The Attorney General for the District of Columbia wasn’t phased by rampant looting and arson in the name of peaceful protest but came totally unglued to learn that Grubhub used deceptive practices. The trendy provisioner might have “harmed consumers during the pandemic by charging hidden fees.” Dirty bleepards were (allegedly) “misleading consumers about them using so-called ‘dark patterns.’”
Alleged deceptive practices
On Monday, March 21, the attorney general for Washington, D.C., Karl Racine, announced he’s filing a deceptive practices action against Grubhub. The food-delivery service, he notes, “grew in prominence over the pandemic as in-person dining shifted to takeout and delivery orders.”
Grubhub responded the same day to quickly assert that “the company supports D.C. restaurants and has sought to work with Racine’s office over the past year to address its concerns.”
Grubhub is “disappointed they have moved forward with this lawsuit because our practices have always complied with DC law,” a spokesperson told the press.
Motion for give me a break, they declare. When problems were called to their attention they were fixed. They’re getting ready to counter-sue for “actual malice.”
“Many of the practices at issue have been discontinued. We will aggressively defend our business in court and look forward to continuing to serve DC restaurants and diners.”
The complaint filed in D.C. Superior Court lists alleged violations of consumer protection laws including lack of transparency about “the fees it charges users.” It seems the “company does not display additional service fees in the way it prominently displays delivery fees.”
Fixed but too late
Racine appears to be personally offended by the practices and wants to make an example of them. Even if they did fix the problems, they did it too late, he argues. “Until recently, Grubhub further obscured these additional fees by grouping them with taxes at checkout.” That’s a definite no-no.
That, he declares, is “a dark pattern,” a “design feature that deceives, coerces, or manipulates consumers into making choices that are either not what they intended, or not in their best interests.” If they printed the fees in big bold letters he would have paid them anyway, and willingly, for the convenience.
Racine is convinced that Grubhub’s advertising practices are “misleading by presenting free online orders and delivery as a universal feature, when only a subset of customers are actually eligible, according to the complaint.” The bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away. The government “also claims that Grubhub harmed restaurant owners with a pandemic-related promotion.”
They supposedly created it to benefit local restaurants. It did. They got more business. The AG is upset because they also “passed most of the costs of the discounts along to the already-struggling restaurants.” In their defense, Grubhub lawyers will argue that without their promotion they wouldn’t be getting the menu price of the goods sold, which Grubhub grabbed a cut of. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. At least under the scheme they both got something.
There were other shady practices too, the AG asserts. “Grubhub allegedly took a number of misleading steps at various times to drive traffic to its platform.” They did things like “listing restaurants on its site without consent.”
The low point was when they created “non-official phone numbers for restaurants in a bid to generate more Grubhub orders and creating non-official websites for restaurants that routed visitors to Grubhub.” That will probably stick if the AG proves it happened.
