Food delivery & takeaway refunds

First: identify exactly what went wrong

Do not begin with “I want a refund”. Begin with the factual breach. That makes it much harder for a support system to reduce the dispute to whether its discretionary refund policy happens to approve the account.

Food does not lose consumer protection because it is perishable

One of the most misleading shortcuts in this area is to say that “food is non-refundable” because it is perishable. That confuses two different sets of rights.

The Consumer Contracts Regulations exclude goods liable to deteriorate or expire rapidly from the ordinary 14-day distance-selling cancellation right. In plain English, you cannot generally order a freshly prepared meal, change your mind after preparation has begun and rely on the normal online-shopping cooling-off period.

That is not the same as saying defective or missing food has no consumer protection. Where goods are supplied under a consumer contract, the Consumer Rights Act contains standards including satisfactory quality and conformity with description. The short-term rejection framework also expressly recognises that goods expected to perish sooner can have a shorter appropriate rejection period. With prepared food, the practical message is simple: inspect and complain promptly.

If the order never arrives

A hot takeaway is not an ordinary parcel that can simply turn up the next day. The contractual structure matters, but an order that is never delivered despite correct details and reasonable availability is fundamentally a non-performance problem.

If the app says “delivered”, ask for the evidence behind that status. Useful material can include the delivery photograph, GPS/location record where available, driver contact attempts, the address shown on the order, doorbell/CCTV footage and messages sent at the time. A status code is evidence; it is not automatically conclusive proof that you received the meal.

If the whole order was never supplied for reasons not attributable to you, a full refund of the unsupplied order will commonly be the practical starting position. Delivery/service fees need separate analysis where different parties provided different services, but a business should explain why it believes a paid-for service was performed rather than simply treating the app status as the end of the matter.

Wrong orders and missing items

If you order a chicken burger and receive somebody else’s pizza order, the goods supplied plainly do not match what was ordered. Photograph the full contents, bag receipt/order number and seals before rearranging or disposing of anything.

Where one item is missing or wrong, the remedy is usually more proportionate. The affected item has not been supplied as contracted, but that does not make every separate item in the bag defective. Start by claiming the price/remedy for the missing or wrong item.

There are cases where the effect is wider. If a missing component was integral to a meal deal, the wrong item creates an allergy/dietary problem, or the omission makes another item effectively unusable, explain that consequence. Do not simply say “one item missing, therefore refund everything”; show why the breach affects more of the order.

Cold, damaged, poor-quality or inedible food

Temperature complaints need sensible treatment. There is no automatic rule that every meal arriving below a consumer’s preferred temperature produces a full refund. Equally, a blanket “we do not refund cold food” rule cannot sensibly determine whether a hot prepared meal actually met the contract.

The stronger cases involve an objective, material problem: food supplied as hot arrives genuinely cold after serious delay; fried food is saturated because of a major packaging/spillage failure; meat is materially undercooked; the meal is spoiled; ingredients are materially different from the description; or the condition is such that an ordinary consumer could not reasonably use the food as supplied.

Satisfactory quality is assessed in context, including description, price and other relevant circumstances. Record the condition as soon as the order arrives. Photographs cannot always prove temperature or taste, but they can show packaging failure, spillage, undercooking, wrong ingredients and the general state of the meal. Delivery timestamps and contemporaneous support messages can help complete the picture.

Unsafe food and allergen problems

Food safety is not merely a customer-service issue. Food businesses delivering meals must manage the food so that it remains safe to eat, and allergen information must be provided for takeaway/delivery ordering in accordance with the applicable food-information rules.

If you genuinely suspect contamination, spoilage, a foreign object, unsafe undercooking or a serious allergen error, stop consuming the food where it is reasonable to do so. Preserve photographs, packaging, labels, order information and any relevant food if it can be kept safely. If someone is having a serious allergic reaction or is acutely unwell, obtain urgent medical assistance rather than concentrating on evidence collection.

A consumer refund/remedy and a food-safety complaint are different things. You can pursue the contractual problem with the restaurant/platform while separately reporting a genuine food-safety or allergen-information issue to the relevant local authority food-safety team.

Late delivery: an estimate is relevant, but it is not a magic defence

Most delivery apps display an estimated arrival time. A modest overrun beyond an estimate does not automatically entitle the customer to a free meal. But “estimated” does not mean timing can never matter.

The Consumer Rights Act delivery framework recognises circumstances where delivery at the agreed time is essential. Its explanatory material gives highly time-sensitive goods such as a birthday cake as an example. Prepared takeaway food is also inherently time-sensitive in a way that many ordinary goods are not.

The best complaint therefore explains the consequence: the order failed to arrive at all; immediate delivery was essential in the circumstances; a very serious delay meant the food arrived materially degraded; or a specific paid-for priority/guaranteed delivery service was not provided. Focus on the contractual outcome, not merely “it was 20 minutes late”.

Who is responsible: restaurant, platform or both?

This is where app-based ordering becomes less intuitive. The company taking the payment through the app is not necessarily the contractual supplier of every element of the transaction.

Current platform terms illustrate the point. Just Eat states that the legal contract for the food/products is between the consumer and the business, while in some cases Just Eat itself provides the delivery service and charges for that delivery as principal. Deliveroo’s UK terms similarly distinguish between deliveries it provides and deliveries provided by the restaurant/partner. Uber’s UK delivery terms also distinguish Uber Delivery from Merchant Delivery.

That means the correct target can depend on the failure. A restaurant can be responsible for preparing the wrong meal while a platform can separately be responsible for a delivery service it contracted to provide. Do not allow “contact the restaurant” or “contact the app” to become circular buck-passing. Ask each organisation to identify the contractual role it says it had for this order and the obligation relevant to your complaint.

Platform terms can change. These examples were checked on 10 September 2026; use the live terms for the order/date in question.

What the apps say, and what the law says

Platform policies are not irrelevant. They can give consumers a fast route to redress and show the types of failures the platform itself expects to handle. But they should not be confused with the full legal position.

Just Eat’s current customer-care terms expressly contemplate refund, proportionate price reduction or other compensation requests for quality/service complaints, say evidence such as photographs may be requested, and ask consumers to report within 24 hours. Crucially, those same terms state that the customer-care clauses do not affect legal and statutory rights.

Deliveroo’s current UK terms expressly refer to consumers’ legal rights to goods which meet description and satisfactory-quality requirements and to services carried out with reasonable care and skill. Uber’s published merchant terms recognise “substandard” or unsatisfactory items and merchant responsibility for customer reimbursements, while its consumer delivery terms separately regulate the delivery service.

So if support responds only with “our system says no refund”, the next question is not whether you can press the refund button again. It is: what is the substantive reason the business says the contract was properly performed?

Internal reporting windows and fraud controls

Report problems with prepared food immediately. That is good advice even before considering any platform rule: food changes quickly, packaging is discarded, and delivery data can disappear.

A platform can also use reasonable evidence requirements and anti-fraud controls. A pattern of repeated claims can justify closer scrutiny. What it should not do is treat a fraud score or past refund count as proof of what happened on the particular order without addressing the available evidence.

Similarly, an internal 24-hour or other customer-service window may affect how an app processes a claim, but it is not automatically the same thing as a statutory limitation rule. A delayed complaint can nevertheless become difficult to prove, especially for a perishable product. Do not rely on that distinction as a reason to wait.

App credit versus a monetary refund

Many platforms can resolve minor problems quickly by offering account credit. There is nothing inherently wrong with accepting it if you are happy with the outcome.

The issue is when credit is presented as the only possible remedy despite a statutory monetary refund being due. Consumer Rights Act refund provisions generally require the trader to reimburse using the same means of payment unless the consumer expressly agrees otherwise, and without charging a refund fee.

Be precise. First establish the actual breach and the amount that should be refunded. Then say clearly if you do not consent to replacing that monetary remedy with app credit. A voluntary goodwill credit offered where no statutory refund exists is a different situation.

What to write when the refund is refused

If the complaint is still refused

1. Put the issue in writing. State the order, the exact failure, evidence, contractual party and remedy claimed.
2. Use the platform/restaurant complaint route. Preserve the final response or refusal and avoid opening multiple inconsistent versions of the complaint.
3. For food safety/allergens, use the regulatory route as well. Serious hygiene or allergen-information issues can be reported to the relevant local authority food-safety team.
4. Consider your payment route. A debit/credit-card chargeback may be worth asking the card issuer about where paid-for goods/services were not provided or were materially defective. Scheme rules and time limits apply.
5. Consider court only proportionately. A small contractual claim can ultimately be pursued through the civil courts, but for a low-value meal the time and effort may outweigh the amount unless a wider issue or repeated loss is involved.