The DoorDash Scam
By: Sajiv Shah
Tags: Food Delivery, Business, DoorDash, Scam, Customer Service

The DoorDash Scam

DoorDash is one of the greatest creations for kids my age. Being able to sit at home when we weren’t able to drive and order food at our convenience was great, up until we realized the cost and discovered we could save a lot on delivery and service fees by just driving and waiting for our food.

In the past year, I remember canceling multiple DoorDash orders and going to the store itself, happy that I had made the right decision to save money and patiently wait for my food. Little did I know that I was paying more than double for my orders as DoorDash never processed any of my refunds.

Image from Unsplash by @dzngriffin

As soon as I discovered this I did what anyone would do when they find out that their refunds haven't been processed — jumped to the DoorDash support chat. I was expecting this process to be fairly simple: I would tell them my issue, and they would refund me. After all chat agents have been pretty efficient and generous about taking care of issues, and after the experience with Amazon’s amazing chatbot, I would never have thought that sitting in a chat room with an agent could be worse than being put on hold by a passive-aggressive stubborn support representative. I was wrong. Below is the chat transcript, with the representative’s name removed.

Consumer Chat Routing Bot (12/24/2020, 9:32:04 PM): You are being transferred to the next available agent.

REP : Hi! My name is Abhinav. Give me a few seconds to pull up your account info

Sajiv: No problem

REP: To make sure I resolve your issue correctly, you are chatting regarding your Credit and Refund Status

Sajiv: Yes. There was an order on May 29th from Chipotle and an order on August 18 from Chipotle that I canceled early, but I do not see refunds for those orders in my bank

REP: I’m really sorry for this unpleasant experience you had with DoorDash.

REP: Sure let me check the details.

REP: Thanks so much for waiting. It will take just another moment or two.

Sajiv: No problem. Additionally, my past order history is not appearing on the website or on my phone. I would like to confirm that my earliest order was on December 2nd at Chipotle

REP: Upon checking the details both the order from Chipotle was canceled per your request.

Sajiv: I have still not received a refund for either order

REP: Because the refund was not processed.

Sajiv: Is there a specific reason that the refund has not processed? The order was 7 months ago.

REP: May I know why you have not contacted before?

Sajiv: I just checked my records at the end of the year. I am shocked that doordash has not contacted me if there was an error processing my refund.

REP: I can totally understand.

REP: We are so sorry to hear that you had a disappointing experience using our service. Unfortunately, your time to request compensation for this order has passed. In the future, please notify us right away if you have an issue with your order so we can take care of you

Sajiv: What? That is incredibly unacceptable. It is DoorDash’s responsibility to refund me. This is a fraud, and you should be compensating for this error. I will be pursuing with legal remedies if this is not taken care of.

REP: Sajiv, I would like to inform you that if the order was cancelled by us or any other issue the refund will be initiated automatically but as you have cancelled both the order so you have to contact us for this.

REP: And you are coming after 7 month for the refund.

REP: As there is a compensation time for every thing and you are coming after the decades.

REP: I want to help you but how I can help you if the system is not allowing me for this.

REP: Are we connected?

Sajiv: Yes.

Sajiv: The app informed me that I had successfully canceled the orders before any preparation, and I was to receive a refund. I am still unclear as to why no refund was processed.

After my last message, my dad called a representative and got a full refund for both orders and a $3.99 credit for compensation for our inconvenience. The agent in the chatbox left, but not before calling me 3 times. I was not exactly sure what irritated me most: the fact that they did not refund properly canceled orders, the fact that the agent said it was “too late” for a refund, or the fact that calling a representative resulted in a much better outcome in about half the time.

DoorDash has likely been scamming tons of customers by not refunding their canceled orders, in addition to the many other scams that have been voiced. I hate to Christmas eve this way, and I am sure it was not fun for either support representative I talked to. DoorDash simply needs to refund orders that have been canceled before they are being prepared by the restaurants.