A man who says he waited nearly four hours for his takeaway to arrive claims he was told days later that the order was never placed to begin with. Iain Lucas, hoped to spend his Saturday night enjoying the takeaway with his family.
The 35-year-old ordered from his local, May Wah, in Blackpool - a takeaway he says he's been to many times before. Using the Foodhub app, Iain says he placed an order with the Devonshire Road business of a Munchy Box at 8.24pm on Saturday, October 1.
Moments later he says he received a notification confirming that May Wah had accepted his order. The food, ordered for Iain, his wife and his younger brother consisted of one Munchy Box sharing meal, which contains salt and pepper chicken, chicken wings, chips, chicken balls, egg fired rice, noodles, vegetarian spring rolls and curry sauce.
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At around 10.30pm, two hours after placing the order, Iain says there was still no sign of the food or any indication to tell him it was on the way. While he says throughout this time he was still convinced the order would arrive and maintained his patience, he called the takeaway to find out more.
"My wife phoned up for an update. I thought maybe they're just busy or behind schedule," Iain told LancsLive. "They asked for our postcode and address and said it would be about half an hour away. 45 minutes went by and still there was nothing, so we phone up again for an update. We gave the address again and they said it'll be about 10 minutes and put some free soup with it."
After another 45 minutes, the trio said they still hadn't heard a knock on the door. Iain says at this point, around midnight, he drove to the takeaway instead - where he found it closed. "I was fuming, I was livid. This was all a massive inconvenience," Iain said.
He said he ended up ordering food really later from elsewhere meaning he had "paid twice in one night" for their dinner. He continued: "I'm quite a patient person but my wife, she was in fits. I kept saying to be patient, it'll arrive, it'll arrive so I feel a bit silly saying that now. The whole time we were being really polite because when you're speaking to them, being irate isn't going to get you anywhere."
Iain says that a couple of days after the order was placed, he received a call from the takeaway who apologised for the mishap. However, Iain adds that he was told by the takeaway staff no order was sent to them by Foodhub which is why his order never arrived the entire night.
Despite being offered a refund and the option to claim back a free meal, Iain says he was left confused due to the multiple occasions he says the takeaway confirmed his order during the evening. Shortly after, he was contacted by Foodhub who arranged a refund.
Iain claims he asked the Foodhub employees if a takeaway has to manually accept the food order or is the notification just automatic. He says he was told that businesses have to accept every order that is placed.
He said: "I said 'when I placed the order, I got a notification that says the restaurant has accepted your order, does that happen automatically or does that only show up when the restaurant has to manually accept the order?'. She said 'no, the restaurant has to manually accept the order and then you get the notifications'. If they didn't get it, fair enough, technology, stuff happens. But it's just that nag in the back of my mind that's like why did they confirm that it's on its way?"
Foodhub and May Wah were both contacted for comment but they did not respond prior to deadline.
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