Refund fraud statistics for restaurants (2026)

40 lei

A Cluj-Napoca pizzeria refunded 40 lei for an AI-made “burnt pizza” photo, and about three weeks later the same customer sent the identical photo again.

Digi24, 26 November 2025 · OECD.AI Incidents Monitor, 26 November 2025

1–2 a year

…is how many complaints a pancake shop says it used to get. Now it can’t keep up. The platforms call these refunds rare incidents.

Știrile ProTV, 26 November 2025

310,000+

malicious compensation claims intercepted in a year by Meituan’s merchant-side AI, preventing ¥86.71 million in losses. It also flags the same claim photo reused by different users.

Meituan, 9 June 2026

5%

rise in cake-damage complaints reported by Zomato’s CEO, driven by AI-edited photos.

Analytics Insight, 8 January 2026

$26.60

in credits a US customer said he got for a Photoshopped raw-chicken photo. DoorDash’s answer: “not worth a permanent ban”.

TODAY, 20 February 2026

UK

Food-safety consultancy Food Alert says AI is being used to fabricate complaints and to intimidate food businesses.

Startups.co.uk, 16 June 2026

+30%

Glovo’s Romanian partner terms let it charge the restaurant the full cost of an incomplete, wrong or poor-quality order plus a penalty of up to 30% of the product value (§4.1 f). Commission is calculated without deducting refunds (§3.1 ii), and a complaint must be filed within one calendar month (§4.1 g).

Glovo, June 2025

§5.7

Bolt may refund the customer at its own discretion and claim the compensation from the restaurant; partners that keep receiving complaints can be suspended.

Bolt, December 2022

2 weeks

Wolt compensates customers “in its sole, reasonable discretion” out of merchant payouts, and payout errors must be raised within two weeks (EU/Poland version of its merchant terms).

Wolt, 17 April 2026

6%

net profit margin of Romanian hotels and restaurants in 2025, the lowest since the pandemic. At 6%, one refunded order wipes out the profit of about 17 orders.

Revista Biz, 4 August 2026

2.5–3%

of US restaurant operators’ revenue is caught up in disputes with delivery providers: about 20% of their delivery profit, according to the CEO of a dispute-recovery company.

Restaurant Business, 5 April 2024

~30%

of refund claims are fraudulent, by Deliverect’s estimate (a vendor figure).

Deliverect, 15 May 2025

27%

of shoppers in Ravelin’s 2026 survey of 6,282 people admit to abusing refunds (all retail, not only food).

Retail Technology Innovation Hub, 21 September 2026

~50%

of consumers say they use generative AI to help write return or refund claims (2,091 consumers in seven countries, 2026).

Business Wire (Riskified), 22 June 2026

5–9%

more revenue for an independent restaurant from one extra star on Yelp.

Harvard Business School (Michael Luca), March 2016

91% → 55%

is how far state-of-the-art detectors fell when only the edited region was swapped: close to a coin toss. A score on its own is not enough evidence.

arXiv (Nebioglu, Bilgiç, Popescu), 30 January 2026

< 50%

of fake damage in refund evidence was caught by most multimodal AI models tested in FraudBench, while specialised detectors flagged some genuinely damaged items.

arXiv (Yan et al.), 9 May 2026