Deliveroo's refund model is straightforward on paper: if the rider caused the problem, Deliveroo covers the refund; if the restaurant did, the cost is applied to the restaurant's statement. Quality complaints — "food was cold", "portion was wrong", "there was something in it" — arrive with a photo and land in the restaurant column by default, because the photo is read as evidence at the moment of the claim. Nobody at Deliveroo inspects the food, and nobody runs an image check.

Where you see it and where you fight it

Refunds show against the order in the Partner Hub (the Restaurant Hub, on the web and in the app), with the customer's stated reason. From the order you can raise a query. That opens a ticket with partner support; you get a text box and the ability to attach files, and a person reads it.

Two things about Deliveroo's process are worth knowing. First, the window is short, and a query raised after it closes is a query lost regardless of merit. Second, Deliveroo periodically reviews partners whose refund rates look unusual in either direction — a restaurant with a very high refund rate can find its own operation under scrutiny. Disputing bad claims is therefore not just about the money; it keeps your refund ratio honest.

What tends to get a cost reversed

The agent reading your query has a queue. The queries that get reversed are the ones that can be checked in twenty seconds:

  • Your pass photo of the order, timestamped, showing the items and the sealed packaging.
  • A specific observation about the customer's photo — the container is not one you use, the alleged defect is sharper than the food around it, the file was last saved by an editing app, the capture time is before the order was placed. Describe the file, not the person; the evidence guide has phrasing that agents respond to.
  • Any prior message from the customer, especially one that demanded a refund in exchange for not posting a review — see the review blackmail guide.

Keep it under 150 words. Attach the pass photo, the customer's original file and your image analysis.

Checking the photo

Download the customer's image from the Hub rather than screenshotting it, so the metadata survives. Run through the quick visual checks in how to tell if a complaint photo is edited, then let a tool do the part the eye cannot: FraudBite returns a risk score, a heatmap marking the regions that do not match the rest of the image, and a list of detected features, in seconds, as a PDF you can attach to the query.

Treat the score as a signal for your decision. High means look closer and answer with evidence; low, together with a pass photo that shows the mistake, means refund and move on — a genuine complaint disputed badly costs more goodwill than the order was worth.

Habits that shrink the problem

  • Photograph every sealed bag at the pass with the order ticket in frame.
  • Raise queries inside the window, every time the evidence supports it.
  • Log outcomes. A month of logged disputes is what turns a "we sided with the customer" conversation with your account manager into a change.

Deliveroo is a third-party platform; FraudBite is not affiliated with it. Verify current query windows and Hub locations in your own partner account, as interfaces change.