What am I paying for? Caviar Fees Explained

Caviar is a food delivery service that was launched in San Francisco but now is offered across dozens of metropolitan cities. The company works very similarly to other food delivery apps as you probably know where you use the app to place orders from restaurants in your area. The list of restaurants available are seen through the app and you can sort them based on the type of food you’re looking for. Once you view the menu from within the app and see pictures of the menu items, you place your order and pay with a debit or credit card.

All of the payments are conducted within the app so you don’t have to deal with cash upon delivery. A courier will head to your favorite restaurant to pick up your food and deliver it to your door. The price you pay for certain foods might be higher when you order through the service than what you would pay for that same dish were you in the restaurant.

Why did I get charged an extra $8.99, what is it for?

With the service you pay a delivery fee for the convenience. The company doesn’t provide exact numbers on the website for the delivery fee only saying that it ranges based on travel time and other associated costs for each partner restaurant. According to users though the general range of fees is between $1.99 and $8.99.

Are there other hidden fees I’m being charged for this that I’m not aware of?

In addition to this fee the company adds a service fee of 18% on all orders.

Above and beyond that you have the option to add a tip to your order for the courier before it arrives. On Android the maximum amount of tip is $3 and on other phones it’s $5.

Can I refute fees related to additional fees?

There are additional fees as mentioned especially for specific partner restaurants. You do have the option of refuting the charges after they have been made through the app, but in most situations you have agreed to pay whatever the final amount is by way of your user agreement.

What can I do if I was incorrectly charged a fee?

If you were incorrectly charged a fee and have tried to fix it with Caviar through their regular customer service methods, but they still haven’t helped you or solved the problem you have two options.

The first is to go through a small claims court. If you choose to go through small claims court you will be responsible for generating a demand letter, sending it to the company, following the requirements for your state as it relates to the necessary paperwork, then filing that paperwork with your court, officially serving the company, paying any small claims court fees, and going to a hearing. That sounds like quite a headache not to mention the fact that your case simply might not qualify because the amount of money that you’re asking for is too low. Thankfully there’s a second option.

The second option is to use consumer arbitration. Using consumer arbitration, a legal option outlined in your user agreement with caviar, we make it easy. Tell us what happened and how you want the company to fix it and we will generate your legal documents and send them to the company. The company may or may not solve the issue right then and there. If they don’t you can move on to consumer arbitration which uses a neutral third-party arbitrator from the American Arbitration Association to settle the issue.