Every delivery platform says roughly the same thing in its partner terms: if the order was wrong, missing or poor quality because of the restaurant, the restaurant covers the refund; if it was the courier, the platform does. The interesting part is how each one decides which it was — because in practice, the deciding evidence is the customer's photo and the deciding process is fast.
This is a practical map of the three platforms most of our customers deal with. Interfaces change; the logic underneath has been stable for years. Where we are not certain of a current detail we say so, and you should check your own partner portal rather than trust a blog post.
Uber Eats
Who pays. Refunds attributed to the restaurant appear as order error adjustments deducted from your payout: missing items, incorrect items, and a quality category that covers "food was damaged / poor quality". Refunds attributed to delivery are absorbed by Uber.
Where you fight it. Uber Eats Manager has an order-errors area where each adjustment is listed with the customer's reason and, where they attached one, their photo. You can dispute an adjustment from there within the window shown on the adjustment itself. Uber publishes some protections — for example, it will generally not charge you for errors on orders it flags as having been handled correctly at the pass when you have used its order-verification features (photo confirmation, item check-off). Use them; they are your best pre-emptive evidence.
What tends to reverse an adjustment. A specific, factual dispute: the item was in the bag (pass photo), the packaging in the customer's photo is not yours, the photo shows signs of editing, or the metadata does not match the order time. Vague disputes ("our food is always fresh") almost never do.
Deliveroo
Who pays. Deliveroo's partner terms distinguish between rider issues (theirs) and restaurant issues (yours), and it applies refund costs for the latter to your statements. Quality complaints with photos land in the restaurant column by default.
Where you fight it. Through the Partner Hub (Restaurant Hub), where orders carry their refund status and you can raise a query on an order. Deliveroo also runs periodic reviews of partner accounts with unusual refund ratios in either direction — a very high refund rate can trigger scrutiny of your kitchen, so disputing bad claims also protects your standing.
What tends to work. The same as everywhere: pass photos, packaging mismatches, and a documented image check. Deliveroo's support agents are people; a two-line technical explanation with an attached marked-up image gets read.
Glovo
Who pays. Glovo's model is similar: partner-caused issues are charged back to the partner; courier-caused ones are not. In markets where Glovo is the dominant app — Spain, Italy, Romania, Poland — the volume of small-value quality refunds is where most partners feel it.
Where you fight it. The Glovo partner portal lists orders with their refund outcome and offers a way to contest a charge or open a ticket with partner support. Response times vary a lot by country; be persistent and keep it factual.
Notes for Romania. If you operate there, our Romanian guide covers Glovo alongside Bolt Food and Tazz, which have their own flows. The English-language advice above transfers; the specifics do not.
The pattern behind all three
Step back and the platforms look alike:
- The customer's photo is treated as sufficient evidence for a refund at the moment of the claim. No platform runs an image check before paying.
- You are notified after the money has moved, and the burden is on you to dispute.
- Disputes are decided by a human reading a text box, often with a queue behind them. Clarity and specificity win; volume of words does not.
- Time limits are short and strictly applied. A dispute filed a day late is a dispute lost.
That last point is why the operational advice in the fake photo refund guide matters more than any argument you can make afterwards: photograph the pass, save the customer's original file, check it, and answer inside the window.
Chargebacks are a different animal
If a customer pays a delivery app by card and then disputes the charge with their bank, that chargeback lands on the platform — it is the merchant of record. You will see it, if at all, as a refund the platform then tries to attribute to you. Where chargebacks hit you directly is on orders you take yourself: your own website, phone orders, dine-in. That process, with its own timelines and evidence rules, is covered in our chargeback guide.
What to actually send
The platforms do not tell you what evidence they want because their process was not designed around evidence. Send it anyway, in a form an agent can absorb in twenty seconds: what you sent, when, what the photo shows, and why you believe the photo does not depict the order as delivered. The evidence guide has a template and a checklist.
And before you write any of it, check the photo. Running it through FraudBite takes seconds and tells you whether you are about to dispute a real complaint — in which case, refund gracefully and move on — or a doctored one.