GrabFood denies playing favourites based on commissions

Grab Malaysia has apologised to its restaurant partners after it came in for heavy criticism when burger outlet Burgertory claimed that it was being discriminated against on the basis of commissions.

Grab Malaysia Managing Director Sean Goh said in a statement today that his company would like to address the misconception.

"We do not turn off any of our stores/restaurants (delivery availability) based on commissions.

"Secondly, during rainy days, or when there is a lack of delivery riders in a specific area, we automatically reduce the service distance to ensure that we can maintain our service levels," he said. 

Once the availability of delivery riders recovers, Goh said that the service distance would resume to normal although occasionally this may result in stores being unavailable in a nearby location but available in a further area. 

"For example, customer A may reside in Bangsar but only see restaurants available in Petaling Jaya, because we have insufficient delivery partners within the Bangsar area at that specific time," he said.

"Thirdly, during festive seasons where some restaurant partners may be closed, we practise a precautionary 'temporary pause' based on feedback from delivery riders who cite that a restaurant is closed despite being available on our app.

"This is done to ensure we do not disappoint customers who may continue to order from restaurants that have not updated their operating hours especially during the festive season. Such was the case experienced by this specific restaurant partner."

Goh (below) was referring to Burgertory which had posted on Facebook yesterday that it was really disappointed and upset over its partnership with GrabFood.

"We have been onboarded to GrabFood for more than a year now, and we have been a cooperating partner. Recently we found out that GrabFood has been very non-transparent in their assignation of restaurants' availability in terms of radius," it said.

Burgertory, which operates an outlet in SS15, Subang Jaya, said it had received a lot of complaints from customers about GrabFood not showing the availability to deliver within a reasonable distance, and it thought it was due to the GrabFood system that is set within a specific distance in each area.

However, after reaching out to GrabFood merchant support, Burgertory said it was told that their restaurant availability status was turned off "due to differences in commission rate by different restaurants, which means restaurants that signed a higher commission rate with them will be given priority and 'be available in more places'."

Burgertory said it was very upset and escalated the issue to a GrabFood manager, only to be told that GrabFood will allow restaurants with a larger "sales bucket" to appear in more places.

"If that's the case, it's discrimination against small businesses or any businesses with a menu selling items at a lower price. We gave feedback to them that this is not acceptable and the manager promised to get back to us after discussing with the team. It's been a week and we have heard nothing from them," it said. 

Burgertory's complaint was echoed by a number of other businesses in the SS15 area.

Goh apologised for this, saying that the information given by the GrabFood support staff was not accurate.

"We note that the information provided by our support staff was inaccurate, and apologise for the heartache and impact on our restaurant partner.

"Prior to the Hari Raya holiday period, we sent out multiple communications (emails and SMS) to remind our restaurant partners to update operating hours and how to easily reactivate their restaurants in case of a 'temporary pause'. 

"In this case, we apologise that we were not attentive enough to ensure our partner received and acknowledged our communications," he said. 

In view of the Covid-19 outbreak and the movement control order (MCO), Goh said Grab Malaysia empathised with its merchant partners whose incomes had been affected due to the restricted operating hours, and now have to rely on delivery services to generate income.

"We are continuously looking at different initiatives to help drive demand for them, such as our Local Heroes and Grab Small-Biz Relief Fund which this specific partner was also a part of, but will strive to balance this with the need to ensure we continue to uphold our highest service level.

"We welcome any partners with queries on this to reach out to us directly so we can address your concerns," he said.

 - Mkini