The beauty of yong tau foo is that you get to choose your own ingredients, an absolute godsend if you’re a picky eater.
Sometimes, if the stall uncle or auntie is nice, they may even throw in free ingredients for you when especially nearing closing hours.
However, there’s just some things you’d never want to get as an additional ingredient in your meal, like snake heads, or in this case, worms.
On Sunday (14 August), a woman named Carolyn Cess shared in a Facebook post about her finding worms in the meal she ordered from “Piao xiang mala hotpot, Yong tau fu” on foodpanda.
She added that she “lost her appetite” immediately upon making the discovery.
foodpanda Processes Meagre Refund For the Incident
For her shock, loss of appetite, and hassle from having to order another meal, the foodpanda customer service agent tending to Cess only promises to process a refund for a grand total of…*drumroll*…90 cents.
In a series of photos shared, Cess showed the conversation she had with the customer service agent.
The customer service agent starts off by acknowledging that there is a “foreign object” in her order, and initially offers a compensation of a “$2 store voucher”.
After Cess asks for a full refund, and stated that she had lost her appetite from this, the agent then responds with, “we won’t be able to refund [you]” as “a picture was not provided as proof of the issue.”
Clearly, this was pretty frustrating for the customer as she had already sent in the photos showing two worms that came out of the order.
After reminding the agent of this, he goes to check with, we’re guessing a superior, and then returns to Cess with a counter offer of a “90 cents” refund to be credited to her Pandapay wallet, as well as a “$1 store voucher”.
Two things:
One, did the customer service agent really just repackage and lower the compensation amount from $2 to $1.90?
Two, how did they even arrive at the arbitrary “90 cents” amount after that?
Is there some sort of foodpanda refund calculator for cases of “Insects in Food”?
Do bigger worms = bigger compensation?
We have so many questions.
foodpanda Responds
Clearly exasperated at this point, Cess decides to inform the agent that she would be sending an email to foodpanda.
According to AsiaOne, which spoke with Cess, foodpanda responded with an offer for a refund amount of $4.80 plus a compensation voucher of $1 to “further express how sorry [foodpanda is] over [her] grievances”.
How incredibly generous.
AsiaOne also reached out to foodpanda, and a spokesperson said that they were aware this incident had occurred and that they were apologetic that the customer had an unpleasant experience with her food order.
“Our customer service team has reached out to her to provide a full refund, and we have also cautioned the agent on the proper processes to follow,” said the spokesperson.
Featured Image: Facebook (Carolyn Cess)