Prevously, the Ridesharing Forum team reported about a foodpanda customer who complained about how the app has denied their request for refund after allegedly receiving the wrong orders from various restaurants, including major ones, such as McDonald’s.
This is a concern with the victim being the customer and the culprit being the food delivery app. However, a recent study conducted by identity solution company Incognia revealed that the blame should not just be upon food delivery apps, but upon some customers themselves – who create fake accounts to order food and request illegitimate refunds. Here’s the scoop.
Incognia has proven that “refund fraud” is everywhere, with customers demanding their money back for alleged unsatisfactory orders, even if there isn’t anything wrong with the food delivered, got them in good faith, and maybe even got to enjoy and finish them.
The study found that nearly half of delivery app consumer fraud is categorized as “refund abuse,” costing businesses about $103 billion in 2024, a separate report from Appriss Retail and Deloitte found out.
“You can say the food wasn’t good, the food was cold, there was something missing,” the study’s proponent, André Ferraz, said. “How do you verify these things? It’s very difficult.”’
It is a reality that customers request several refunds for several orders in a row via a certain delivery app, with them complaining if the app has refused to grant their refund request, such as what happened with the foodpanda customer in the earlier report from Ridesharing Forum.
Aside from flooding apps with illegitimate refund requests, the study also found that while fake accounts were used in a whopping 57 percent of driver-side fraud cases, refund and promotion abuse tied as the top consumer-side fraud at 48 percent.
But the graveness of deed is still upon fraudster customers, the study pointed out. Incognia told about a fraudster who created not 10, not 500, but 800 fake accounts to misuse coupons, making off with 1.5 percent of the total redeemed coupon. Then, there was also another who accessed 400 various accounts on a singular device to take advantage of thousands of dollars worth of offers in just a month.
“Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated, relentlessly targeting gig economy platforms with advanced fraud techniques that erode user trust and degrade the overall experience,” Ferraz added. “You’re abusing the platform.”
Last week, the Ridesharing Forum team cited a report on The Straits Times saying how a foodpanda customer got wrong orders in just within six months. They requested a refund from those restaurants, but they were not granted.
For instance, in one of their McDonald’s orders, the customer ordered a Double Prosperity Burger but got an ordinary burger. They also claimed they got wrong orders from various other restaurants.
"Please share this because it is too much,” the customer wrote in The Straits Times.
Was the customer under the category in the study? Maybe not, but their complaint does not always make food delivery apps in the wrong.
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