Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

Post by nevi-me » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

sathackr wrote: post #112

shadowgovt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a first approximation, I can't really see why Place and Pay should be illegal. It's basically paying the neighbor kid to go pick up some dinner for you, writ large. It "competes" with any delivery service a restaurant runs, but if the restaurant offers takeout at all, it's hard for me to see why the market should care who is doing the taking out.

To me it gets 'shitty' when they do this without disclosure. I have no problem with placing an order with GH and having them place the order for me, but when they masquerade as the restaurant and try to hide that from the customer is where the problem comes in.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #15

The “place and pay” orders the lawsuit describes are new to me. I’d always kinda held the position that saying “We’ll deliver you food from Lou’s Diner” doesn’t necessarily imply you’re affiliated. But if Grubhub is telling drivers to disguise themselves because restaurants wouldn’t accept the order if they knew it was from Grubhub, that seems pretty clearly unethical.

Post by buckminster » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #58

buckminster wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A middle man is responsible to the consumer. A subcontractor is not. Grubhub does not tell the consumer whether they are acting as a subcontractor or middle man for a particular restaurant. This is deceptive and harms the restaurants who do not subcontract Grubhub.

I can buy this, if the customer is ordering directly from the restaurant and Grubhub delivers that order. Because that's what a subcontractor relationship looks like; you the customer only deal with the primary contractor. But if I order from Grubhub , I am explicitly asking them to be a middle man, no?

Post by TuringNYC » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

nevi-me wrote: post #141

sathackr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it gets 'shitty' when they do this without disclosure. I have no problem with placing an order with GH and having them place the order for me, but when they masquerade as the restaurant and try to hide that from the customer is where the problem comes in.

And what happens when orders go wrong? Last month the grilled chicken place gave me chicken which wasn't grilled. I called them (they have a national call centre), and the store manager called me shortly after, to apologise. Following day they sent me chicken. Last week I was at a pizza place at night. An angry customer called, they got the other wrong. I listened to the store manager for about 4-6 minutes trying to…

Post by moksly » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #60

mabbo wrote: post #19

I hope there's a strong precedent set here. Companies like Grubhub list restaurants on their site/app, but put the wrong phone number on it- one that goes to their own people instead. That's clearly some kind of fraud or misrepresentation. Makes me feel like I should setup a phone number and a website called something like "GrubhubHelp.com", and list a help number for assistance with GrubHub orders. Then when custome…

FYI - the same thing happens with Hotels.com. When you "call the hotel" with the number listed, I learned that the representative is actually a Hotels.com rep, not a hotel employee or hotel call-center employee. This matters. In my case, I asked about my corporate discount and they gave me a vague answer about "I dont see anything in the system", which I guess was technically not a lie, but definitely deceitful. I wi…