Your order arrived wrong, cold, or missing items — what now?
The first five minutes after a bad delivery decide whether you get your money back. Here is a calm checklist, sorted by exactly what went wrong, so you know what to capture and what to say before the moment (and the evidence) slips away.
Before you do anything: don't tidy up
The instinct is to unpack, bin the bag, and deal with it later. Resist it. The bag, the seal, the receipt stuck to it, and the food in the state it arrived are your evidence. Take photos first, then unpack. Thirty seconds now saves a lost claim later.
If it's the wrong item
Photograph what you received next to the order summary on your phone, so the mismatch is obvious. Note the name on the label if there is one — wrong-order mix-ups often have someone else's name or a different restaurant on the bag, which is powerful proof. Report it as "wrong item received," not "I don't like it." You ordered A; B arrived; that is a clean, provable fault.
If an item is missing
Lay out everything that arrived and photograph it together. A picture of the incomplete order is proof of the gap — the platform can see that what's present doesn't match what you paid for. Missing-item refunds are among the easiest to win because the receipt and the photo do all the arguing for you.
If it never arrived
This is the frustrating one: the app says "delivered," but your doorstep is empty. Check the obvious first — a different door, a lobby, a neighbour, the map pin the rider used. If it's genuinely missing, report it immediately while the timestamp is fresh. The platform holds the tracking record; if there's no photo of a handoff, no signature, and no code entered, "marked delivered" is a claim, not proof. Say plainly: nothing arrived, there is no proof of delivery, and you want a refund.
If it's spilled or damaged
Photograph the sealed or failed packaging before opening further. A curry that leaked through a torn bag, a drink that emptied into the container — that's a packaging failure the platform or restaurant is responsible for, not something you caused. Damaged-in-transit is a valid, refundable fault when the food is genuinely unusable.
If it's cold, or unsafe to eat
Temperature is harder because you can't photograph "cold." What you can do is report it immediately (a complaint an hour later is weaker), describe it specifically ("arrived stone cold and congealed"), and note anything visible — a soggy box, melted ice cream, a delivery that took far longer than promised. If a long delay caused the problem, the delay is part of your evidence.
Decide what you actually want
Once you know the fault, decide the fair remedy before you open the ticket: a refund for the one bad item, or for the whole order if it's all unusable. Asking for exactly what you lost is faster to approve than asking for everything plus extra. Then follow the clear-ask approach in how to get a refund.
Who is actually responsible?
It helps to know who owns which problem: the restaurant usually owns what's in the bag (wrong or missing items, how it was packed), the platform owns the delivery promise and the record of it, and the rider is rarely at fault for a kitchen mistake. You don't have to referee this — you complain to the platform — but knowing it stops support from deflecting you to "that's the restaurant's problem." More on that in your consumer rights.
If you want to get quick at this without a real dinner on the line, The Wrong Order lets you practise the whole loop — spot the fault, gather the proof, make the case — on fictional orders that go wrong on purpose.