Recently, there’s been a recent influx of Delivery Pranks on us Food Delivery riders.
Since the start of January, I’ve been on the receiving end of 3 different prank orders around Sengkang, Punggol and Hougang- in which 2 of them came at a time when I had to cycle through heavy downpours during the first half of the month’s cold and rainy season.
Earlier today, I received my 3rd prank order and I had to wait for 30 minutes with 3/4 other Panda Riders at a corridor as Foodpanda’s absolutely garbage Customer Service has to sort things out. One panda rider was an amputee on his right leg on his PMA. This 3rd incident was my breaking point.
Prank orders are done when somebody provides a non-existent unit number and orders through cash.
So why is it an issue for us? One could take the food home and go. Well, first of all, for cash orders, we would have to pay the amount that we received back to Grab/Foodpanda through a digital transaction. So in this case, had we just left with the food without contacting CS to cancel the order, we would be paying for something that we don’t even want. For my unfortunate experience today, I was left with my hands clasped around a plastic bag filled with $75 worth of Unhalal food that I can’t eat.
Please la. Have some compassion. I had to spend an hour of my life going to a restaurant, waiting for food and delivering only to find out that some CB decided it’s funny to play with people’s livelihoods. I’m lucky enough to still be a student and just doing this food delivery thing as a part time job to supplement my student life, but when I see people like the aforementioned amputee having to go through great lengths and struggles to deliver food only to be greeted by this nonsense, I get mad.
Not only does this nonsense affect the riders, it definitely affects the restaurants as well because Panda/Grab won’t pay them for the meals. All because Panda/Grab receive nothing from the prank. They are the ones who suffer the most in this because of such unthoughtful and despicable ‘pranks’. Essentially, they make food for nothing.