SkipTheDishes complaint: Won’t Refund Food that Was Never Delivered

I ordered food on Saturday night. I live in a high rise apartment downtown, and have had issues with Skip the Dishes not delivering my food to my door in the past, so I purposely changed my delivery instructions to state that I wanted it delivered to my door. I watched the tracker on my computer screen to see when it would be expected. I saw the car arrive at my place, and was waiting for the phone to show the driver was buzzing in. Instead, I got a text saying that the individual couldn’t find parking and asking me to come down to get the order. I was annoyed, but went down the 20 floors anyway. My food was nowhere to be found.

I found it interesting that when I got to the lobby, a driver for Door Dash was in between the lobby doors in the process of buzzing in to another customer in the building. He got in without a problem and proceeded to go up in the elevator to deliver the lucky customer’s food. Like I said, mine was nowhere to be found. I looked in the lobby, in between the doors, outside the doors, and even went to the back door. No food anywhere.

Now really annoyed, I returned to my apartment and tried to text the driver back asking where they had left the order. I got an automatic reply saying that the number could only be used for outgoing texts. My roommate went down to check for the food again while I tried to report the problem on the Skip website. In the past there was a chat bot where you could report any issues, but that was no longer there. I googled the phone number for customer service, but when I called, the automated message said that they are no longer accepting telephone complaints. The message said to report the issue on their website using the chat (which as I said is no longer there).

I went back to their website and reported the issue as best I could given the meager tools they provided. It’s a series of buttons that sortakinda resembles your issue. While I was not interested in a refund, and just wanted them to track down my food, the only option was to request a refund. Meantime my roommate got back reporting that he couldn’t locate the order either. When I got to the screen to process the refund, I found that they were only giving the option to request a refund for the subtotal BEFORE the delivery fee. The subtotal was $25 and change, but I had paid $31 and change. In the box marked Anything else to say? I wrote that I wanted a FULL refund, not only the $25. The message that came up said they would get back to me to let me know if my request for a refund was accepted.

Later that night I got an email from Skip the Dishes saying that my request was denied. That’s it. No explanation, except for a link to their terms of service. I don’t know about anyone else, but I call this THEFT. I ended up ordering my dinner from the sushi place across the street. Eating dinner ended up costing me almost $100 that night, even though I only ate $50 worth of food.

This has to be stopped. There is literally no recourse. It’s so frustrating not to be able to speak to someone to express what the actual situation is. This is an expensive service that doesn’t offer any…well…service. They literally stole $31 from me, and there are no consequences for them? I don’t think so. Something has to be done.