a purchase, I don't get a discount at the till.
So my options are to subsidize other people's cashback with my money, and get nothing - or use a credit card, and have other people subsidize my cashback with their money.
More specifically, yes, I get it, customers pay for cashback - but if I don't use my credit card for a purchase, I don't get a discount at the till.
This is exactly what I'm talking about: CC companies use this to 'force' people from cash to CC, and many stores and merchants have to accept it because they would lose revenue by not accepting it.
Amex pays cashback here, other cards have done this before too. They don't pay that out of the processing fee here, that's paid out of the 27.3% APR you pay for any outstanding balance at the end of the month.
But you seem to think you're winning with retailers needing to put prices up to pay you cashback. Great system.
Nope. Cashback cards are (for the most part) non existant in Europe. There's two amex cards in the UK that I'm aware of, and they're not widely used at all.
US is still in the stone age of technology and finance, as usual. I live in a third-world country and all my online purchases require confirmation in a bank app on my phone.
Tock accepted the fraudulent charge. They should be on the hook. That's where the interface goes wrong; a reliable restaurant is clearly the lowest risk piece of the chain, they shouldn't be extending the app a line of credit.
While I think it's wrong to add additional risks beyond the loss of value itself (i.e. raised fees for too many charge backs.) I would rather the merchant stay liable for the loss itself.
I think it is an equivalent example that if no business was responsible for the risk of accepting bad notes, convenience stores would have a policy of not investigating and actively hindering prosecution on obviously counterfeit notes.
> I think it is an equivalent example that if no business was responsible for the risk of accepting bad notes, convenience stores would have a policy of not investigating and actively hindering prosecution on obviously counterfeit notes.
That's not how the incentives align. If Visa is responsible for eating fees from fraudulent charges, they're going to start removing vendors with higher than usual fraud charges from the network. Businesses will still have an incentive not to allow fraud, because they won't be able to process credit cards otherwise. This already exists for chargebacks, and businesses hate them because too many chargebacks increases the percentage the processor takes.
Counterfeit notes are different. There is no information asymmetry. What makes a dollar bill a dollar bill is widely published, so validating the authenticity of one is rather easy. There are tons of companies that make machines that will tell you if your dollar is real or not.
Credit card charges are different in that there is a huge information asymmetry. Your credit card network knows who you are. They have your address. They have a copy of your usual spending habits. They know who lives in your house. They have a ton of information they can look at to see whether a given charge makes sense. They can add additional security measures.
You know what your merchant knows about you? That you want to buy X, and you're paying with Y credit card. They don't have any meaningful information to make a judgement about whether this purchase is legitimate. I struggle to think of how a merchant legitimately has the option to stop fraud. You can pay one of those anti-fraud sites, but at that point you're really just paying so you can get access to the same information that the credit card processor already has.
Some of the CC processors even already have an anti-fraud service. It sure seems like they're the best poised to offer it, they just want to be able to charge you more for using it and still avoid any liability for fraudulent charges that do occur.
I think part of the confusion here is that Visa's role in fraud detection / prevention is not well understood.
Issuing banks are the entity (in the US at least) that know about the cardholder.
The merchant bank is the entity that the merchant runs cards through.
Visa connects the merchant bank to issuing banks. You'll notice that Visa already uses different rates to govern fees assessed on a merchant banks' transaction with an issuing bank based on details about how the transaction occurs, and where:
You'll notice nothing relating to chargebacks per se; the assumption being higher risk transactions are more likely to be refunded or canceled, so each one "costs" more for the merchant bank to issue in the first place.
The merchant bank sets the rate for the business type based on the fees it expects to pay for the transaction mix the merchant will bring.
Merchant banks will almost always roll on an issuing bank requesting a charge back from a customer because customer retention is their highest priority (because you can charge the consumer interest), whereas the merchant knows it's a pain in the ass or existential to stop using them and switch to another processor, so they know you'll eat it.
The merchant bank has a lot less to lose than the issuer bank, so it's not like they're going to go to bat.
Visa does govern the agreements between Merchants and Issuers using their services, and they get to decide certain features of Issuer's cards with Visa logo trademarks. But they can't tell them how to run their fraud operations, for example.
That's why Visa doesn't really enter into the equation here.
It obviously depends on what "change this" means, but I would expect anything meant as a pro-merchant reform to first take current discretion to discriminate away from visa and merchant side processing.
A place I used to get takeaway from started requiring ID to pick up orders, which I’ve no problem with if they want to just look. But the last time I went to get an order, the employee turned down my passport card. The manager on duty said they require an ID with a scannable code, like on the back of state-issued cards.
Problem is, I don’t drive and don’t carry a state-issued ID. Just a passport card since they became available about a decade ago. No scan, no order.
I walked away and haven’t been back since. This whole situation sucks but that’s a bit much.
It’s such a pain when this catches you out. I walk around with no form of ID and only bring it when I’m expecting to need it but every now and then I get caught out.
Ordered something from apple and went to pick it up and was refused without ID. But I have the QR code for the order from their app. No one else could have got that QR code.
> I walk around with no form of ID and only bring it when I’m expecting to need it
May I ask why? Is it of inconvenient size, do you not like to carry baggage that you do not need most of the time or is it just that you do not want to be easily identifiable most of the time?
The German "Personalausweis" (official id card, distinct from passports) is sized and shaped like a credit card and therefore easily goes into the wallet. We used to have larger ones in the past which indeed did not fit into some wallets. It is also very convenient to have it on you to be able to identify yourself in whatever situation.
What situation? Other than crossing a border, or maybe appearing in court, I can't think of any situation where I need to prove who I am. I might need to prove my age, or that I have a right to a particular service, but I shouldn't need to provide my identity to do that.
Here, you can pick up packages that the postman couldn't deliver (because nobody was home at the time) at the supermarket/gas station. They require you to identify yourself of course. This is the main reason I need it these days.
During the lockdown, I let my library account expire and expect to sign up again one of these days when I am in the area. I would hate if I actually had to plan to take my id with me for such a thing.
When I was a student, I participated in surveys. To prevent people participating more than once (you were reimbursed for the time spent there) they required you to identify yourself.
The advantage of carrying a credit card sized id in my wallet all the time outweighs the disadvantages of not doing it (which is pretty easy because I think there are none) which is why I am suprised when someone does not.
> They require you to identify yourself of course.
That's unnecessary; all they need is to know that you have the right to collect the parcel. This can be done with a QR code generated by the sender, potentially alongside proof of address.
> I let my library account expire [...]
Proof of address, again, to show that you're a local resident and thereby entitled to the service. Why does a library need to know who you are?
> When I was a student, I participated in surveys [...]
That's a valid use of identity, yes. However, it's unnecessary for the survey company themselves to receive your identity; a trusted intermediary could hash your id number together with a salt provided by the survey company.
> the disadvantages of doing it
If you carry it the whole time, persons in authority (or not in authority) will get used to being able to demand or request it, which has a corrosive effect on privacy and civil liberty.
I don’t carry a wallet anymore. I typically leave the house with just my phone, Apple Watch and sometimes AirPods. That covers almost everything I need. I just find a wallet to be very bulky while I almost never need it.
I’m technically identifiable by holding the button on my watch or the medical id button on my watch. I’m just not legally identifiable.
This maybe takes “identifying as an Apple user” a bridge too far!
And really, who’s going to know (how) to do that, especially in an emergency? It also relies on either your phone or watch surviving an accident intact. It’s your life, but it’s just going to frustrate identification attempts when it’s important.
A wallet doesn’t have to be bulky a to hold a couple of cards or a few slips of paper. I have a cardholder which is much more minimal and compact than a standard wallet, and even Apple makes cardholders that attach to the back of MagSafe phones now.
I would hope that in this situation, a persons first response would be to call for professional help. And the medical professionals would know how to access it (it shows a button labeled “emergency” on the home screen if it scans a face not of the owner).
When my phone was lost once, it was dropped off at the police station and they opened the emergency access screen to call someone to get the phone returned. So it’s not completely unknown.
Who is going to know about a default-on user-facing feature in one of the most popular mobile operating systems in the world? Did you really just ask that?
Not OP but I'm in the UK, (and lived in Ireland before this) and I carry my drivers license in my wallet because it fits, but I have _never_ needed it for a situation other than buying alcohol when I was ~19/20. What situations are there that I would need to identify myself?
Hmm, mostly I use my driver's license when I pick up packages from post office. Or open a contract and like.
Other thing is as customer reward cards in certain shop as it contains national ID number.
Funny thing is that driver's license is not official identification document here in Finland. Only passport and id card are...
This kind of thinking has always baffled me, because faking a passport card will get you in way more trouble than just some replica of some state's poorly designed driver's license.
There's 2 potential issues. The first is familiarity. Many Americans have never had a passport, and have no idea what they look like. You can train around that. The second is that driver's licenses are scannable, so you don't have to argue with the CC company about whether or not your worker correctly validated the passport.
I also would not be surprised if bars occasionally turn down passports as ID, because they don't have anyone around that's comfortable saying it's real. I've often seen bartenders get the manager to check a passport or an uncommon out of state ID (if they don't have a scanner).
"Thinking" is not present usually in this process. It's people that have never seen anything but a driver's license.
There are always stories about how people got turned down for trying to present a passport, or an out of state ID to buy alcohol or for other ID requiring purposes.
> Problem is, I don’t drive and don’t carry a state-issued ID.
These two are not related in most every state, or at least the several I've checked, which routinely issue non-driver state IDs. They usually look and feel identical to that state's license except for the driving details.
I'm in the UK and don't drive but have a provisional drivers license issued for learners that's pretty much the same as these.
When I got it I was actually planning on learning to drive, but just never got around to it.
When it expires (it's valid for ten years), I might however get a new one, because it's been convenient to have as a second ID separate from my passport.
It's not all fraud. I've recently started ordering from a national fast food restaurant that does curbside delivery. Of five orders, four had problems. This is curbside, no one but me and the employee touched my order.
If someone pre-covid forgot the fries in the order, you just say "you forgot my fries", and you get your fries. Now, someone makes it, someone else bags it, someone ELSE picks it up, puts it in their car, and delivers it to some address contact free. There is a chance for error at each step. By the time you know something's wrong, there's nothing really to be done, except ask for a refund.
Grocery delivery is similar. It's normal for an order to have a mistake in it. No fraud, just "extra bag" or "missing bag", and we've always be able to find it. The systems are new, and don't have good safeguards built in yet.
I think the main problem (in addition to fraud) is there are too many moving parts, and most of them are new. Things like reminders: "That order is still waiting to be carried out to the car" or "did you give them all the bags expected?" aren't built into systems yet, and so you get issues.
Add a third party delivery service to the above, and you just get more of the same.
The 24-hour restaurant with the golden arches does this here. Incidentally, it's one of those delivery/takeout restaurants we've had a lot of mishaps with in the past. Mostly, because the people packing the bags get distracted and someone else moves them around or they don't read the labels on the customised burgers, etc. However, I've always notified (in a friendly tone) their customer service and suggested they train their employees a bit more - and it helped. Had no issues there in the last 2 years.
I'm a little surprised delivery app companies don't give restaurants a guide to all these anti-fraud measures when they sign up. Restaurants are good at making food, not designing secure systems. The fact they're having to think up how to avoid fraud themselves is incredibly dumb.
The real problem is that the app companies have very little incentive to stop fraud unless it gets so bad that they lose a restaurant. If they took a small percentage of the loss (say, 5%) when it happens they'd be massively more invested in stopping it.
> The real problem is that the app companies have very little incentive to stop fraud
The app companies have plenty of incentive to stop customers from defrauding them (e.g. by using stolen credit cards); they simply have no incentive to stop customers from defrauding the restaurants, because that doesn't come out of their pocket.
The delivery platforms have a near-monopoly and are equally scummy, so unless you’re a household name customers will jump through extra hoops to order from (like going direct to your website), you have no choice but to accept this if you want to compete.
Presumably more people are tied to their platform installed (UberEats/Deliver/JustEat) than a restaurant. If "that random pizza place across town that I order from in one click" disappeared off deliveroo, many people would just go to the next restaurant on the list.
It also wouldn't surprise me if these apps/sites delisted them in such a way that if you go looking for them they tell you they're "not accepting orders anymore" and just suggest an alternative.
The apps just populate them regardless of their consent. As in, a restaurant does not want to be on their app, but is listed against their will anyway. Not only does that happen, but the menu on the app may not be what the place is selling nor the prices correct. And the app does not know if an item is sold-out for the day (as may be common with doughnut or BBQ places) yet charges for sales nonetheless.
And these these issues in favor of the delivery companies, they are loosing 10's of millions of dollars a month.
We ordered food maybe three weeks ago using DoorDash. There was food missing on a $70 order plus tip. I have no idea if the driver kept it, if the restaurant messed up, or if the system didn’t even properly give them my order.
Recently I stopped using Uber. In my city, I’ll get paired with a 4.9 or 5 star Uber driver who accepts the trip but then will drive past the street or drive in a weird pattern just a few blocks away but never actually stop to pick me up. Four out of five times I cancelled and got charged a cancellation fee. I disputed and Uber refunded me. The fifth time I didn’t cancel and waited to see how long this driver would screw around. Eventually HE cancelled and then I got an email from Uber saying that I was reported for not wearing a mask.
The service industry is ripe with scammers. I’ve basically stopped using it. And Uber has gotten legitimately expensive enough that it’s cheaper for me to buy a new Corolla and pay for insurance and gas.
In my area, Uber is $7-10 to go within a mile or two. A 17 minute trip to the office is $28 one way, or $56 round trip.
If I use Uber 5 times to get to the office, that’s basically more than a lease payment on an entry sedan and the insurance payment. If I add in a couple other convenience trips such as for groceries, that covers gas too.
If I use Uber to get to the office 8 or 9 times, I can straight up buy a sedan.
You let me know which part of the math is hyperbole.
Depends how much is being ordered. Some people live off of delivered food now. 3 meals a day at probably a minimum of $10 per order in delivery or 'surcharges', same thing. That's 900 a month.
A lot of this may be errors in the more-complicated delivery supply chain rather than intentional dishonesty, or intentional dishonesty on the part of someone other than the (listed) customer.
We've had our delivery orders show up next door. Orders for next door show up on our doorstep. Orders for somebody the next block over show up on our doorstep. Orders go completely missing. Dashers pick up the wrong order at the restaurant. Restaurants pack the wrong item into the wrong order. Restaurants leave off an item. Platforms display menu items that the restaurant isn't actually selling.
In most cases, when our order doesn't show up, we call the platform and get the charge refunded, or sometimes have the order resent. But when we've called a platform to say that we got somebody else's meal, they might be looking for it, they tell us "Well, it's yours now." We've gotten a few free lunches (and one free order of ~$200 worth of groceries) this way, making up for the many missing items and occasional lost grocery delivery. We assumed that the platform is eating (no pun intended) the cost of this, but maybe they're just passing it along to the restaurant.
Some of this is also generic credit card & identity theft. We had our bank account number stolen a few months ago; you damn well bet we're going to call and shut down that account and get those charges reversed, and whoever's providing services to someone with fraudulent payment methods is going to eat the costs.
I really don't like the idea of people handling my food when they're not affiliated with the restaurant, so I avoid delivery apps altogether. Instead I call it in and pick it up myself, this way I can be sure that the food is properly handled and that the restaurant gets to keep a bigger share of the profit from the sale.
The problem is that those scummy delivery platforms have taken over the market. A lot of restaurants no longer have in-house delivery staff and only rely on said platforms for delivery. Some won’t even accept collection orders over the phone, forcing you to use the platforms even if you’re happy to pick up in-person and would simply like to order in advance.
I noticed the trend of switching from eating out to getting delivered meals in pre-pandemic years in countries like mainland China and South Korea. I’m not a fan of it, and perhaps there’s more to that than just the subjective “oh no, things are bad because they aren’t the way they used to be” bias on my side.
— Visiting a restaurant in person gives a glimpse of how they operate (Bourdain’s “clean toilets” measure and all), which seems important when discovering new places. Without that, you have to mostly rely on online optics when determining whether they’re even sanitary (doesn’t sound realistic to expect government regulation to frequently check every single place that prepares food for delivery).
— Near impossibility of establishing anything resembling a personal relationship between yourself and people who prepare your meal and/or the business owner, and indeed those you trust to bring it to you. The former applies more to smaller restaurants, but they are incidentally also the places one would feel most inclined to consciously support.
— Further contribution to sedentary/low-mobility lifestyle.
— Uncertainty about how much of your payment goes to the restaurant and also comes into play, though I already wonder about that every time I pay with plastic.
— When choosing to dine at a place that also does delivery (with delivery workers visibly coming in and leaving), it could be hard to shake the feeling of being in a place where other customers would rather pay someone they don’t know to go rather than coming in person.
— Somewhat tangentially, a walk in Seoul became almost hazardous because of delivery scooters ignoring traffic rules with deafening noise—trying to squeeze as many deliveries in an hour as possible, while shaving costs on mufflers and/or vehicle maintenance. Presumably, this also has to do with specifics of local law enforcement, but I can’t help but think how dominance of meal delivery could change the walkability and urban landscape of any city over longer term.
The trend was boosted by the pandemic and I hope it will fall back afterwards. Small but quality local restaurants and cafes can be satisfying to discover and visit when you can.
The delivery companies should share fraud data and require deposits for people who have bad credit or have been previously found to commit fraud. If chexsystems can stop a fraudster from using a bad check at a retail store then certainly we can come up with analogous schemes for food delivery.
They [delivery apps, via third party device fingerprinting/etc SDKs] actually do share a ton of data with each other and pre-cancel orders for certain people. It's kind of horrifying in terms of just how much data is being sold when you make a simple pickup order.
It doesn't help when someone places a card-not-present phone order reading off the number, though.
It’s pretty common, especially from certain restaurants I just completely get the wrong thing. This is particularly bad at a certain well know national coffee chain. I don’t drink coffee, but I like some of their teas and many times I’ve just been given a random coffee instead of what I’ve ordered.
If I choose to report an incorrect item, I have to provide a photo alongside some text documenting it. If I report a missing item I’m instantly issues a refund no questions asked.
Now I understand it’s a lot more difficult to verify a missing item, but still...
People have been proved to ask their item didn’t get delivered. My favorite was someone sent back a shot of the empty spot on their desk where the computer equipment should have been.
What really is needed is to go back the good old days. And that is signing for what you received. Though that is hard in with today's schedules. But it is responsibility of receiver to go over the shipping manifest and verify that each and every item is present and appears not to be damaged... Protects all parties.
Balancing risk, cost, and convenience is a better goal than eliminating risk at any cost and inconvenience.
Suppose I get a 75 line item order from Digi-Key. Is the delivery person expected to wait while I check the package contents against the manifest (a human-powered N*N operation)? Am I expected to drop whatever I’m doing to do 45 minutes of material receiving inspection on my doorstep? What weather conditions might make that untenable? If I come up short, should I inspect everything a second time to make sure I didn’t make a mistake?
Same for a 25-person team meal. Chris ordered “no peppers”, let’s make sure we find that one. Mary got extra cheese on hers. That must be this one...
Not for me - I have all the time in the world to do an inventory. But no amazon logistics driver is going to wait for me to carefully unpack a shrink wrapped box, verify it's what it says, and pack it back up again to give back to him if there's something not right, and yet somehow the onus is on _me_ ?
I don't even get the opportunity to inspect and sign when a common carrier is delivering a "shipper required signature" package and, because it's a big ticket item, I want to. They just sign for me and leave it sitting outside without even a doorbell ring.
A quasi-related anecdote: a place I'd been pretty regularly making pickup orders at over the phone recently asked I pay upfront, read-out-card-number style. (Normally I'd just pay in person when picking up)
Apparently they'd been having too many people place orders and just never come pick them up. It's not exactly "dine-and-dash" but it hurts the restaurant pretty similarly.
Of course, since then I order online from this place, so there's probably some extra service charge they're losing, too.
> Apparently they'd been having too many people place orders and just never come pick them up. It's not exactly "dine-and-dash" but it hurts the restaurant pretty similarly.
I'd always wondered if this happens a ton at restaurants, and how they deal with it. Any ideas how frequent these are normally (pre-COVID)?
No idea really, but it must happen to some extent all the time basically... like people ordering then rejecting pizzas, things like that.
I can't imagine it's a hugely significant number just because places do just take phone orders (barring some covid-related changes where some don't take in person payment at all). Plus if you actually like the place you can only pull something like this so often before you get blacklisted... And it's not like you're even ending up with food if you do this, so what's the percentage in it for you?
Still, I assume if you're putting in a big order some (most?) places would want prepay or some other "skin in the game" or something. Not that it helps if the "customer" uses a stolen card and/or just charges you back, though, as we see in this article.
I believe the problem is restaurants getting lazier about to go food. I used to love ordering from Texas Roadhouse, but the last three times I've ordered, from three different locations, something bad happened each time.
1- Order was completely wrong upon pickup, had to wait around for an hour until my order was ready.
2- 1.5 hours after placing my order and receiving the confirmation text, I am told to pick up my oder. Im already at the location so I go inside. The order is cold, had been sitting for an hour probably.
3- Placed order and two hours later I received the confirmation text for my order and it would be ready in 45 mins. Someone had forgotten to put my order in. I didnt bother to cancel my order, but imagine my surprise when a full 3.5 hours after placing my order I received the order ready text. Who in the world still wants food they ordered to eat now almost four hours prior. At that point screw them, they cost me orders of magnitude more than the cost of the meal with the hassle of waiting, then getting fed up with waiting and ordering from another restaurant, and driving to the new location and waiting even longer.
I won't eat at a texas roadhouse until I feel safe going inside to eat, or just never, I'm over it.
Problem is, this is rampant now, orders wrong or forgotten from restaurants and fast food chains.
I will never, ever, pay for a meal up front, not after what I've experienced in the last 1.5 yrs.
Chargebacks on credit cards work well for business owners only in high trust societies - there is too much scope for abuse.
If a similar chargeback system existed in countries like India, people would abuse the shit out of it - which is why even regular card transactions have two factor auth there.
Credit cards are making it more difficult you have to first call
The restaurant for a legit dispute and then call your cc company to continue a dispute. Gone are the days of one click disputes.
I can't believe individual resteraunts have to deal with credit card fraud through these services, and it's not a value add. maybe that's how payment processors want to handle things, but still, it would be very easy for these services to act as an escrow service. many already require photo proof of delivery and encourage the sealing of bags by the resteraunt. one more photo upload before that and you have auditable chain of custody, no blockchain required
I was expecting some casualties due to fraud from this rapid change in so many industries so I'm not too surprised at the content of this article. I work in near proximity to an anti-fraud team and the stuff I hear people get up to is incredibly elaborate. Some folks are small time criminals like the guy with a van in this story but others are quite large organized crime rings. The thing they all have in common is that they're almost always ahead.
>> On Nov. 25, Tock sent Hwang an email letting her know the customer was disputing the $728.76 charge and the payment had been temporarily removed from her account. The reason for the dispute was listed as “other fraud card absent” (the real cardholder said someone else used their credit card number).
I feel really bad for this restaurant owner. Wouldn't a solution be to have the card present at pickup for confirmation/swipe? How much benefit does the establishment get from a phone/internet swipe vs an in-person swipe on pickup?
In my country we have 2FA on most of the internet payments by debit/credit card. Also most people use debit and it’s nearly impossible to dispute the payment, but IMO relying on services (Uber Eats) rather than banks is simpler.
If reported accurately, what an intensely classless scam by the old Asian guy!
It's one thing to steal bread when your family's starving. It's another
bizarrely gluttonous thing to gorge on $700 worth of catering at the
restaurant's expense.
It seems like delivery apps have a more helpful contest process for restaurants. I know credit cards are deeply ingrained, but it's sad to see an non-existent ecosystem of one-directional payments. Apps like MocaPay or AliPay don't allow such fraud, and it seems like some restaurants might be better off if they went cash only. I certainly don't mind going to an atm every week to grab a hundred bucks for my purchases. ATMs in the US usually have even greater daily withdrawal limits.
In a trustless society cash is king (I mean I suppose there can be money counterfeiting but I suppose the USSS can help you setup a sting op)
Could be easily avoided with cash or crypto payments, in exchange for a discount. But credit card companies forbid cash discounts, which I'm convinced is a fraudulent tactics and should be addressed through legislation.
Filing a police report is probably the next legally expected step.
Sadly, there's one more step the restaurant _should_ be taking here. The part in the thread where the place of business is scanning something off the IDs made me think of it. The reason they want the scan is as a way of taking a photo of proof of identity and residence to send the police after on a fraud report. Particularly if it's for multiple hundred dollars. That's still small claims court, but with that much evidence it's pretty cut and dry.
One would think that the delivery service like door dash would pay for the meal with their card and then the customer pays door dash with their card so the insurer in this case is door dash. That’s what I would expect, not a pass thru sale.
< The order was placed through the Tock platform for pickup on Nov. 18. ***Hwang noticed the customer did not include his vehicle information (make and model of the car) on the order form, her standard procedure since switching exclusively to curbside takeout and delivery during the pandemic. She texted the customer directly and he didn’t respond. But Hwang, happy to receive such a large order, wasn’t alarmed.***
Extremely poor risk management on her part. I get being happy to get a large sale (I've sold handfuls of phones and electronics over the years), but if you let the numbers cloud your judgement, you can't be surprised when you learn that you got duped.
What I find astonishing, is how much things have changed in a mere 30 years.
Back then, I was working at a local pizza place. I'd worked there for 6 years, both in high school, as a delivery person, and eventually as the main cook/whatnot, in College.
We made as much as we could from scratch. Many pizza places order everything pre-made, pre-cut, including sauce and dough. We made our own dough, sauce, tonnes of home-made prep.
Anyhow, back in the day... we used this thing called "cash". It worked perfectly fine, too.
People would place orders, then show up and pay with .... cash!
People would place delivery orders, and pay with ... cash!
Out of 500+ orders a night, maybe... perhaps once a week, rarely twice a week, we'd have one customer not pick up their order. And... we'd eat it!
Problem solved.
There were no charge backs. No concept of someone showing ID?! To buy food?! No worries about losing 2-5% to the bank/cards. No online ordering.
No one had any issues with this, because this was how everyone did it. Everywhere. If there was a large order, people would pre-pay for some of it. I'm taking, 20 pizzas + chicken+spaghetti dinners or some such.
Per-paying for large orders upset no one, it was logical and sensible.
I get that today, as everyone has "bought in" to the idea of using credit cards, that people have little choice. One must compete with other restaurants, or lose money.
And even I, I strong advocate for cash, tends to carry less of it.
But I still wonder ; just who has won here, and who as lost?
Have the restaurants won? Well, no. They pay more, have to have additional hardware, have issues with chargebacks, and more.
And do customers benefit? Not really, for everyone is paying 3 to 5% more for food, just to cover charge costs and losses, and then many of the people paying?
Are sometimes paying 25%, or even double, once they get around to paying off their card a year later.
Well, nowadays you won't get as many fake bills, and you don't have to pay the banks as much for armed guards that drive cash from place to place in an armed truck.
Not sure how much you paid for banking, but where I was it was always free or very low charges, nowhere close to even 2% of all your payments (which is a minimum estimate for credit card charges).
Banks make a profit where I live, and the armoured trucks aren't free, and the armed guards are paid, and the cash lost through robbieries is replaced. One way or another the banks' customers pay for all that.
We'd just walk across the street and drop cash into the bank deposit slot. What armed guards?
Obviously things can change for large businesses. Even employee theft is less of a concern, when (like the restaurants highlighted here), it's mostly a mom and pop type concern...
I would worry about the safety of the employee doing the bank run. You close your pizza joint at midnight and what do you do with day’s cash? Leave it in the restaurant overnight and deposit it in daylight the next day, or send an employee to the bank drop box at 12:30 in the morning?
Even 33 years ago, I got more training and policy drilling on how to do the bank drop than I did on sales to work my Electronics Boutique mall job.
I guess it depends upon the crime rate in the local area.
Realistically, at the time, I'd be carrying between $500 to $1000 in my pocket, cash, from delivery payments.
And usually -- from 11am to 2am, it was very slow. Generally one person in the pizza place, in a strip mall, with every other business closed. It would be just as easy to walk in, and demand the cash then.
Yes, the crime rate. The bank has trained people to check the cash being paid in, has a vault in each branch office, and trucks+staff for transporting cash between branches, and insurance premiums on losses during storage and transport. The insurance agency's premiums will depend on the typical losses and on how much money the bank spends on checking and guarding the money, and all of those will tend to vary with the crime rate.
If there are more forgeries around, the banks need to either spend more on detecting them, spend more on insurance against losses relating to forged money, or encourage customers to use electronic transfers.
As a small pizza place, if I take a credit card payment, I must:
- have some way to process it. This requires hardware, often leased, sometimes owned.
- which requires an extra phone line, OR, internet connection
- and requires a service, and fees to be paid to that service (between 3 to 5% depending upon card).
- and, the money can be challenged (chargebacks), which requires loads of time to deal with... or you just loose the cash
When I take cash, I require... none of the above!
In both cases, I have a bank account, deposit fees, and more from the banks.
I'm guessing you're going to say things like "employees steal cash" or "fake bank notes" or some other such thing. Yet in 6+ years, we had one counterfeit $20.
But if not, what other hidden fees are built into cash?
This is an incredibly pessimistic view of electronic payment.
Cards are so convenient. Tap and go, no fiddling round with change, no grimey coins filling your pockets, and the ability to pay remotely.
Even the "benefits" of cash you mentioned, like no charge-back, are a disadvantage if you are actually in a situation where you got scammed or similar.
Frauds, scams, and other forms of dishonesty have exploded. From phone scams, to unemployment fraud, and marketplace scams, to retail cheats. Many people are thinking with an adversarial and self-optimizing mindset. I think based on this trend, we'll soon see a call for centralized identity over privacy to curtail these.
"If you charge that much, you deserve to be scammed" is what I hear in my mind. No blame to anyone scamming the business then? No "witty" jibe for them? Just let thieves go?
They ordered the food. They knew what it cost. They even paid. But it's the business owner's fault?
I do not understand why some people think like they do. You have a FUNDAMENTALLY different idea of right and wrong, to me, I think.
One of the problems is because the delivery company is a complete middle man that takes on zero accountability for the order. For example, if an Uber eats or Deliveroo driver turns up with the wrong order, they can do literally nothing about it. If a company that employees it’s own delivery staff (eg Domino’s, supermarket chains, independents restaurants etc.) shows up with a bad order, they will go back and fix it, because it’s cheaper for everyone to do that.
Outsourcing delivery to another company works for restaurants that have limited delivery orders and no marketing channel, but is it really sustainable? If they have consistent volume it would certainly be easier for them to have their own drivers, as has been the case since the telephone was invented.