- As far as stupid refund claims go, we have a winner.
Asking a refund for your food delivery order seems like a reasonable thing to do if your meal gets to you cold. Unless, of course, you ordered ice cream.
Hassan Habib, the owner of Lucky’s Diner in Oldham, U.K., recently had to issue the most ridiculous refund of his career. A customer that ordered a bunch of cold treats wanted their money back — because the food wasn’t warm when it got to them.
“They ordered four milkshakes, a cheesecake, and an ice cream. 45 minutes later they put in a refund request because the food was cold,” Habib told Manchester Evening News.
The whole situation is mind-bogglingly stupid. Was the customer possibly expecting Lucky’s to send them melted ice cream?
A Change for the Worst
Unfortunately, this isn’t a case of stupidity, but malice. The ice cream refund is just one example of the recent flood of scams plaguing English restaurants.
The customer placed their ice cream order through Just Eat, a British food delivery service similar to Uber Eats. The service recently revamped its refund system to be simpler for the customers, mostly in an effort to keep up with its main competitor.
But it seems that the change has now rigged the system against restaurants owners.
“We can see how many orders someone’s made on Just Eat or with us. I’ve seen someone who’s ordered food from us and they’ve never placed an order on Just Eat before,” Habib said, describing the ice cream scammer.
“That’s just one of the many examples — they just order food, put down ‘X, Y, Z’ is wrong with it, do a refund, and leave us to the costs.”
Earlier, Just Eat would contact a restaurant to check whether the refund request was legitimate. With the new system, however, the service processes refunds based only on customer claims, charging restaurants for things that could reasonably be their fault.
Exploiting a Loophole
This “no questions asked” process has left British restaurants vulnerable to scams. Because no one asks them anything, restaurants can’t immediately dispute false claims.
There is a 30-day dispute period after Just Eat makes a refund decision. But the change is still making a serious dent into restaurants’ earnings.
Habibi doesn’t claim that his restaurant always provides flawless service — mistakes happen, after all. But earlier, he could try to make things right instead of bleeding money.
“I fully understand that things go wrong. Sometimes we make mistakes, we miss items or send the wrong item out, but we make it up to the customers whether it’s with a replacement item or a fully entitled refund,” he explained.
“But now some really bad, evil people are taking advantage of this loophole and it’s left us in a really bad position.”
Habibi said that he’s been losing hundreds of dollars’ worth of income every month due to false refund claims. As a result, he has taken his restaurant off the Just Eat platform.
“We’re sorry for any inconvenience it may cause but we won’t be available on Just Eat for deliveries anymore! There’s a scam going on Just Eat for past few weeks and we just can’t carry on like this as a small business,” Lucky’s wrote on Facebook to inform their customers of the decision.
“We have taken it up with Just Eat numerous times, like a lot of other small independent businesses, but we had no support whatsoever, which is very sad and unfair.”
A Cry for Help
On their part, Just Eat maintains that their refund policy change conforms to industry standards. Nonetheless, the service claims that it always refunds restaurants in full when they discover a fraudulent customer claim.
“Just Eat is only successful if our restaurant partners are successful and we have a track record of helping restaurants prosper. We’re keen to maintain an open dialogue with the restaurants on our platform and continue to review our policies and processes in this space to support both customers and restaurants alike,” a spokesperson told Manchester Evening News.
Habibi, however, isn’t particularly impressed by Just Eat’s efforts. Instead of paying the delivery service their 20% cut, he said he’d rather just offer a 20% discount for customers to order through his restaurant’s website.
“I work 90 hours a week and have burns and cuts all over my hands and why? For some scammer out there who Just Eat are supporting?”
Habib is now trying to collaborate with other small restaurants to send a message to Just Eat. His goal is to get 50-100 establishments to all switch their order system’s offline at the same time.
“I can afford to turn Just Eat off [permanently] but a lot of businesses can’t. There’s nothing we can do to help them but we desperately need help,” he said.
“Even if we just turn the machines off for an hour to show we’re unhappy, that might help get a conversation going.”