[throwaway_2009]

Right, except with an atomic transfer this is impossible.

You can literally stand at the door, check that the food is there, done.

The worst case is that the restaurant scams you and it's not good food. This happens far far less than the middleman scams or pseudo-scams like oversubscribing delivery drivers so that everything is cold or late.

[perl4ever]

I'd like to hear more about the industry of delivering food without prepayment.

[cortesoft]

I mean, almost all pizza delivery was cash on delivery until fairly recently, which is food delivery without prepayment. The driver would tell you how much you owed, and you hand them the cash plus a tip. Yes, sometimes pizza places would have issues with people prank ordering a bunch of pizzas to someone else’s house, but pizza shops had ways to try to mitigate that risk.

If you are really too young to remember this, you can watch “Home Alone” to see some examples of how this worked.

[throwaway_2009]

Right, the fancy delivery apps aren't even ten years old yet. You couldn't even pay by card at all until ~2010 in the UK, I'm sure the odd weird pizza shop might have allowed you to read out details over the phone...?

[perl4ever]

Thanks, but I wasn't asking about history. You can't roll the clock back.

I'm old enough to remember when you could pump gas before paying, and there was actually at least one place that had full service in town (I've never lived in NJ or OR).

[cortesoft]

Umm, you can still order from most pizza places and pay on delivery. You just call them up on the phone.

[throwaway_2009]

Er, basically every takeaway I've ever bought?

Is this a joke? Come to mine and we'll get an Indian in? lol.

[perl4ever]

I'm getting the impression that people are avoiding saying "it's a thing outside the US".

I'm in the US, though, so I was interested if it was a thing in the US.

[cortesoft]

I am also in the US (California) and still sometimes order pizza to be paid with cash on delivery. It is a thing in the US

[random-one]

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