A lawsuit has recently been filed against Doordash. The Plaintiff is a merchant that claims that Doordash made customers on the Doordash app believe that they couldn't place an order with them because they were either closed or too far away. The plaintiff in this case, Lona's Lil Eats, which is an Asian restaurant in the St. Louis area has filed suit because they claim that they were actually open and within a delivery distance.
The reasoning here is that Doordash would rather have their customers place orders from Doordash partnered merchants from whom Doordash earns a commission back from each sale.
Lona's Lil Eats, even though they are not a partnered merchant, is listed on Doordash platform. They are one of the many non-partnered merchants listed on Doordash.
Listing non-partnered restaurants on food delivery platforms is nothing unusual and is a practice that all similar type companies do. This is done to give these non-partnered merchants sales data when a partnership is purposed.
This will then put pressure on non-partnered merchants to become partnered merchants which of course comes with a 20 to 30 percent fee. Think of the non-partnered time as a trial run. Most restaurants don't mind the extra free business.
Lona's Lil Eats is claiming that Doordash purposely steered customers away due to the fact that a commission cannot be collected from them since they are not a partnered restaurant. The plaintiff stated that whenever a customer tried to order from them, the app would tell them that Lona's Lil Eats was closed or that the distance was too far away to delivery to.
Lona's Lil Eats demonstrated what they were talking about and used a delivery location 200 feet away from their restaurant to prove their point. In the lawsuit, claims are made that Doordash is using these non-partnered merchants to drive customers to Doordash. Once this is done, Doordash is using deceptive ways to direct customers to partnered merchants.
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