A COUPLE were charged £63 for a Chinese takeaway they never ordered in an intricate scam which no one knows how was pulled off.
Jason Parker, 24, and his girlfriend received an email from JustEat confirming the huge order from a restaurant they have never heard of on January 11.
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They were baffled by the £63.50 bill for the oriental feast that he had not purchased that was being sent to an address he did not recognise in Edinburgh.
The scammers ordered an extravagant banquet of gyoza chicken dumplings, edamame, king prawn satay on skewers and tofu sweetcorn soup.
And they didn’t stop there – as mixed seafood soup, pork sieuw mai, a salt and chilli mixed platter, salt and chilli king prawn, salt and chilli chips and sweet and sour chicken were also on the menu.
While mulling over the order for the mouthwatering meal, the quick-thinking couple froze their bank account while contacting JustEat to iron out the issue.
But the online delivery service has also been stumped by the scam after assuring concerned customers there had been no data breaches.
Upon looking into the mysterious takeaway, the Scots pair found a string of other people have claimed they have been swindled out of cash for food they haven’t ordered by the same restaurant.
Jason’s partner, who wished to remain anonymous, told Edinburgh Live: “I noticed something had happened last Tuesday when I had received an email notification saying an order had been confirmed.
“I had not placed anything and did not recognise the takeaway or the address it was being sent to.
“I went to freeze my account with the bank and was told to call the fraud team at the bank,” she said.
“After this, I attempted to contact JustEat’s customer service team but it did not appear to be in operation.
“I also tried to phone the actual takeaway itself to say it was a fraudulent order but the takeaway number doesn’t appear to be in operation either.”
The couple explained they had then taken their grievance to Twitter to get in touch with JustEat, but were told by the team there was no data breach on their end.
“They said it was a matter of someone accessing my account, so I was told to contact my bank to recover the money,” Jason’s girlfriend continued.
“What concerns me and what is most relevant, this has happened to over 20 people.”
After delving through reviews online, she found more disgruntled customers had suffered a similar fate this month.
One person explained: “I did not make this order. Someone has hacked my JustEat account and spent £72 on a takeaway to a hotel.
FRAUDULENT ORDERS
“After calling the hotel they say no food deliveries here. And this place says it’s shut down.”
Another wrote: “I don’t know what the food was like because my account was hacked and I didn’t order this food!!”
While a third comment said: “Someone made an order to the restaurant fraudulently through my account, so I tried to contact them to cancel the order.
“However the number doesn’t even ring so had to call my bank and go through the absolute hassle of changing my card details.
“Absolutely ridiculous that the restaurant’s number wasn’t even able to be reached.”
JustEat have now launched an investigation into the disappearing grub, while its fraud experts are understood to suspect the couple’s details were swiped elsewhere.
A JustEat spokesperson said: “Protecting our customers from online fraud is of utmost importance to us and we have multiple security measures in place to protect customer information.
“We do not store customer card details on our website or app and all payments are managed securely by an independent external payment service provider.
“Additionally, our systems screen customers’ login credentials against a list of breaches from all over the web, and we proactively alert customers should they need to change their password.
“We are currently conducting a thorough investigation of this issue to understand the cause and will communicate directly with the customer to resolve the matter.”
Source: The Sun
