5 ms·

Anyone know if it would be considered fraud and/or illegal to exploit this? I would consider doordash and grubhubs tactics of falsely representing themselves as

Anyone know if it would be considered fraud and/or illegal to exploit this? I would consider doordash and grubhubs tactics of falsely representing themselves as restaurants to be more unethical. It would be great if someone could scale a solution that would take those arbitrage opportunities and pass them on to the drivers and the restaurants.

astura 6y ago
Yes, it's fraud. In general, knowingly obtaining money, goods or services you know you are not entitled to is fraud/illegal. Here's an example of someone going to jail for knowingly exploiting a glitch: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hp/news_update/20071026_N_C__woman_admits_400G_scam_of_QVC.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hp/news_update/20071026_N_C_...
- ethbro 6y ago
  It seems like it would depend on who's initiating the action. While the restaurant preparing "partial" pizzas to ship to coordinated orders is obviously fraud, I'm not so sure "Asking the restaurant owner about their costs, then independently ordering a large number of pizzas" qualifies. It's not your responsibility if Doordash has shit code and auditing. And given VC-onomics, it's not even clear how you would be certain this isn't "operating as intended."
  - hnick 6y ago
    > While the restaurant preparing "partial" pizzas to ship to coordinated orders is obviously fraud Does Doordash allow customer menu modification requests? "No cheese, no tomato sauce, no onion" etc. That would also then fall under shit code and auditing :)
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > While the restaurant preparing "partial" pizzas to ship to coordinated orders is obviously fraud How so? They're making the pizzas the way the customer wants them. The 'objective' tastiness is none of the delivery middleman's business. And there's nothing wrong with offering a bad pizza for $24, as long as the customer knows what they're getting.
    - Beldin 6y ago
      Well, if the restaurant reimburses the customer after, it probably would become a problem. Way around this: private owner places his own orders as customer, pockets profits as owner. That might be legitimate - but remember: if you take legal advice from the Internet, you get what you paid for.
      - hannasanarion 6y ago
        Why does it matter if the owner is reimbursing their non-owning customers? Restaurants do that all the time.
        ethbro 6y ago
        (IANAL) My gut says coordination would be be evidence of both (a) premeditated intent & (b) knowledge that actions constituted fraud. One could place a personal order (or 100) innocently. One looks substantially less innocent when coordinating with a third party to place orders and transfer money around. While that speaks to the severity of the crime (if one were proven), as you noted, it doesn't in any way impact whether that behavior is a crime at all.
        hannasanarion 6y ago
        But who's defrauding who? If the doordash website says I can buy a dough pizza for $19, then doordash has to get me a dough pizza for $19 when I buy one. No fraud is happening, doordash is fulfilling the requirements of the contract they make with all their customers. If anything, the one who's committing fraud is doordash, because they're putting in "takeout" orders with the restaurant and presenting them as "delivery" orders to the customer.
        ethbro 6y ago
        In the example from TFA, Doordash says you can buy a pizza for $16 and charges you $16. The restaurant menu price is $24, and Doordash pays $24 for the pizza. That's... the starting place. (As screwy as it is) Now, if I order a dough pizza for $16, in coordination with the restaurant, and Doordash pays $24 to the restaurant, and the restaurant gives me a dough pizza, and then the restaurant makes it worth my while, what do we have? Doordash has been paid $16, and spent $24 + (cost of delivery) = (-) SoftBank money The restaurant has been paid $24 and spent ~$1 (cost of dough pizza [1]) = ~$23 profit (minus labor) I paid $16 (let's ignore tip). The restaurant reimburses me for that (me: $0, restaurant: $7) to make it worth my while, and then splits profits with me (me: $3.50, restaurant: $3.50). So at the end, Doordash: -$8 - delivery cost, restaurant: $3.50, me: $3.50. It's the reimbursement of the customer that seems... suspect. The way to ethically monetize this would be for restaurants to target Doordash misprices, and "sell" coupons (a food box, containing only a paper coupon), good for future food orders directly through the restaurants. Then encourage all their customers to buy as much as possible. [1] We'll say we return and recycle the boxes, being environmentally conscious citizens
- asdfaoeu 6y ago
  Your case is more clear cut because that is a glitch in the website. It seems that in this case Doordash is offering a promotion. Calling that fraud would be like calling taking advantage of reward points fraud.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    It gets dicier when the restaurant starts shipping out plain pizza dough.
    - kingkawn 6y ago
      Not if the customer ordered plain pizza dough
      - tptacek 6y ago
        That's not how this works. The glitch is that there's a particular menu-item mispriced by Doordash. You can't just order arbitrary things at arbitrary prices, and when the restaurant takes an order for X and delivers Y, it's taking a step towards making a material false statement to obtain something of value.
    - Beldin 6y ago
      This made me wonder: what if a restaurant puts a pain dough "pizza" for $30 on their menu? Of course, no one would order it. But in this situation, an aggregator could offer it and the restaurant owner could take advantage of that. It smells like fraud, except that every individual step seems legitimate (albeit weird). I'm pretty sure you're allowed to charge ridiculous prices for common goods if you so choose...
      - hhmc 6y ago
        It still requires the aggregator to offer it for less that $30 (at least the cost of dough less). Which, at least in this case, seems to requires a scraping error.
    - 6y ago
- Thriptic 6y ago
  It doesn't seem like fraud when they are still delivering an actual pizza; that's basically just leveraging a sale. It becomes more dubious when they aren't delivering the finished good.

astura 6y ago

Yes, it's fraud. In general, knowingly obtaining money, goods or services you know you are not entitled to is fraud/illegal. Here's an example of someone going to jail for knowingly exploiting a glitch: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hp/news_update/20071026_N_C__woman_admits_400G_scam_of_QVC.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hp/news_update/20071026_N_C_...

ethbro 6y ago
It seems like it would depend on who's initiating the action. While the restaurant preparing "partial" pizzas to ship to coordinated orders is obviously fraud, I'm not so sure "Asking the restaurant owner about their costs, then independently ordering a large number of pizzas" qualifies. It's not your responsibility if Doordash has shit code and auditing. And given VC-onomics, it's not even clear how you would be certain this isn't "operating as intended."
- hnick 6y ago
  > While the restaurant preparing "partial" pizzas to ship to coordinated orders is obviously fraud Does Doordash allow customer menu modification requests? "No cheese, no tomato sauce, no onion" etc. That would also then fall under shit code and auditing :)
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > While the restaurant preparing "partial" pizzas to ship to coordinated orders is obviously fraud How so? They're making the pizzas the way the customer wants them. The 'objective' tastiness is none of the delivery middleman's business. And there's nothing wrong with offering a bad pizza for $24, as long as the customer knows what they're getting.
  - Beldin 6y ago
    Well, if the restaurant reimburses the customer after, it probably would become a problem. Way around this: private owner places his own orders as customer, pockets profits as owner. That might be legitimate - but remember: if you take legal advice from the Internet, you get what you paid for.
    - hannasanarion 6y ago
      Why does it matter if the owner is reimbursing their non-owning customers? Restaurants do that all the time.
      - ethbro 6y ago
        (IANAL) My gut says coordination would be be evidence of both (a) premeditated intent & (b) knowledge that actions constituted fraud. One could place a personal order (or 100) innocently. One looks substantially less innocent when coordinating with a third party to place orders and transfer money around. While that speaks to the severity of the crime (if one were proven), as you noted, it doesn't in any way impact whether that behavior is a crime at all.
        hannasanarion 6y ago
        But who's defrauding who? If the doordash website says I can buy a dough pizza for $19, then doordash has to get me a dough pizza for $19 when I buy one. No fraud is happening, doordash is fulfilling the requirements of the contract they make with all their customers. If anything, the one who's committing fraud is doordash, because they're putting in "takeout" orders with the restaurant and presenting them as "delivery" orders to the customer.
        ethbro 6y ago
        In the example from TFA, Doordash says you can buy a pizza for $16 and charges you $16. The restaurant menu price is $24, and Doordash pays $24 for the pizza. That's... the starting place. (As screwy as it is) Now, if I order a dough pizza for $16, in coordination with the restaurant, and Doordash pays $24 to the restaurant, and the restaurant gives me a dough pizza, and then the restaurant makes it worth my while, what do we have? Doordash has been paid $16, and spent $24 + (cost of delivery) = (-) SoftBank money The restaurant has been paid $24 and spent ~$1 (cost of dough pizza [1]) = ~$23 profit (minus labor) I paid $16 (let's ignore tip). The restaurant reimburses me for that (me: $0, restaurant: $7) to make it worth my while, and then splits profits with me (me: $3.50, restaurant: $3.50). So at the end, Doordash: -$8 - delivery cost, restaurant: $3.50, me: $3.50. It's the reimbursement of the customer that seems... suspect. The way to ethically monetize this would be for restaurants to target Doordash misprices, and "sell" coupons (a food box, containing only a paper coupon), good for future food orders directly through the restaurants. Then encourage all their customers to buy as much as possible. [1] We'll say we return and recycle the boxes, being environmentally conscious citizens
asdfaoeu 6y ago
Your case is more clear cut because that is a glitch in the website. It seems that in this case Doordash is offering a promotion. Calling that fraud would be like calling taking advantage of reward points fraud.
- tptacek 6y ago
  It gets dicier when the restaurant starts shipping out plain pizza dough.
  - kingkawn 6y ago
    Not if the customer ordered plain pizza dough
    - tptacek 6y ago
      That's not how this works. The glitch is that there's a particular menu-item mispriced by Doordash. You can't just order arbitrary things at arbitrary prices, and when the restaurant takes an order for X and delivers Y, it's taking a step towards making a material false statement to obtain something of value.
  - Beldin 6y ago
    This made me wonder: what if a restaurant puts a pain dough "pizza" for $30 on their menu? Of course, no one would order it. But in this situation, an aggregator could offer it and the restaurant owner could take advantage of that. It smells like fraud, except that every individual step seems legitimate (albeit weird). I'm pretty sure you're allowed to charge ridiculous prices for common goods if you so choose...
    - hhmc 6y ago
      It still requires the aggregator to offer it for less that $30 (at least the cost of dough less). Which, at least in this case, seems to requires a scraping error.
  - 6y ago
Thriptic 6y ago
It doesn't seem like fraud when they are still delivering an actual pizza; that's basically just leveraging a sale. It becomes more dubious when they aren't delivering the finished good.