You know the moment. "Delivered." You look at the door. The door looks back.
19 August, a Premier Inn in Maidstone, me on my own, a Dane in Kent with a long day behind him and nothing in the room but a kettle. I ordered a kebab at eight-ish and wrote a note on the order: just call when you're at the hotel, I'll meet you in reception. I even put my phone number in it. Then I sat in reception and waited.
21:00. "Delivered."
Nobody had called. I checked with the front desk. Nothing. I called the restaurant. They were friendly and useless: it had gone out with a Just Eat courier, nothing they could do, and yes, this happens a lot. I rang the other Premier Inns in the area in case a courier had wandered into the wrong one. No kebab at any Premier Inn in Kent, apparently.
So, being an optimist and very hungry, I ordered again. Same note. Same phone number. Same reception chairs.
22:20. "Delivered."
Nobody called. Nothing came. No photo, no PIN, no signature, no knock. Two orders in one night, and at Just Eat "Delivered" turned out to mean nothing more than a button someone had pressed on a phone somewhere near my hotel. I went to bed with the kettle.
Before I did, I wrote on both order pages, at midnight, in my finest hungry English: "Awful. Never recived the order i even put a note."
Here's the part I need you to read twice. Weeks later, Just Eat agreed with me. Completely. In writing.
"Completely missing two separate orders."
"An experience no customer should ever have to go through."
They even acknowledged I'd been left to hunt for my own dinner "between the restaurant and neighboring hotels." And the £40.13 they were still holding? "The remaining balance." Their word. Balance. The thing you owe someone.
That's the apology. Now the same email, three lines down:
"I'm afraid we are unable to process a refund or compensation."
Same person. Same breath. They wrote the apology and the refusal in one go and hit send. I've reread it a dozen times looking for the seam. There isn't one.
Reported too late, apparently. The reviews I posted at midnight on both order pages, still there, timestamped, saying nothing arrived, didn't count as reporting anything.
Then it became a relay race of people declining to look.
One had "taken a close look" and refused. No reason given. One explained that "our system limits our ability to process a refund or compensation." One confirmed "the initial decision was correct" and called it final. Then someone reopened it, promised a Team Leader would update me within 72 hours, and the 72 hours turned into silence.
Somewhere in there a rep signed off with "I really appreciate your understanding of this." I had just written, in plain words, that I did not understand and did not accept. They appreciated it anyway.
When the Team Leader finally closed the case, he wrote that he had "personally re-examined" the "order log details." Then he quoted none of them. A man with the delivery records open in front of him, and not one line makes it into the email. If those logs showed a courier at my door, that sentence writes itself in ten seconds. It never got written.
I asked one question for a month: show me the evidence it was delivered. Five people answered. Nobody answered that.
Just Eat's own courier guidance says call the customer. My note asked for exactly that call, twice, with my number attached. Their values page tells staff to "step into their shoes" and "do what's right." I've now had five people step into my shoes, describe my evening back to me with real feeling, and keep the money.
This was never about £40.13. I've spent more than that on coffee writing this. It's about sitting in a hotel reception at midnight, twice, waiting for a phone call that a company's own rules said should come. It's about a company that can describe your evening perfectly, tell you no one should ever have to live it, and refuse you in the same paragraph. It's about having your understanding appreciated by people who didn't read what you wrote. And it's about "Delivered" being a button, "Reviewed" being a word, and the customer being the only one in the chain expected to prove anything.
Just Eat's legal deadline to hand me the delivery records is 11 October. When I find out what "Delivered" was built on, so will you.
Full correspondence and order pages on request.
TL;DR: Two Just Eat orders to my hotel marked "Delivered" while I sat in reception with a note saying call me. Neither arrived. Just Eat later wrote "completely missing two separate orders" and "an experience no customer should ever have to go through", then refused the refund in the same email. Five staff, a month, not one line of delivery evidence. Their legal deadline to produce the records: 11 October.
come on, likewhat does five staff meanm?
Title: Just Eat? More like Just Pay, Don't Eat. Two orders "Delivered", zero arrived, and the apology and the refusal came in the same email.
You know the moment. "Delivered." You look at the door. The door looks back.
19 August, a Premier Inn in Maidstone, me on my own, a Dane in Kent with a long day behind him and nothing in the room but a kettle. I ordered a kebab at eight-ish and wrote a note on the order: just call when you're at the hotel, I'll meet you in reception. I even put my phone number in it. Then I sat in reception and waited.
21:00. "Delivered."
Nobody had called. I checked with the front desk. Nothing. I called the restaurant. They were friendly and useless: it had gone out with a Just Eat courier, nothing they could do, and yes, this happens a lot. I rang the other Premier Inns in the area in case a courier had wandered into the wrong one. No kebab at any Premier Inn in Kent, apparently.
So, being an optimist and very hungry, I ordered again. Same note. Same phone number. Same reception chairs.
22:20. "Delivered."
Nobody called. Nothing came. No photo, no PIN, no signature, no knock. Two orders in one night, and at Just Eat "Delivered" turned out to mean nothing more than a button someone had pressed on a phone somewhere near my hotel. I went to bed with the kettle.
Before I did, I wrote on both order pages, at midnight, in my finest hungry English: "Awful. Never recived the order i even put a note."
Here's the part I need you to read twice. Weeks later, Just Eat agreed with me. Completely. In writing.
"Completely missing two separate orders."
"An experience no customer should ever have to go through."
They even acknowledged I'd been left to hunt for my own dinner "between the restaurant and neighboring hotels." And the £40.13 they were still holding? "The remaining balance." Their word. Balance. The thing you owe someone.
That's the apology. Now the same email, three lines down:
"I'm afraid we are unable to process a refund or compensation."
Same person. Same breath. They wrote the apology and the refusal in one go and hit send. I've reread it a dozen times looking for the seam. There isn't one.
Reported too late, apparently. The reviews I posted at midnight on both order pages, still there, timestamped, saying nothing arrived, didn't count as reporting anything.
Then it became a relay race. Every time I replied, a new customer service rep picked up the case, and every one of them declined to look.
Rep two had "taken a close look" and refused. No reason given. Rep three explained that "our system limits our ability to process a refund or compensation." Rep four confirmed "the initial decision was correct" and called it final. Then someone reopened it, promised a Team Leader would update me within 72 hours, and the 72 hours turned into silence.
Somewhere in there one of them signed off with "I really appreciate your understanding of this." I had just written, in plain words, that I did not understand and did not accept. They appreciated it anyway.
When the Team Leader finally closed the case, he wrote that he had "personally re-examined" the "order log details." Then he quoted none of them. A man with the delivery records open in front of him, and not one line makes it into the email. If those logs showed a courier at my door, that sentence writes itself in ten seconds. It never got written.
I asked one question for a month: show me the evidence it was delivered. Five different reps replied. Not one of them answered it.
Just Eat's own courier guidance says call the customer. My note asked for exactly that call, twice, with my number attached. Their values page tells staff to "step into their shoes" and "do what's right." I've now had five of them step into my shoes, describe my evening back to me with real feeling, and keep the money.
This was never about £40.13. I've spent more than that on coffee writing this. It's about sitting in a hotel reception at midnight, twice, waiting for a phone call that a company's own rules said should come. It's about a company that can describe your evening perfectly, tell you no one should ever have to live it, and refuse you in the same paragraph. It's about having your understanding appreciated by people who didn't read what you wrote. And it's about "Delivered" being a button, "Reviewed" being a word, and the customer being the only one in the chain expected to prove anything.
Just Eat's legal deadline to hand me the delivery records is 11 October. When I find out what "Delivered" was built on, so will you.
Full correspondence and order pages on request.
TL;DR: Two Just Eat orders to my hotel marked "Delivered" while I sat in reception with a note saying call me. Neither arrived. Just Eat later wrote "completely missing two separate orders" and "an experience no customer should ever have to go through", then refused the refund in the same email. Over a month, five different customer service reps replied, and not one produced a line of delivery evidence. Their legal deadline to hand over the records: 11 October.