If you're gearing up for takeaway delivery be warned some restaurants are allegedly cooking up extra charges.
Pizza (Photo by Alan Hardman on Unsplash) Photo: Photo by Alan Hardman on Unsplash
An investigation by advocacy group Consumer NZ found some pizza joints were tacking extra costs on menu items for delivery, despite also charging a delivery fee.
Jon Duffy from Consumer NZ said his team noticed there was a big difference between delivery and pickup prices.
"What we've discovered, when we've had a close look at this, is that particularly when you're ordering online, if you go into let's say Pizza Hut's website and you select pickup...you'll be charged one price...if you select delivery rather than pickup, that pizza rises in cost...and then there's a delivery charge on top of that."
A meatlovers pizza was $15.39 pickup and $18.49 delivery, he said.
While you were told the delivery was $7.99, in actual fact, with the difference in price, it was closer to $11, he said.
"We think that's misleading."
The more you bought, the higher the delivery premium was, he said.
"How can companies get away with saying delivery costs $7.99 when actually if you elect delivery it costs quite a lot more than that to get the product delivered?"
Dominos did something similar, although it made some amendments after being contacted by Consumer NZ, Duffy said.
"KFC are doing it, Taco Bell is doing it, Carl's Jr and we also see similar behaviour with some of these third party delivery services like Uber Eats, Deliver Easy and Menulog."
Duffy said the fundamental difference with third party deliver services was that customers would expect some ticket clipping along the way.
"The issue here is transparency, people need to know what component of what they're paying, what the total price they're paying is, is delivery."
Pizza Hut did not get back to Consumer NZ when it was contacted.
Consumer NZ would be referring the matter to the Commerce Commission.