Facing fury over ‘fake websites,’ Grubhub says restaurants have it wrong

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #13

Traster wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terms of service is the wrong term really. These restaurants signed a contract with another business to receive a service. They didn't read the contract. People running businesses shouldn't be signing contracts without at the very least reading the document carefully. These are absolutely not analagous to Terms of Service and businesses do not enjoy consumer protection laws. These contracts just could just as easily…

Why do you think "terms of service" is the wrong term? The article refers to it as such multiple times.

Post by shay_ker » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #30

shay_ker wrote: post #29

To be honest, not a great look from Matt. It's entirely possible that a lot of this was a misunderstanding, since microsites is literally a product feature that GrubHub sales folks use to sell to restaurant owners (among several, several other features that GrubHub provides). One could imagine that this was mainly a communication error, and it could've been fixed by updating GrubHub's sales processes. But Matt saying…

They might have not-insignificant potential revenue losses if they have to remove these micro-sites.

Post by jeremyjh » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

floatingatoll wrote: post #15

GrubHub says that restaurants have it wrong by citing fine print. Restaurants want first right of refusal over the use of their brand, not default opt-in by a third party buried in legalspeak. GrubHub is trying to reframe this issue in legalistic terms, to distract from their failure to collect explicit opt-ins from every restaurant they’ve used in this manner. It’s unfortunate that the headline enables that change i…

Post by JasonFruit » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #34

JasonFruit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the business owners didn't understand what they were signing — not misunderstood, but simply couldn't figure it out, as seems most likely here — but they signed it anyway instead of figuring it out or asking an expert, I can't see how they have anyone to blame here but themselves. I'm not even being intentionally contrarian, as I sometimes might; I really can't see why GrubHub is being blamed.

The way of the modern world is that contracts are getting so obscure and hard to parse that I imagine we'll see more cases like this - with courts upholding the objections from the smaller parties because writing a contract that is incomprehensible is a form of negotiating in bad faith.

Post by tdhoot » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

iwantagrinder wrote: post #8

JasonFruit wrote: post #3

Short form: the restaurants didn't read the TOS, and they have been treated with more consideration than that document requires. GrubHub has done nothing wrong, and even went out of its way to do the right thing.

Terrifying how we have people taking the side of a TOS belonging to a shitty gig economy startup over small business owning human beings