Had been a loyal supporter for a while now and ordered food almost exclusively on foodpanda, but didn’t expect this to happen to me. A truly upsetting and disappointing experience with FP. I had wanted to refrain from putting this on social media, but it seems like this is my last recourse.
tl;dr
1) Dinner delivery was delayed by almost 2h.
2) Delivery was done by Foodpanda’s (FP) own 3PL service – PandaGo.
3) FP Customer support said that they are unable to track the courier because the restaurant had chosen their own service provider. Again, it’s FP’s own 3PL service – PandaGo.
4) Order dinner around 7pm+ but dinner came around 10pm. Explained to CS a few times that the restaurant was closed but CS kept giving a template reply for $6 voucher for late delivery and asked me to make a new order. CS agent seemed to struggle with English.
5) CS eventually agreed to provide full refund, which did not come. Closed off chat before I could ask for a transcript and also marked the case as resolved.
6) Realized that the full refund did not come in, re-opened the case but a new CS agent gave a template reply and marked case as resolved again without giving the full refund.
Full details:
On 09 Feb 2022, Priscilia Chan and I placed an order for BBBURGERS around 7.30pm. As a previous patron of the restaurant, I knew that the burgers would be freshly prepared and since it was wet weather that day, I understood that it could take an hour or so for the food to be delivered.
On the Foodpanda app, I was told that my order would be delivered between 20:20 – 20:40h. At 20:28h, I received an SMS saying that my food has been collected and will be delivered by PandaGo. Do note that the restaurant is located at Punggol Plaza and I am located at Fernvale. The drive itself should not take more than 30 mins even in wet weather. Subsequently, the PandaGo tracker keeps delaying the delivery time, from “21:24 – 21:34” to eventually “21:46 – 21:56.”
Throughout this time, the courier was seen to be stuck at Punggol Plaza on the tracker. Feeling hungry and feeling that something wasn’t right, we reached out to customer support at 21:20h and spoke to one Shahzaib. A, who marks the beginning of our nightmare because he could hardly understand English and could only give template response and repeatedly asking us to ignore his earlier replies.
It was an ordeal to speak with him, much less to get a resolution from him because he insisted that the restaurant had used their own service provider to deliver to food and they could not reach the restaurant. Of course they couldn’t, as the restaurant was already closed at the time. We managed to get the restaurant owner’s contact number eventually and spoke to him, and we understood that the food was not delivered by the restaurant’s own courier, but Foodpanda’s other service – PandaGo. From our conversation with the restaurant owner, we also understood that the CS agent hung up after 1 ring and the restaurant owner was not able to pick up the call.
We asked Shahzaib to help us contact the courier to check the status of the delivery, as the food was already picked up from the restaurant an hour earlier. To our dismay, Shahzaib’s response was that he is unable to track the PandaGo courier as this was “the restaurant’s own courier” and the “restaurant was uncontactable.”
What transpired next was a lot of us trying to get him to help expedite or process a full refund for us, only for him to give us the same template replies that they are sorry for the delayed delivery, o again, to ignore his previous messages. We felt that the CS agent’s understanding of English is below basic proficiency and it was an extremely frustrating experience.
After a lengthy back and forth of repeatedly asking and getting the same answers, the CS agent agreed to provide us a full refund on the order as he wasn’t sure if the food will be delivered, and even if it did, we can receive the food. The food eventually arrived at 22:01h and we only knew that it came because Truffle barked, despite the special instructions to call or text on arrival. It also appears that the food was marked delivered at 20:47h on the Foodpanda app. Before I could ask for a transcript of the chat and end the night, Shahzaib abruptly left and ended the chat.
Yesterday, we opened the Foodpanda app and wanted to order supper, but realized that the full refund was never processed. There was however, a $6 voucher for the late delivery. Perplexed, I looked for the support ticket, which was marked resolved the Shahzaib. Our query was responded by Eliya Polous, who gave yet another template reply with absolutely no resolution to the problem, just thanking us for the feedback even though the query to re-open the support ticket specifically said “this is not resolved i was supposed to get a full refund but i have not received it yet. this customer service is bad and i would appreciate that i get a response soon.”
True enough the response came quick, but FP might as well have not replied if they are not sincere to resolve issues. At this point, I am still expecting a proper resolution so we can close this chapter and move on but here is a feedback for you since your CS likes to ask for it
1) It is no secret that companies are outsourcing support teams to cheaper countries and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the minimum you could do is to ensure that ALL your customer support agents have a basic, conversational proficiency on the English language if your app is in English.
2) If you are not able to control or track your courier on your extended service, then you might as well not launch it.