> What this has led to in my experience is that when something goes wrong, instead of me working it out with the restaurant, I am left frustrated, hungry, and hung out to dry by three parties - the restaurant, the platform, and the contractor.
My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds (your experience clearly sucked, though!), which is nice (but I’m guessing not for the drivers, who may or may not be at fault), but that restaurants with their own delivery services have been more willing to send out the missing food on an expedited basis, which is often a better resolution (if I didn’t want the food more than the money, I wouldn’t have ordered in the first place.)
I’ve also noticed that wrong or missing food items are more common with third-party delivery services.
> My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds
This has changed over time, though. For the first year or so of Postmates' existence, refunds were easy and near-automatic. It was trivial to get in touch with a support person, and their response to pretty much any complaint was either a refund or a (usually generous) credit. But after Postmates grew beyond a certain point, they got more stingy with refunds, and credit they offered -- if any! -- would be much lower.
I remember the same thing happening with Uber when it was new. Rating a driver under 4 stars would win you an unsolicited email from support, asking what went wrong, with a credit or refund for the ride. That pretty much never happens anymore.
Agree with you on restaurants, though. Restaurants that do their own first-party delivery are almost always better at customer experience and fixing things when something goes wrong. And it makes sense, too: DoorDash and the driver don't care if you end up with a negative impression of a restaurant because the food arrived cold. The consequences for DD are much less than the consequences for the restaurant. And even if you do call the restaurant, there's usually not much they can do, because they're not able to get DD to redo the delivery for free, and have no leverage over DD to give refunds.
Doordash's refund algorithm is usually pretty fair, but sometimes it isn't. I order a lot, and once in a blue moon the order will be significantly messed up (missing entrees, for example) and they give a low ball offer.
I've gotten plenty of certificates from restaurants who gave me "a bad delivery experience", without my asking. I didn't even consider the experience "bad". It was something like the driver had a flat tire, called me and said he was going to be late and then said he would have the food remade. I said don't worry about it, bring the food cold (pizza) and I would just heat it up. I didn't even think about it anymore. But I still got a free coupon.
My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds (your experience clearly sucked, though!), which is nice (but I’m guessing not for the drivers, who may or may not be at fault), but that restaurants with their own delivery services have been more willing to send out the missing food on an expedited basis, which is often a better resolution (if I didn’t want the food more than the money, I wouldn’t have ordered in the first place.)
I’ve also noticed that wrong or missing food items are more common with third-party delivery services.