Full Refunds for Missing Items on FoodPanda and UberEats: A Personal Experience

With the rise of restaurant food delivery services in Taiwan, the two giants “FoodPanda” and “UberEats” are quite generous with their refund mechanisms. Whenever a merchant leaves out part of an order, the customer service system usually chooses to refund everything — and I mean every charge on that order.

Once I ordered a bento box, and the merchant left out a bottle of winter melon tea. After receiving the meal, I complained to customer service. I originally thought they would have the merchant deliver it again, but the order was fully refunded all the same. At the time it was genuinely a little surprising and delightful.

Another time, a friend reported through customer service that a NT$25 extra bowl of white rice in a set meal had not been delivered, and customer service generously refunded the entire NT$560 meal cost. Although he was happy that the whole amount was refunded at once, he still complained that being hungry was probably worse (laughs).

Or another case: ordering a drink, where a bubble milk tea that should have come with a large straw arrived with a small straw. After complaining, someone also successfully got the entire drink refunded.

But there are exceptions where no refund is given. A friend bought McDonald’s chicken nuggets, and when they arrived the sweet-and-sour sauce was missing. When he complained to customer service, he was told that sauce packets are not a meal option, so they could neither be replaced nor refunded.

The question is, are chicken nuggets without sweet-and-sour sauce still chicken nuggets? In this kind of situation, it really depends on whether the individual customer service agent’s judgment has gone off track. My friend’s eventual solution was to contact McDonald’s directly, and they asked another Panda delivery rider to bring it over.

There was also a rather amusing experience. I ordered McDonald’s on the FoodPanda platform, and when the delivery rider arrived he performed an impressive high-speed braking and wide U-turn maneuver right in front of my door. After I took the paper bag with the burgers, he quietly looked deep into the pink box on the back of his scooter and suddenly told me he had forgotten the drink, and that he would go buy a bottle at a convenience store to make up for it.

I didn’t think much of it at first, only assuming he had forgotten to take it or McDonald’s had forgotten to give it, and wondering whether making him go out of his way would be too much trouble. But while saying it was no trouble, he pulled out the remains of the drink can and asked me to help throw it away. After all that, it turned out this rider had knocked the drink over, and hadn’t told the truth at first, so I quietly gave him a one-star rating.

Still, although the ordering platforms seem generous, this is actually a tug-of-war with no winner.

Although the merchant’s service fell short and the matter was handled with a full refund — which on one hand motivates merchants to provide better service — on the other hand the platforms are also strict about customers’ shortcomings.

Once I used FoodPanda to order delivery from Carrefour. Because the delivery time was long, it happened to arrive when I was frantically busy. When the order was cancelled, I discovered I still had to pay for it — and that was NT$800 worth of household goods.

Even after complaining to customer service, they would only say that I hadn’t answered the phone. The problem is that I checked my phone and there was no incoming call at all, and the delivery address was on the first floor; looking through the main door you could see a group of people, yet the delivery person never pressed the doorbell or knocked. This means that if a delivery rider has the chance to play tricks, we seem to have no way to guard against it — we can only keep staring at the tracking data in the app and constantly make sure the phone signal stays connected (FoodPanda’s rider locations are not shown in real time, presumably to save some system operating costs).

In this give-and-take, the delivery platforms clearly aren’t going to lose money, so there’s no need to feel guilty about seemingly getting a free meal. Next time you order through these delivery platforms and something is missing or short, don’t hold back — go ahead and file a complaint with customer service.

Further Reading / Recommended Appendix

1. 🥘 Uber Eats Food Delivery

• UberEATS Delivery iPhone / iPad
• UberEATS Delivery ⓖ Google Android

2. 🐼 FoodPanda Food Delivery NT$200 Discount