[kelnos]

> My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds

This has changed over time, though. For the first year or so of Postmates' existence, refunds were easy and near-automatic. It was trivial to get in touch with a support person, and their response to pretty much any complaint was either a refund or a (usually generous) credit. But after Postmates grew beyond a certain point, they got more stingy with refunds, and credit they offered -- if any! -- would be much lower.

I remember the same thing happening with Uber when it was new. Rating a driver under 4 stars would win you an unsolicited email from support, asking what went wrong, with a credit or refund for the ride. That pretty much never happens anymore.

Agree with you on restaurants, though. Restaurants that do their own first-party delivery are almost always better at customer experience and fixing things when something goes wrong. And it makes sense, too: DoorDash and the driver don't care if you end up with a negative impression of a restaurant because the food arrived cold. The consequences for DD are much less than the consequences for the restaurant. And even if you do call the restaurant, there's usually not much they can do, because they're not able to get DD to redo the delivery for free, and have no leverage over DD to give refunds.