A Victorian resident is raising concerns about potentially fraudulent restaurants on food delivery services after waiting hours for his online order, only for the restaurant to take his money and never deliver the food.
Tom Power used Uber Eats earlier this week to place an order at Dushka Burger, which the app said was located at 580 Yates St. in the city center.
After three hours and many unanswered messages to the restaurant, including calls to the burger joint’s phone number that connected to a liquor store and Uber Eats support telling her to wait, the app notified her that her order had been delivered.
But Power said it never came.
“I didn’t get any notification, no knock on my door, nothing like that,” Power said. “He [Uber Eats] support is all automatic; There’s no option to just talk to someone.”
CBC News has since learned that there is no Dushka Burger restaurant at 580 Yates St., and after contacting Uber Eats, which said it discovered fraudulent activity, the food delivery service closed Dushka Burger’s account at the application.
When CBC began investigating other potentially suspicious accounts in the area, it found another at a nearby address, also on Yates Street. Uber Eats later closed that account as well.
Power is now warning other food delivery app users to take extra care when placing orders and watch for red flags, such as low ratings.
Power says he tried to open a support ticket with Uber Eats customer service when his order kept running late, but he says the app urged him to contact Dushka Burger directly for his order and keep waiting.
“[Uber Eats] “You should just call the restaurant to make sure it exists or see what the customer experience would be like,” Power said. “If you tell a customer to call the restaurant to solve their problem, what is that experience like?
“Why would Uber Eats tell me to do that if they haven’t done it themselves?”
CBC News asked Uber Eats what its vetting process is for allowing restaurants to join the app and what consideration goes into allowing restaurants to have store staff deliver orders themselves.
“There are several requirements for a restaurant to be listed on the Uber Eats platform, including submitting a business license, bank account information and store details,” Rang said. “Our checks help verify that all restaurants meet our requirements to minimize fraudulent activity. However, there are still cases of bad actors.”
It is not an isolated incident
CBC News’ investigation found that Holmes Burgers, located at 560 Yates St in Victoria, just down the street from Dushka Burger, is the location of Adventure Clothing. Holmes Burgers had no reviews on Uber Eats and its menu contained multiple spelling errors.
CBC News contacted Uber Eats about this establishment. The food delivery service says it determined fraudulent activity and closed the Holmes Burgers account on its app.
“He [Holmes Burger] “The account was created earlier this week and deactivated a couple of days later,” said Keerthana Rang, corporate communications lead at Uber Eats. “We’re running a scan for fraudulent activity and this would have been caught up in that.”
CBC News asked Uber Eats about the scope of the analysis it is conducting, but has not yet received a response.
How to avoid this situation
Simone Lis, CEO and president of the Better Business Bureau (BBB), which serves mainland British Columbia and the Yukon, says there are a few things customers can do before placing an order from a food delivery app.
“You want to do your research on the business you’re thinking of ordering from,” Lis said. “The ideal is to order from companies you have already purchased from before.”
Lis says you can research other customers’ reviews to see what their experience was like. But he says to be careful with fake reviews. She says you should be wary of glowing reviews on a website posted all at once.
“You can also do reverse image searches to see if they are stock photos or if they are real photos,” Lis said. “That might be a good way to see if the restaurant you’re dealing with is legitimate.”
Lis says he hasn’t heard many experiences of people ordering from fraudulent restaurants through food delivery apps, but he says fake websites, phishing scams and types of online transactions are a common area of scams. .
“Online shopping scams were the fifth riskiest scam in our BBB risk report and account for one-third of all scams reported to the BBB,” Lis said. “It’s easy to create a fake business and try to transact through that online business.”
If someone feels they were defrauded on a food delivery app, Lis recommends notifying the app to try to get a refund. It also encourages sharing the experience online.
“When dealing with a third party, especially if it is online, we recommend that you use a credit card compared to other payment methods,” Lis said. “If you don’t get what you’re looking for, you can file a chargeback for services not provided.”
Power says he contacted Uber Eats support after receiving the bill for the meal to try to get his money back. He received a refund of $27.95 (the cost of the meal), but not the $5.84 he left as a tip.
