I'm curious why they would need the owner's permission for listing? I can understand the issues around things like the alleged practice of replacing the businesses' information. But the idea of just having a third-party delivery service acting as a middle-man... The restaurant is still getting paid whatever they charged. I don't understand why they would get a say anymore than, say, a book store regarding me reselling books I bought on eBay.
In this analogy, it would be more like you creating an eBay store called "Strand Books", listing the entire Strand Books' catalog, and then when someone purchases a book from you, popping into The Strand to get the book and shipping it to them.
Except sometimes they're out of the book, and so the customer never receives it. Or you damage the book between the book store and the post office, and they receive a badly damaged book.
The customer is going to be mad at the Strand, not at you. You'd be damaging their reputation.
A middle man is responsible to the consumer. A subcontractor is not. Grubhub does not tell the consumer whether they are acting as a subcontractor or middle man for a particular restaurant. This is deceptive and harms the restaurants who do not subcontract Grubhub.
I can buy this, if the customer is ordering directly from the restaurant and Grubhub delivers that order. Because that's what a subcontractor relationship looks like; you the customer only deal with the primary contractor. But if I order from Grubhub, I am explicitly asking them to be a middle man, no?
No. Just as Amazon and eBay maintain that your transaction is with the third-party seller, not them, Grubhub claim that your transaction is with the restaurant, and the restaurant is responsible for problems. Except when the restaurant didn't subcontract them, but they don't mention this. They can't have it both ways.
Grubhub literally says on their website "Grubhub helps you find and order food from wherever you are. How it works: you type in an address, we tell you the restaurants that deliver to that locale as well as showing you droves of pickup restaurants near you.".
Grubhub literally says 'shows you restaurants that deliver to you', imply the restaurant is delivering, not Grubhub. Furthermore it implies if you order, you're ordering from the restaurant- where Grubhub may have put up that ordering entirely without their consent!
At least you didn't cut off the second half of that sentence. The AS WELL AS there is carrying a lot of weight. As long as the restaurant is offering pickup service, Grubhub is very clear about that offering.
The restaurant may not be offering pickup service in a way they consent to because Grubhub is listing them against their consent. Grubhub isn't being clear that these restaurants haven't consented to orders via Grubhub.
This is just reiterating the first post I responded to, and so I'll respond in kind:
Why does Grubhub have any responsibility to obtain the restaurant's consent? If I pay someone to go to the grocers and pick up some items for me, is that someone obligated to obtain the grocers' permission? Why is this situation different?
If the restaurant is offering pickup service, then to me there is no obligation on any third party to obtain permission to utilize that service and deliver the results to a customer.
Because the service represents the restaurant as actually participating in the transaction. If the food gets delivered cold or the order gets messed up, the restaurant is likely to get bad Yelp reviews which can actually affect business.
> Why would they be confused about a middle-man being present?
In some cases its because GrubHub created a website for the restaurant and they don't make it clear that it's a GrubHub site and not a site operated by the restaurant. If you call the phone number on that site, a GrubHub employee answers as if they are the restaurant.
Because Grubhub makes it sound like they're a delivery service that the restaurants hired. On their front page right now, for example, they say "we tell you the restaurants that deliver to that locale" - that's not an accurate description if Grubhub is the one deciding whether to deliver.
Grubhub uses "pickup restaurants" in its ordering UI to refer to restaurants where the final customer has to go pick up the food, so I don't think many consumers would understand this to refer to restaurants where Grubhub drivers do the pickup.
Because grubhub also marks up food on their website. Everything is a couple dollars marked up versus if you called the order in directly. Imagine opening an electronics store that sells marked up apple devices without any approval from apple, yet convincing customers that you were a genuine authorized seller. Apple would sue you out of existence before the end of the week, and rightfully so.
The only reason why it took this long for gruphub is that restaurants do not have the legal resources of a company like Apple or Grubhub, not because this isn't fraud (it is).
