On delivery platforms, part of your revenue never reaches you. A customer reports a missing item, an order arrives late, a dish is deemed not as described: the platform refunds the customer and passes all or part of the amount on to your payout. Taken one by one, these adjustments seem minor. Added up over a month, they weigh heavily on your margin.
The problem isn't just the amount. It's mostly that these refunds are scattered: they appear in each platform's statements, with their own vocabulary, often several days after the order. As a result, many restaurant owners only see them at the end of the month, too late to act.
The most common types of disputes
Each platform has its own categories, but the same reasons come up everywhere:
- Missing item: the customer says an item wasn't in the bag.
- Incorrect order: wrong dish, wrong option, wrong size.
- Delay: order delivered well after the announced time.
- Quality: cold dish, spilled, damaged packaging.
- Order not received: the customer claims they were never delivered.
- Cancellation: order cancelled after preparation.
Some reasons are on you (preparation error), others on the courier (delay, spilled bag), others on the customer. That's precisely why they need to be categorised: you don't fix a kitchen problem the same way as a delivery problem.
Step 1: capture every adjustment as soon as it comes in
The first rule is simple: don't discover anything at the end of the month. Every refund should be visible the same day, linked to the original order.
Two ways to do it:
- Manually: check each platform's restaurant portal every day (Uber Eats Manager, Deliveroo Hub…), log the adjustments in a spreadsheet and match them to the tickets. It's doable at low volume, but time-consuming and prone to oversights.
- Automatically: an order centralisation tool receives the platforms' adjustments in real time and links them to the order. With Pepprio, every Uber Eats and Deliveroo dispute comes in within a minute, categorised by reason.
Step 2: group by reason, platform and time slot
An isolated refund doesn't tell you much. A series tells you a lot. Group your disputes:
- by reason: if "missing items" dominate, the problem is probably when the bag is closed;
- by platform: a clear gap between two platforms may come from the couriers or from how the menu is set up;
- by time slot: disputes concentrated on the Friday-night rush point to an organisation problem;
- by product: the same dish coming up often (forgotten sauce, misread option) deserves a fix in its recipe card.
Set yourself an alert threshold per reason, for example a percentage of orders above which you investigate. Pepprio lets you define these thresholds and get alerted automatically when one of them is exceeded.
Step 3: identify the disputes worth contesting
Not all refunds are justified. A dispute is worth contesting when:
- you have proof the order was complete (ticket, check before departure);
- the reason doesn't match reality (delay blamed on the restaurant even though the order was ready on time);
- the same customer keeps filing claims (see our article on refund fraud).
Contest deadlines and procedures are set by each platform and change over time: check them in your partner terms and contest quickly. The older a dispute, the harder it is to defend.
Step 4: contest with concrete evidence
An effective contest is short and factual:
- the order number and time;
- the reason being contested;
- the evidence: time the order switched to "ready", bag check, photo if you take one;
- what you're asking for (cancellation of the deduction).
This is where a clean history makes the difference. When your kitchen display records the time the order switched to "ready" and the platform was notified automatically, you have a time-stamped element to answer a delay dispute. In Pepprio, order disputes are included in the Menu Prestige plan.
Step 5: fix the cause, not just the symptom
Contesting recovers money. Fixing the cause stops you losing it. A few simple levers:
- a bag-closing checklist (sauces, cutlery, drinks) displayed at the packing station;
- clear recipe cards for dishes with options;
- a "ready" status sent automatically to the platform so the courier arrives neither too early nor too late;
- a monthly review of the dispute rate per location and per brand.
What about accounting?
Refunds must appear clearly in your accounts: they explain the gap between your sales and the platforms' payouts. Every month, export the list of disputes and refunds, matched to the payouts, for your accountant. Pepprio provides these exports as CSV, ready for the main accounting software.
In short
- Capture every adjustment the same day, linked to its order.
- Group by reason, platform, time slot and product to see trends.
- Contest quickly, with time-stamped evidence.
- Fix the cause to bring your dispute rate down for good.
To go further: centralise your Uber Eats and Deliveroo orders and reduce the cancellation rate in delivery.