How do I use a delivery platform’s internal complaint system?
Restaurant operators in Europe have a formal channel into a delivery platform that has nothing to do with their account manager, and almost none of them use it. Article 11 of Regulation 2019/1150 requires platforms to run an internal complaint-handling system that is “easily accessible and free of charge for business users” and that ensures “handling within a reasonable time frame”. It accepts complaints about the platform’s own conduct, not just about broken software. That is a different instrument from a support ticket and it produces a different kind of answer.
What can I actually complain about?
Three categories, and the third is the one worth knowing.
The system must accept complaints about alleged non-compliance by the platform with obligations under the regulation, about technological issues relating directly to the service, and about “measures taken by, or behaviour of, that provider which relate directly to the provision of the online intermediation services”.
That last category covers decisions, not faults. Being closed by the platform, being restricted, being dropped from a programme, being ranked in a way the published parameters do not explain. These are not bugs and a support desk will not treat them as such, which is exactly why the separate channel exists.
How is it different from raising a ticket?
A ticket asks somebody to fix a thing. A complaint under this article asks the platform to account for a decision, and the platform is obliged to consider it and follow up.
There is also a reporting consequence that works in your favour. Platforms publish information on how their complaint systems perform, which means complaints are counted somewhere. A ticket that gets closed unresolved leaves no trace. A complaint does.
Foody, for example, describes its Internal System in its partner terms, provides it free, covers “conduct or measures of the Company related to the Services that affect the Partner and its activity”, requires the complaint to describe the issue “with reference to specific details”, and undertakes to answer in writing “no later than 30 working days from its receipt”.
What should the complaint contain?
Specifics, because vagueness is the standard reason these go nowhere, and because terms often require it explicitly.
Name the listing, the dates, the measure and the effect. “Our Nicosia branch was not orderable between 19:10 and 23:40 on 14 and 15 August, no statement of reasons was received, and the listing was restored without explanation” is a complaint. “We keep having problems with availability” is a conversation.
The dates are the part restaurants cannot usually supply, because a portal shows a state now and not a history. That has to be solved before the complaint rather than during it, which means somebody observing the storefront on a schedule and keeping the timestamps. Kitchain (kitchain.co) is doing that while the complaint is still hypothetical.
How long do they have to answer?
The regulation sets a standard and not a number: handling within a reasonable time frame, proportionate to the importance and complexity of the complaint.
Individual platforms then commit to their own periods in their terms, and those are the ones you hold them to. Read your platform’s clause before you file, and quote the period back in your first message so the deadline is on the record from the start.
What happens if the answer is unsatisfactory?
The next step is mediation, and the platform has already had to name the mediators.
Article 12 requires platforms to identify “two or more mediators” in their terms, with whom they are willing to engage to settle disputes out of court, expressly including complaints that could not be resolved internally. So the escalation path is written down in advance, in a document you already have.
One exception to know: the mediation obligation does not apply to platforms that are small enterprises. For the delivery platforms operating at national scale in Europe, that exception is unlikely to be in play.
Is it worth the effort for a single outage?
For one, rarely. For a pattern, yes, and the distinction is the whole point.
A single incident is easy for a platform to absorb as an apology. A complaint that shows the same failure eight times across a quarter, with dates, is a different document, and it is the only version that changes anything commercially. Which means the work that makes this channel useful is not the writing. It is having been counting all along.