What happens if you’re not home to receive a delivery?
The delivery rider might leave it at your doorstep, or with the security officer if you live in a condominium.
One cafe, however, took a slightly different approach when their customer missed their delivery.
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They threw it in the trash, took a picture of it, and sent it to the customer.
Desert Café Drew Flak After Sending Image of Discarded Pastries
A woman had a rather unsavoury experience with a cafe after her surprise birthday gift ended up in the bin.
Speaking to Stomp, the woman, Jasmine, said her colleague had ordered éclairs from L’éclair Pâtisserie, an éclair specialty store.
She had arranged for it to be delivered to Jasmine’s condominium.
It was meant to be a birthday surprise for the woman, and so Jasmine didn’t know a thing about it.
When the cafe’s deliveryman arrived at Jasmine’s condo, however, he was unable to contact her via her intercom.
So he called her multiple times, specifically “four times in 11 minutes”, but to no avail.
Jasmine missed the calls as she was visiting her mother at the hospital.
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Here, you’d expect the delivery driver to leave the eclairs at the guard house, right? I mean, what else could he do? Throw it in the bin?
“Next thing I know, I received a message from my colleague, who apologised and informed me about my gift being disposed into the rubbish bin by the deliveryman,” Jasmine said.
“The deliveryman later shared me with that he had been instructed by L’éclair to do so.”
Jasmine’s colleague, the one who ordered the gift for her, said she then received a photo showing her colleague’s gift in the trash.
The message stated that the cafe would be disposing of the éclairs as they were unable to reach both Jasmine and her colleague, even though they tried for 15 minutes.
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They added that this course of action was stipulated in their terms and conditions, and that there would be no re-delivery.
“This is indeed a ‘surprise’ on my birthday!” Jasmine told Stomp.
“I just wanted to make people aware about making surprise deliveries, so that they don’t receive such disappointment and a picture of their birthday gift being thrown into the bin on their birthdays.
“L’éclair could have at least asked my colleague, who I’m sure would not mind paying the re-delivery fee, compared to the amount paid for the éclairs.
“They didn’t even apologise for throwing the item away!” Jasmine said.
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So, what does the cafe have to say about the matter?
Disposed to Reduce Risk of Contamination
In response to queries from 8days, L’éclair Pâtisserie explained they only discard pastries under two conditions:
- They’ve “exhausted all reasonable means to contact the recipient or the sender”
- The delivery driver “does not accept the items for his personal consumption”
According to the cafe, the deliveryman could not reach anyone via Jasmin’s condo intercom, and the security guard had not allowed him to hang the delivery at the recipient’s door.
The deliveryman also couldn’t consume it himself, as the pastries were not halal-certified.
So the cafe instructed the deliveryman to dispose of the pastries, to reduce “the risk of contamination/spoilage”.
To be fair, this is stated on the cafe’s website:
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L’éclair Pâtisserie claims this is the first time they’ve discarded a delivery, as their recipients are usually reachable and undelivered orders are given away to delivery drivers.
But why did they send a photo of the discarded gift?
The cafe explained it was “necessary” to send a photo to “prevent any allegations of no-show or bad faith on the driver’s part”.
L’éclair Pâtisserie called for “customers’ understanding” as they “engage a third-party service for [their] deliveries and… are unable to request drivers to wait for every recipient to collect the items”.
So, if you miss a delivery from L’éclair Pâtisserie, you can arrange for a re-delivery, but you’ll have to cough up some extra cash.
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What do you think? Do you think the cafe was right to throw away the undelivered pastries?
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