'I feel so cheated': Hangry customer on Deliveroo mislabelling NTU Korean stall as halal
Woman was incensed that a food joint in NTU was stated as halal on food delivery app Deliveroo.
PHOTO: Facebook/Complaint Singapore
PUBLISHED ONJune 04, 2022 5:27 AMByAmierul Rashid[UPDATE June 6] Deliveroo reached out to AsiaOne on June 6 that they are taking this case extremely seriously and investigations are ongoing.
"Aside from processing a full refund to the customer, we have taken immediate action to remove the restaurant partner's 'Halal' tag from our platform," said Deliveroo.
The company said it will continue to review their restaurant verification process.
Deciding on what grub to order tends to be based on food cravings but for many, religious obligations do come into play too.
One woman Tiara Nadrina decided to order from KClove Korean Cuisine, a food stall in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) which she said was labelled halal on food delivery app Deliveroo.
Tiara thought nothing of it - after all she had ordered from that same outlet via Deliveroo twice before.
However, she later found out that the food joint is not halal-certified after searching for the stall's name on the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) website.
She posted that she couldn't find any other information online indicating that it is halal-certified.
Halal-certified means a company has gone through the necessary audits to ensure that they are indeed providing halal food.
Halal is an Arabic word that means lawful or permissible. Any food and drink under this category are permitted for Muslim consumption, according to MUIS website.
Tiara was deeply upset and took to the Facebook group Complaint Singapore on Wednesday (June 1) to air her grievances on this matter.
However, a Deliveroo staff she chatted with online told her that the food outlet included "halal" in its display name but the stall did not confirm with the Deliveroo staff if it is indeed halal-certified.
"If they are not halal then why do they mislead people and put their company name as halal?! I ordered twice from them thinking that it is really halal... Please refund my money and get them to remove the word halal from their company name. This is absurd!!!" Tiara said.
She asked for a refund on her two orders and based on a live chat screenshot that she posted, Deliveroo obliged with a total refund of $45.40.
"I feel so cheated and this is disgusting," Tiara added.
The word "halal" has since been removed from KClove Korean Cuisine's Deliveroo page.
When AsiaOne checked on the stall's Foodpanda and GrabFood page, the word "halal" was not there too.
When contacted by AsiaOne, KClove Korean Cuisine responded on Facebook that a representative from Deliveroo was helping them set up for the platform's services but they are "not sure why they have labelled us as halal stall since we did not submit any halal cert".
In the reply, KClove said they are on Grab and Foodpanda platforms but they are not labelled as halal stalls.
And in this particular case, they have already forwarded the issue towards Deliveroo to rectify the mislabelling.
"Most of our customers check with us whether we are halal through Facebook messaging, and we have always been transparent about it, that we are not halal-certified currently," said KClove.
About Tiara's plight, a number of Facebook users agreed that she should feel aggrieved but one suggested that she shouldn't have taken out her anger on the customer service staff.
Tiara acknowledged this and apologised about her tone when she spoke with the customer service that night as "we were already tired and hungry after work and by then the seller shop already closed. I could have phrased my sentences better."
According to one Facebook user, KClove Korean Cuisine was actually halal-certified pre-pandemic.
AsiaOne has reached out to Tiara and Deliveroo for more information.