Topic: Ordering Indian Takeaway Online

[Kashmiri Bob]

Seem's a popular way to order a curry these days. Not tried it myself, preferring to phone or collect. However, the feedback left by customers ordering on-line is informative, sometimes amusing, occasionally bizarre. So if I type my postcode into an order website (for example, Just-Eat) it comes up with 41 different Indian TAs/restaurants that can deliver to my house.  Many are places I have had curries from.  Here's just a few comments from customers at 2 of them.  Sadly, some of this sounds all too familiar.


"Awful! First and last time we will order from here. The order was wrong, there were two items missing and the quality was poor. I had a king prawn madras with only 3 prawns in it! No popadums either...".

"Naan bread tasted and felt stale, chips were smothered in grease so much the paper they were delivered in was thick with grease. Food wasn

[natterjak]

I've used a few of these sites - just-eat.co.uk, takeaway.com, hungryhouse.co.uk. They all have a similar business model which is to provide the takeaway vendor with a promotional service for which they take a cut of the order value. It has some drawbacks.

First the takeaways quickly caught on to the idea that their chances of a customer in any given area ordering depends on the number of competing restaurants which show up in that area. So perfect solution is to sign up many times using different restaurant names and addresses and fulfill all the orders from the same kitchen. So now you have much more market share and even if people order from you and don't like the food, they could be ordering from you again the next week using one of your other aliases! Not really conducive to high standards... People have reported finding takeaways registered on just-eat using the address of another flat in their own block!

Then there's the incentive to diss the competition by writing fake reviews of their food. And the temptation to cut corners and reduce portion sizes to cover the fee deducted by the website.

Although I've used them many times before I'm coming back around to the idea that I'm better off just phoning a known local establishment with actual bricks and mortar premises, preferably one I know has been in business a good long time.

That said I do find takeaway curries in this area pretty dismal in general and have no qualms about being able to cook way better BIR at home. Not sure why so many folk seem convinced they can never reach the same standard as a real takeaway or restaurant.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Just tried "Just-eat", in response to your post, and it fails to list the three nearest BIRs, listing instead two that have closed and one that is eight miles away.  Unimpressed.  But for me, ordering online is as much of a no-no as ordering by 'phone :  I actually /enjoy/ going there, reading the menu, chatting to the owner while I wait for my meal and so on.  In fact, the last time I was in the Coxheath Tandoori, I ended up trying to service the owner's aquarium pump (at his request, I hasten to add) which had packed up.  Sadly it was of a design with which I was completely unfamiliar, and all I could do was to give offer him contact details for Pelagic Aquatics, the local specialists.

P.S.  Takeaway.com was even worse, as was Hungyhouse.  I'll stick to spotting likely places when I'm out cycling or driving and then returning to them when I am hungry !

** Phil.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Not sure why so many folk seem convinced they can never reach the same standard as a real takeaway or restaurant.

I think, because most of us remember, perhaps through rose-tinted spectacles, the T/As and BIRs of yesteryear, each unique, and most producing mouth-watering flavours that we would have killed to be able to replicate.  Unlike today

** Phil.

[Kashmiri Bob]

Just popped my old postcode in. Manchester. 58 TAs/restaurants in delivery range.  First feedback comment at a place I used to go:


"Shami kebab was like cardboard, madras sauce was sour tasting vegetable rice full of peas and 3 pieces of cauliflower channa badji was nice ordered it for 19.30 arrived at 18.30 would love to know what rubbish the people who rate this take away are used to eating I WON

[Naga]

My last (and it might REALLY be my very last!) T/A order was made through Just-Eat from a well-known branded restaurant. The meal was awful - cold, tasteless (except for raw spices) and entirely unappealing. It got binned, and the experience just reinforced the notion that I can prepare BIR-style food at home that is at least as good as the best T/As and often, much better IMHO.

There is just one T/A-cum-restaurant left in the area that I haven't tried and, after that, I'm done with local providers. All the curries taste much the same anyway as they seem to use a ubiquitous base sauce for everything.

BTW, this isn't a comment on the service from Just-Eat which was easy enough, although I've had to add them to my Spam filter as there seems no way of unsubscribing from their endless marketing emails.

[goncalo]

While in UK, I've only used just eat for kebabs from a turkish ta, the only reason being that (1) I was starving (2) I had no cash on me and just-eats accepts card (fees apply, etc.)

With my move to Ireland, I use Just Eats quite regularly but I can't say I've ever had a truly remarkably b ad experience. Perhaps I was lucky and picked the right restaurants? I surely remember going through reviews, but Cambridge in general is filled with pretty decent, all around BIRs. Getting your order wrong is a common theme that happens in a lot of these TAs. I always call them back as soon as I notice something missing and ask them to deliver it ASAP and ignore their plead to have it as credit for the next time. One thing worth highlighting is that if you want food done in a specific way, don't rely on the field where you can add additional notes to the restaurant. My experience is that the staff ignores this. When I want something, I always call the TA as soon as the order appears as "accepted" on the screen, to highlight it, because then if it comes wrong, I will give them a call back to ask for a new order seeing as they've ignored my request.