Grubhub Reportedly Still Owes NYC Restaurants Thousands of Dollars After Disastrous Free Lunch Promo (eater.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Eater NY: Two weeks after Grubhub rolled out a disastrous, citywide free lunch promo that overloaded NYC restaurants with delivery orders, some businesses are still waiting for the company to refund them for undelivered food orders. The New York Post reports that salad chain Fresh & Co. lost about $4,000 on the promotion stemming from orders that were never picked up, according to the company's CEO. Upper West Side restaurateur Jeremy Wladis tells the Post that he's down $1,500 from the promotion.
Grubhub has promised to reach out to restaurants that are requesting refunds over the snafu starting this week, according to the Post. A sales representative told the paper that "all orders from the Free Lunch Promo will be refunded." At the height of the hours-long promotional frenzy, the app was recording 6,000 orders per minute, according to Grubhub.
Grubhub has promised to reach out to restaurants that are requesting refunds over the snafu starting this week, according to the Post. A sales representative told the paper that "all orders from the Free Lunch Promo will be refunded." At the height of the hours-long promotional frenzy, the app was recording 6,000 orders per minute, according to Grubhub.
Before they delisted in the US (because JET) (Score:2)
I was looking at them as a potential investment. NYC is already their stronghold. It made no sense to do a promo there anyway. I think it's likely they will sell out, as they're a distant 3rd in market share, but the other two are pulling back as well so time will tell.
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They did the promo in NYC because their reputation here is trash.
Many restaurants refused to work with grubhub ... so grubhub went and listed them anyway - basically reselling their food using grubhub's own delivery people which resulted in tons of poor reviews. They finally, mostly, stopped doing that.
The games they play with fees, charges, tips, and all that is abysmal and still not "fixed".
They were trying to do a "oh look at us, we're the generous company that's using our business to HELP all these res
Require payments when food is ordered. (Score:5, Insightful)
Restaurant should simply require the payments to go through when the food is ordered, confirmed by the credit card companies or Interac when they deal with those scums.
Re: Require payments when food is ordered. (Score:2)
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I am sure there is an agreement that spells out these risks. And if this type of takeaway is not profitable the restaurants can decline. Certainly if there is no agreement the restaura
Re:Require payments when food is ordered. (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody but GrubHub.
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There is a whole system of "incoterms" for dealing with this and talking about it. You know the tech bros and the lawyers understand this system. All these little wrinkles could have been worked out ahead of time and in other industries they would have but:
They choose to take advantage of restaurateurs, in the case of small operators often have little business experience outside handing food and cash over the counter. Similarly they know consumers for the most part are also clueless and will agree to anythi
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Sure, in a world with realistic protections for individuals and small businesses (also generally known as the EU) that might happen.
But as with every behemoth of a company that has an effective monopoly/duopoly/etc. in an area (because no, of course they don't price fix that's illegal) they set the rules and the rules about following the rules (binding arbitration yay) and then have the power to boot someone who is too annoying or costly anyhow.
Everyone knows (Score:5, Funny)
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
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Came for this comment. Was not disappointed.
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Came for the comment saying you came for this comment. Was not disappointed.
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Came back for the comment saying you came for the comment saying you came for the comment. Was not disappointed. 10/10 would come back again.
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Came for this comment. Was not disappointed.
Howabout my Turnabout?
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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This is not the first "free lunch" idea that didn't turn out well.
WKRP - I thought turkeys could fly - Mr. Carlson [youtube.com]
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There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Or, in this case, even a Paid one!
don't pizza places run the card before makeing it? (Score:2)
don't pizza places run the card before makeing it?
So an place let some place an $1,500 order with out running the card?
Re:don't pizza places run the card before makeing (Score:4, Informative)
Probably not if the customers are paying through GrubHub. And it's not a $1,500 order. It's a bunch of orders that add up to $1,500, which never got picked up because GrubHub couldn't handle the surge in deliveries caused by their promo.
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It allows them to require the PIN, which greatly reduces credit card fraud. It also allows people to pay with their ATM card, which has much lower merchant fees compared to credit cards.
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don't pizza places run the card before makeing it?
So an place let some place an $1,500 order with out running the card?
Not when using a service like grubhub who processes the transaction on their behalf, takes out the fees, surcharges, etc. and then settles up daily/weekly/whatever with the establishment. $1500 was probably the 100x $15 orders that got FUBAR'd
The problem with these orders is they were never picked up, thus not marked as completed. Since they were incomplete, i'm assuming the grubhub system normally flags them as failed orders and does not pay...which is kind of ironic when grubhub themselves do a lot of t
fReE lUnCh! (Score:2, Funny)
One thing's for sure is whoever came up with that idea at the board meeting had 2 minutes to clear his desk before the burly security guards hovering over him swiftly escorted him off the premesis, and only if he managed to get inside the building before they deactivated his key card.
Re:fReE lUnCh! (Score:4)
Unless it was an upper level executive, in which case they got paid their bonus and possibly a golden parachute along with a week or two to liquidate any stock options before their voluntary resignation.
Being perp-walked to the door is only for the lower level employees, after all. They might steal a stapler on their way out in the hops of selling it to pay for their kid's insulin and that would be unacceptable.
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They're getting a lot of press AND they've delayed payouts on thousands of dollars for several weeks. What's not to like?
People like free stuff (Score:1)
News already happened an hour ago.