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Just Eat under fire after delivery driver sends unwanted texts to a female customer

A woman has taken to Twitter to call out Just Eat after she received unwanted messages from a delivery driver [Photo: Getty]
A woman has taken to Twitter to call out Just Eat after she received unwanted messages from a delivery driver [Photo: Getty]

A woman has taken to social media to call out Just Eat after receiving unwanted attention by one of their delivery drivers.

Taking to Twitter, Michelle Midwinter shared some of the responses from a live chat with Just Eat after complaining that she had been messaged by the driver who had delivered her take away food.

“Just a snippet of Just Eat’s response to my receiving unsolicited messages from the guy who had just delivered my food,” Michelle wrote.

“Nice one Just Eat! Apart from him using my number in this way surely being in breach of privacy laws etc, they don’t really seem to take it seriously do they??”

Michelle, 33 from Gloucestershire also shared screen grabs of some of the messages she’d received from the delivery driver.

The screen grabs appear to show Michelle’s confusion about who was contacting her and then concern when the driver explained he had just delivered her meal.

He also allegedly asked her to tell him if she had a boyfriend as he didn’t want to make any problems, before telling her he would see her the next time he got her meal to which Michelle replied “I’m literally never ordering from there ever again”

Michelle’s tweet also shared some of the responses she’d received from Just Eat after complaining about the incident.

“The best thing to do is give the restaurant feedback by leaving a review on Just Eat,” the response reads.

“Try and be constructive – we discuss reviews (good and bad) with restaurants and it helps them improve their service. It also helps other people using Just Eat decide where to order from. We know this won’t fix a bad meal but it will hopefully improve things in the future.”

A second response says that the company doesn’t have a complaints department before offering Michelle a £5 goodwill voucher for the “inconvenience.”

To which Michelle had replied: “It’s not “an inconvenience” it’s absolutely outrageous and disgusting behaviour.”

After her response, the Just Eat representative appeared to up the offer to a £10 goodwill voucher.

“We don’t usually do this but I can offer you a goodwill voucher worth £10,” the screen grab indicates.

Since posting the tweet has been retweeted 4.4K times and received over 8,000 likes.

The thread has also received countless messages of support from other users some of whom encountered their own similar experiences.

“Wow. Why aren’t they taking it seriously?” one user wrote.

“In a nutshell:
“This is outrageous behaviour – what are you going to do?”
“Here’s £5”
“Sorry, do you not understand? He has totally crossed the line and the intrusion is utterly unacceptable”
“Ok ok…. £10”.”

“Same thing happened to me and they just said to me ”what would you like us to do?” It’s ridiculous!!” another user added.

“The thing that really bugs me about this shit is that now he knows where you live and if he wanted to be a real creep about it he could,” another user commented.

Michelle later took to Twitter to give an update on the story and reveal that she had been contacted by countless others who had similar stories to share.

“That escalated quickly,” she wrote. “I am astounded by the amount of females who have contacted me saying a similar thing happened to them. This is no longer about my personal experience, this is about privacy law and safeguarding females. This is clearly a huge problem and it needs to stop.”

Does more need to be done to protect customers’ safety? [Photo: Getty]
Does more need to be done to protect customers’ safety? [Photo: Getty]

Speaking to Yahoo Style UK via email Michelle explained that she had been left feeling vulnerable by the incident.

“At first I was shocked at the fact someone could approach me in that way, but that turned to feeling very uncomfortable as I realised this guy had my name, address, and phone number,” she said.

“I have never had an issue with using the service before, and certainly no issue from the takeaway in question.”

Michelle said she initially wrote about what happened on Facebook and was surprised by the response she got from people saying how unacceptable and creepy it was. She also found out that two other acquaintances had received similar messages from the same driver.

It was at that point she decided to get in touch with Just Eat to see if they could intervene on her behalf.

“I didn’t feel comfortable going directly to the restaurant as I was worried about any repercussions. I did not want them to find find out who made the complaint – after all my privacy had already been breached by them and how was I to know they would not tell the driver it was me who filed the complaint? This guy has my name, address, and phone number and if he ended up getting fired over this, who knows what he would do with my information as he clearly had no qualms over using it in the first place,” she continued.

Though Michelle was disappointed with Just Eat’s initial response she says the company have been in touch to say they are looking into things and will be taking action.

“The scary thing is the sheer number of females who have had similar experiences – a few with Just Eat, but generally this issue is much bigger and more widespread than I initially anticipated. We trust companies with our personal details and for them to be used in this way is unacceptable,” Michelle continues.

Michelle hopes that her story will serve to raise awareness about the issue.

“I now realise we have to consider the bigger picture. This is no longer about my personal experience, this is about every single female who has been victimised in this way by someone from a company we put our trust in,” she tells Yahoo Style UK.

“How is it thought to be acceptable that our personal data is used in this way? What are companies doing to safeguard our information? Are people not given proper training regarding this sort of behaviour? How in today‘s world can we still be looking at this type of behaviour?”

Commenting on the incident a spokesperson for Just Eat told Yahoo Style UK: “The safety and wellbeing of our customers is extremely important to us and we were deeply concerned to hear about this incident. Whilst the restaurants on our platform are independent from the Just Eat business, we hold ourselves to high standards and in line with these, we would expect all drivers associated with our restaurant partners to act responsibly and respectfully at all times.”

“This driver has acted in a way that does not represent Just Eat and our core values. We are investigating this with our restaurant partner and are also speaking to this customer offline and if the customer decides this is a criminal matter and reports it to the police, we will of course assist the police with any investigation.”

“Along with our restaurant partners we take the safeguarding of customer data extremely seriously. We share information with our restaurant partners solely for the purpose of facilitating delivery and are continually reviewing our policies and practices to ensure they are robust.”

Regarding the handling of the customer’s initial complaint the spokesperson continued:

“We are appalled by the way this was handled when the customer initially made contact with our customer care team. This lacked empathy and does not reflect our policies or the way Just Eat would expect something like this to be dealt with.”

“We have established procedures for dealing with customer complaints including escalations and compliance teams who will step in if an issue is not resolved satisfactorily on first contact. We are looking at our procedures to understand why incorrect and inappropriate information was given out to the customer on this occasion. We have highlighted this with our Customer Care Senior Management team, who will review the incident, and ensure appropriate action is taken to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

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