Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 288 posts

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#211

Post by vkou »

icebraining wrote: post #151
kop316 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Grubhub was against place and pay at first, when UberEats and Doordash began doing it (not because Grubhub is selfless but because partnered restaurants are way more profitable), but resisting place and pay turned out to be a recipe for losing market share so that's no longer the case." If Grubhub actually took a stand and showed they not only did not do this sort of behavior, I would actually use it, and I would pa…

I don't get it, how would the restaurant be losing money from this behaviour? Isn't Grubhub paying the regular takeout price, same as if you order it yourself?

Grubhub fucks up the order, the customer leaves a bad yelp/google review for the restaurant. (Because the customer was tricked into believing that they were interacting with the restaurant the entire time.)

That's why this is fraud.

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#212

Post by RHSeeger »

jetpackjoe wrote: post #10
doytch wrote: post #5

What's the "best" ordering app to use these days if I want to prioritize how well they treat restaurants? I've tried looking this up recently to no avail. I know at the end of the day, "call and pick-up directly" is going to be it but occasionally I just don't want to go pick it up.

Not all restaurants have their own website, but a lot do, and you can order online there.

Of course, some apparently have fake websites setup by grubhub to mislead customers.

> Grubhub is using thousands of fake websites to upcharge commission fees from real businesses

> They also list phone numbers that don’t belong to the actual business

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless...

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#213

Post by LocalH »

abernard1 wrote: post #43
s_dev wrote: post #7

Trading under another brands name -- by listing them as an ordering place with an unofficial dark kitchen associated in your app -- seems like the most egregious form of trade mark infringement. Why aren't GrubHub concerned about the legal reprecussions of this?

> Why aren't GrubHub concerned about the legal reprecussions of this? Because the company is firmly in Team Blue, and they control the House right now. This is the same organization where the CEO told his employees that if they voted for Trump, they should resign.

It’s not a partisan thing, when the Republicans are always bleating about capitalism being the “one true way”. Do you really think this type of thing wouldn’t be happening regardless of which party is in power?

Greed transcends politics. It takes extreme mindfulness to acquire wealth and not end up corrupted by it in some way.

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#214

Post by staplers »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #201
bckygldstn wrote: post #100

The lawsuit [1] lists the following Factual Allegations: • Gruhub tells consumers it’s working cooperatively with restaurants • Grubhub decides to add unaffiliated restaurants to its website and mobile apps without the restaurants’ permission • Grubhub’s unauthorized use of restaurants’ names and logos misleads consumers and harms restaurants • Restaurants have good reasons for choosing not to work with Grubhub ◦ Gru…

A counter point is that an individual is free to hire someone to go and pick up food from a restaurant on their behalf and it does not make any difference to the restaurant. I suspect that what restaurants fear, though, is that Grubhub is trying to grab as much marketshare as possible then once they are in a position of strength they'll go and demand a commission from the restaurants, or else...

  an individual is free to hire someone to go and pick up food from a restaurant on their behalf
They are commercially advertising names, logos, menus, etc not taking random orders from people.

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#215

Post by asdff »

jdmichal wrote: post #6
julianlam wrote: post #3

I'll admit I don't know the full story behind grubhub's practices with adding restaurants without the owners' permission. It does sound like a case of "fake it till you make it", in a sense that adding restaurants without the owners' consent would be a way around the chicken and egg problem. Not saying it's a particularly nice thing to do, I'd be super annoyed if it happened to me

I'm curious why they would need the owner's permission for listing? I can understand the issues around things like the alleged practice of replacing the businesses' information. But the idea of just having a third-party delivery service acting as a middle-man... The restaurant is still getting paid whatever they charged. I don't understand why they would get a say anymore than, say, a book store regarding me resellin…

Because grubhub also marks up food on their website. Everything is a couple dollars marked up versus if you called the order in directly. Imagine opening an electronics store that sells marked up apple devices without any approval from apple, yet convincing customers that you were a genuine authorized seller. Apple would sue you out of existence before the end of the week, and rightfully so.

The only reason why it took this long for gruphub is that restaurants do not have the legal resources of a company like Apple or Grubhub, not because this isn't fraud (it is).

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#216

Post by jjk166 »

jberryman wrote: post #189
ghthrowaway99 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[ Disclaimer: GH employee but speaking independently & not representing the company in this message ] You're mixing up controversies - there was a separate "feature" Grubhub did years ago where grubhub would stand up online presence for restaurants to bring in web search traffic (branded websites, search results on grubhub.com, etc) and list a grubhub phone number instead of the real phone number so that grubhub coul…

> The restaurant can opt out of this I was at the bar of a local restaurant when some delivery driver (not sure if GH) came in to pick up an order. The (super busy) server said "we told you we don't want to participate in this...", clearly exasperated at this happening over and over. This is a restaurant that does a lot of catering, where they set the terms/fees. The driver started trying to "explain" how it's just t…

I get that the restaurant owner was frustrated but this is like giving your waiter a bad tip because your food didn't taste good - you really think the driver has any influence on which restaurants get listed?

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#217

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#218

Post by heavyset_go »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #160
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.

Hey, if it's just fast food why does the market even care who prepares it? How long till these food "delivery" services just capture all the addressable market masquerading as a bunch of uninformed, non-participating restaurants and make the food they deliver? Why are they leaving all this extra margin on the table?

This is what Pasqually's/Chuck E Cheese does[1].

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/diners-discover-that-pasqual...

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#219

Post by LocalH »

chrisshroba wrote: post #30

Tbh I don't see a major problem with this. If folks want to pay someone (Grubhub) to go pick up food for them, why should the restaurants be allowed to say no? > Food may not travel well. Fair point, but if the customer still wants it, that's on them. > But that may lead to unfairly low ratings for the restaurant. If (say) 30% of the restaurant's patrons choose to get the food via food delivery, why shouldn't those f…

Why should issues with a third-party delivery company affect the reputation of the restaurant itself? What you say on that point would apply if it were the restaurant’s in-house delivery service.

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#220

Post by RandallBrown »

sschueller wrote: post #64
chrisseaton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's clearly some kind of fraud or misrepresentation. I don't really understand this point of view. They're saying you'll get food from restaurant X. That's exactly what you do get, at the price you agreed. I can't conceive how that's fraud or misrepresentation?

When you click on a number to call the restaurant and not the restaurant answers it is fraud if the restaurant did not agree on that. Doesn't matter if you end of providing the exact same service. What if I picked up calls going to Apple and all I did was transfer you to the correct person. You are still getting the same service if you called Apple directly but its not legal because Apple did not give me permission t…

My understanding of the phone numbers is different than how you're saying it works.

The calls are forwarded so that Grubhub knows about them (and can get commission), but the customer that still talks to the actual restaurant.

Post reply on HN