Grubhub Adds Their Own Custom Phone Numbers to Listings
https://www.buzzfeednews.comGrubhub adds a custom phone number for each restaurant listings they generate. If someone calls in and orders via this number, Grubhub takes a fee. This number then gets picked up on other listing sites and sometimes even on Google.
Grubhub (which also owns Seamless, MenuPages, Tapingo, and LevelUp) generates a unique phone number for each restaurant on its platform; it appears on the restaurant’s Grubhub or Seamless page and redirects to the restaurant’s own phone line (a restaurant cannot list its own phone number on its Grubhub or Seamless page). The redirect number can also appear higher in Google search results (including the Google panel for that business) than the restaurant’s own line. This leads some customers to call it even if they don’t intend to use Grubhub. Some restaurant owners have also raised this concern about Yelp, which lists Grubhub numbers, according to Vice.
But despite hiding in plain sight for years, that practise is now coming under fire from authorities.
“Most people don’t even realize when they google the phone number for a restaurant, 9 times out of 10, they’re pulling up Grubhub’s forwarding number for that restaurant,” New York City Council Member Justin Brannan told BuzzFeed News. “In peacetime, it’s devious. In wartime, it’s just ugly greed.”
On Wednesday, the New York City Council passed a bill prohibiting platforms from charging for telephone calls in which a transaction did not take place during the state of emergency. It also capped fees that platforms may charge restaurants for orders and deliveries during an emergency.
