A fed up takeaway owner allegedly rummaged through a customer's bin to prove that they had received a 'missing' order they had demanded a refund for.
Connor Calland, boss of EborCibus Pizza, decided to do some detective work of his own to track down a 12-inch 'Solar Goat Pig' pizza, buffalo blue chicken loaded fries and mozzarella dippers.
After raking through the rubbish, he claims he found evidence of the food, worth £23.49.
He then later received a grovelling apology from the caught out customer, who said they felt 'terrible' and 'greatly' regretted their scam.
"I have learnt a big lesson," the customer added.
Connoe who runs the pizza parlour in York, says "fraudulent" complaints were costing his business between £50-£100 every week, Hull Live reports.
He shared his bin adventure on Facebook to raise awareness of the problem.
He wrote: "How deeply sad is it that in order to preserve the integrity of my business and staff I have to root through someone’s dirty bin. Knowing full well before I did this, that I was going to find my packaging.
"In the bin we find all our packaging that cross references to the order, the indicative buffalo sauce lining a container."
Deliveroo said it issued a refund to the customer in line with its policy because the customer had claimed the takeout bag was torn and food had spilled out.
However, EborCibus Pizza said they had a screenshot showing they were told the refund was issued because the order was "not delivered".
Connor added: "In the end - Deliveroo still gets 14 per cent commission regardless, we take the hit. And their 'Genuine customer, who is not abusing the system' (read the email) received their full refund."
The pizza boss said he was prepared to take similar action again in the future if customers abused his trust. "Deliveroo make it so easy, as their system automatically refunds them and you have to prove they got the goods. Meanwhile deliveroo take their cut regardless," he added.
A Deliveroo spokesperson said: "Deliveroo takes customer service extremely seriously and, in this case, a refund was issued to the customer in line with our policy. Whilst the restaurant was initially billed for the order, we have since spoken to them and decided not take payment on this occasion."
A spokesperson for EborCibus Pizza said: "It's regrettable that certain people fraudulently take advantage of goodwill and trust. We had to investigate this matter fully because this isn’t unfortunately a one-time occurrence, it’s happens on a daily basis to small businesses around the UK.
"Deliveroo does have anti-fraud prevention measures for companies that use Deliveroo riders, but in our case we use our own drivers, and the Deliveroo platform doesn’t have any protection for us. This event happened three months ago, and nothing has changed. We hope our story will perhaps change the mindset of people who believe it’s acceptable to do this, and urge Deliveroo to input anti-fraud measures."
It is not the first time in recent months that a takeaway has expressed frustration with the policies of delivery firms. In February a takeaway owner said he had to let staff go because a customer loophole with Just Eat was leaving him out of pocket. Edris Nosrati called on Just Eat to allow takeaway owners to challenge refund requests from customers before the money was returned.
In an email to Connor, the EborCibus customer said: "I will not only learn through feeling sad from my mistakes; I will work going forward to help support my local business as best as I can do.
"Thank you so much for all and any patience and understanding you have had for me during this most regrettable situation. Please accept my sincerest apologies towards what has happened.
"I realise it is very hard for small businesses and that lots of such acts could really damage a business being able to operate, pay and feed its workers.
"I wholeheartedly regret my actions and will never do anything like this again. I regret following in peer pressure from my peers to engage in this act, as it was a despicable thing that I did."
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