Just-Eat: Did Somebody Say... Piss-Poor Customer Service?

Back in the pre-Covid Utopia that was 2008, I wrote about my experiences with a relatively young company - Just-Eat.

It was a bit of a mixed bag. The convenience of ordering online rather than having to phone the restaurant directly was a big selling point. The problems back then were customer service - how things were handled when they went wrong. Back then there were definite issues, especially trying to contact them out of office hours.

Since then Just-Eat have gone from strength-to-strength and are now a widely recognised brand, and you can probably order from most restaurants in your home town from them.

For the most part their customer service improved too. Mistakes can (and will) happen - and how they deal with them is key to whether consumers will continue to use them. So if a restaurant didn't pick up on your order within 20 minutes or so then receiving a courtesy phone call from a Just Eat representative wasn't unusual. Missing an item or an order gone astray? Contacting the restaurant was usually enough to resolve the issue, if not then the Just-Eat staff had your back to help sort things out.

Recently it looks like things have changed, and not for the better.

Not long ago I had an issue with some items missing from an order, and the food was cold too. Phoning the take-away using the number provided on the website passed me straight through to an automated phone line ran by Just-Eat themselves, which resulted in a short message to use their website to make a complaint, or contact the restaurant directly. One Google search later to find out how to complain I entered the details and waited.

This was followed by an email from Just-Eat:

Just Eat Takeaway.com (Just Eat UK)
X XXX, XX:XX GMT
Hi Dan,
Thank you for contacting us about your recent order [Order Number Removed]. We're sorry to hear you didn't have the great experience we wanted for you.
We've looked into everything in detail to see what we can do. On this occasion, we're unable to offer a refund or compensation based on all the information we have.
We appreciate your understanding and we hope to have the chance to provide a better experience for you next time.
Thanks again for getting in touch with us.
Just Eat


Further emails were exchanged - but I may as well not have wasted my time. Short version: Computer Says NO!

As it was one meal (six or seven pounds worth of food) it's not the end of the World, so I let it be.

I've ordered stuff between then and now and had no more problems, until today.

This time the entire order went missing. Their website says it had been delivered, but God only knows who to. So, contact the restaurant via the phone number, which passes me back to that oh-so-familiar Just-Eat automated phone line.

Complain on the website, which results in me getting an identical email as the previous time, otherwise known as "Computer Says NO!". I've also tried going via their Facebook, all to no avail. So this time it's a £20 order gone, and no way of getting a refund short of spending more time with the bank reversing the charges, or taking them to the small claims court - which seems like a lot of effort for £20.

I did manage to track down an actual phone number for the takeaway, and had an apologetic but not helpful conversation with them. According to them once the delivery driver has the food it's Just-Eat's responsibility. The take-away didn't have any way of contacting the drivers (or even have the name of whoever it was) as they work for Just-Eat rather than them, and Just-Eat don't provide them with any tracking information.

Thankfully these days Just-Eat aren't the only company locally taking online orders, so I'll be switching to one of them, probably Deliveroo - as I'm led to believe that they do have actual customer support rather than just an automated service that might as well say: We've got your money and you can't have any of it back, so there!

For those of you who think I may be laying this on a bit thick, then may I suggest that you go to https://www.facebook.com/justeat and try reading the comments on their posts, you'll see a lot of people having the same issues.

Just-Eat? It might as well be Just-Go-Hungry!