For Amigos Restaurant owner Owen Langton, signing up to UberEATS means an end to expensive prank calls.
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The Wollongong restaurant used to offer home delivery and Mr Langton said it wasn’t unusual to get stung by people ringing up and placing prank orders.
“We’d get that when we did home delivery – you’d drive out there with a $100 order and they’d go ‘no, we didn’t order it’,” Mr Langton said.
“So it was just someone being an idiot and calling up.”
Mr Langton said “there’s none of that rubbish” with UberEATS because food is ordered through an app linked to a credit card –pranksters could still place an order, but they’d be paying for someone else’s food.
The Uber food delivery service launched in Wollongong at 10am on Wednesday and is the third in the region, following on from Menulog and Deliveroo.
More than 25 restaurants have signed up to the app, which will deliver from Corrimal to Figtree between 10am and 10pm.
Mr Langton said it was a cheaper and more efficient alternative to providing Amigos supplying its own home delivery service.
“We get a lot of phone calls each week asking if we do home delivery, because it’s hard to get a car park around here to come and pick up takeaway,” he said.
He reckoned it was a win for the customers’ stomachs as well.
“It broadens everyone’s horizons a bit when it comes to the choices they have,” he said.