Fake Bookings in Online Food Delivery Business

A Research Paper

PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE SCHOOL

UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS-LEGAZPI

LEGAZPI CITY

BY

Harvy Davis Chua

Introduction:

Food delivery businesses area a popular and fast-growing field nowadays. These businesses

typically thrive in college towns, large cities and other areas where large populations are willing

to pay to have food from restaurants delivered to their offices and address. The basic business

model for this type of business is to approach local restaurants and ask to deliver their food, then

charge a small commission for your company’s profit.

In the Philippines, this is one of the most active businesses nowadays, we have different

companies trying to accommodate this service. Here in Legazpi we also have few, but having

these kinds of businesses also have problems that they may encounter or they are currently

encountering right now, one is what we call fake bookings. Fake Bookings occur when a user is

playing a joke to a rider by ordering some food and letting it be delivered to an unknown

address, or sometimes to a random person’s address. This act makes the rider to pay for your

delivery with their own money, ruining what they can earn for that day. That’s where the

problems lie, how can we stop fake bookings? How can we protect the riders from it?

A lot of riders are just trying to survive by daily basis, so its very important that we find a

solution to this problem.

Methods:

The researcher gathered information through interview, personally and through social media or

Facebook. I interviewed some Food Panda riders who experienced these fake bookings and

asked them what is the impact to them. I also interviewed some users to know what is their take

regarding this problem now. Also asked them to suggest some ways on how to prevent it.

Results:

The researcher found out that fake bookings happen a lot nowadays, the effect is that riders

usually pay for the meal with their own money and leaving them profitless for the day. And the

cause is that the application or software that we are currently using gives you a freedom to

change the delivery address anytime, you just need to pin it in the map shown in the app and by

that you can playfully choose an address where it should be delivered and choosing cash on

delivery method for the payment.

The researcher suggests that addresses must be fixed to a user, where their accounts must be

verified in order to remove the risk of pinpointing to wrong addresses, and the order can be
delivered in the right address. Users should present their ID’s for verification in the app before

they proceed in their order.

The researcher also suggests that cash on deliver payment method must be remove from the app,

in order to prevent the riders from paying it first and then reimbursing it after to the users. They

can choose the debit payment method, or the app must have a digital wallet so that the users can

use that for their orders.

Discussion:

Solving the fake booking problem will help the businesses who were engaged in this type. They

will be more secured when doing a transaction with the user, and the user’s food delivery will be

delivered also in the proper address, avoiding the risk to misroute their deliveries. And the riders

will not be in a risky situation by paying it first and then being scammed later, then ruining their

income for the day.

The limitation of this research is that more financial investment needed in order to implement

new things in the app, like the verification process per user and the digital wallet being

introduced, more capital should be made in order to implement these things.