F&B Boss Says "Wrongful" Refund Requests For Food Orders Common Across Delivery Platforms
His customer requested a refund for missing cabbage in their order, with a photo of half-eaten food.
In these pandemic times, food delivery is a convenient benefit for both eateries and customers. Unless there’s a wrong order, which sometimes results in a headache for everyone involved.
In a recent Facebook post, F&B boss Charles Ng, who runs eight-year-old healthy bento cafe Lean Bento, highlights his plight of dealing with a tricky refund request from a customer.
The refund request
Charles tells 8days.sg that he has been offering delivery service for his bentos for the past six years. While his deliveries were largely uneventful, he says: “Once every two or three weeks we will get a ‘wrongful’ refund request.” One such request came from a customer who had ordered two of his Low-Carb Roast Chicken Zucchini Udon bowls, which includes sautéed cabbage.
In a screenshot (pictured above) of the refund request — which was sent to a food delivery platform that Charles declines to name — the customer had indicated their reason as being: “The [website] description stated sautéed cabbage but there aren’t [any] in both bentos.”
The food delivery platform then contacted Lean Bento’s staff to notify them that “we’ve charged the refund to you because the customer was not happy with how the order was cooked”.
FYI: Food delivery companies usually deduct refunds from a seller’s account, and credit it back if the seller is able to prove that the request is invalid.
Request dispute: “The customer has eaten up the precious cabbage and told a lie”
Charles vigorously disputed his customer’s refund request, as he had photographic and CCTV proof that his bentos were assembled correctly before they were sent out to the recipient. “My team and I feel that there were many refunds that were wrongful. [Luckily] we can substantiate it with [evidence like] CCTV footage or a conversation,” he says.
A NUS engineering graduate, he had implemented an “internal system where we capture images of the food, bento plating and which food delivery platform it’s for, and we take a photo of [the food] with the delivery slip before it’s sent out”.
In a heated e-mail sent to the platform to dispute the refund, he says: “We refute this refund. There was no mistake. The customer has eaten up the precious cabbage and told a lie.”
Photo evidence is of a half-eaten bowl
The customer had included a photo of their dissatisfied food order — which Charles shares with 8days.sg — that shows a half-eaten bowl. “They substantiated their refund request with a photo showing half-eaten food, and say there’s no cabbage,” says a frustrated Charles.
Sending orders is “like playing Russian roulette”
He eventually got the refund dropped, with the food delivery platform informing him via e-mail that “after verification we accept your dispute and we will refund the amount claimed on your next invoice”.
According to him, the customer did not insist further on a refund. He reckons, “They could refute again if they wanted to, but they didn’t. It felt like they were trying their luck. I can’t find any way to explain otherwise.”
He maintains that his system of photographing food orders is “not meant to weaponise, it’s for our internal quality control”. However, it becomes a lifeline when he faces dodgy refund requests. “Every time an order goes out, it’s like playing Russian roulette and you don’t know where you are going to get the next blow from. The default refund policy makes it very easy for people to [nitpick]. We can only defend ourselves,” he says.
He points out that a lot of food companies do not have a habit of keeping a photographic record. “Sometimes it’s not even the customer’s fault. Something may happen during the delivery,” he says. “So if you don’t take a photo first, it opens up a can of worms where, if the customer’s order is damaged, how are you going to pinpoint who did it?”
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