Singapore—At times, serving food to others can be a thankless job, especially when customers randomly cancel orders, forcing an eatery to absorb the financial loss. And when the order is sizable, it makes it even worse.
A woman named XinYi Lim took to Facebook on Sunday (Dec 29) when she experienced this, and appealed to GrabFood for some help in the matter.
Ms XinYi wrote that their eatery had received an order for 20 pieces of Tomato Ban Mian on Saturday (Dec 28) at around 11:00 in the evening.
Since they were doubtful of the order as it was unlikely that anyone “would organise a ban mian party at this hour,” Ms XinYi’s fiancé phoned the customer for confirmation, and having obtained it, they proceeded to prepare it.
However, problems arose when no food delivery rider was available, with two riders canceling upon seeing the volume of the order, saying they could not carry so much food.
Ms XinYi’s fiancé then said he would deliver the food himself in his own car, but this would take an additional 20 minutes due to the packing and the drive to the delivery address, which the customer agreed to.
But the customer ended up canceling the order just as Ms XinYi’s fiancé called him to say he was on the way. She wrote, “When my fiancé done (sic) the packing and texted the customer say he is on the way over to the customer (sic) place, the customer just claimed that it took too long & cancel order (sic) !!! (when it’s like less than 30 min wait!?)”
This made no sense to Ms XinYi, who did the math concerning the customer’s waiting time if he had gotten the order delivered via bicycle. “3.4km distance. From food stall to destination. By car, 7 minutes based on google map. How about by cycling? Prepping that 20 packets needs at least 20 minutes. So, isn’t it logical to think that your food needs at least 30 minutes to reach you?”
When she reported the matter to GrabFood, she received a confusing answer saying that the customer claimed he had made a double order, and thus cancelled theirs. Furthermore, she was also told that the customer actually received his food, which Ms XinYi humorously accredited to the “solar eclipse aftermath, is it.”
While GrabFood assured her that they would expedite her complaint and have the payment team get back to her, she made an appeal on behalf of merchants and riders anyway.
She wrote, “Grabfood, please do something for the merchants & riders. Everyone’s trying to make money here. Would appreciate if anyone can SERIOUSLY look into this matter else other poor merchants & riders will suffer too.”
Ms XinYi appealed to customers as well.
“Yes it is convenient to order your supper from grabfood/food panda/deliveroo food delivery service, however, have some patience please. Food stalls are normally operated by 1-2workers at this hour. Receiving such orders may be hectic for them to manage. It doesn’t seems to be ‘big’ deal to some people but this is hard earned money. If you can’t wait that long, perhaps order fast food next time. They are (sic) ‘fast-food’ after-all.
People can queue & wait SEVERAL HOURS for BBT, A&W, HDL etc yet they don’t have the patience to wait for hawker food. How ironic.
What a day to remember before closing 2019.”
-/TISG