Consumer columnist and West Hartford resident Harlan Levy has more than 20 years of experience writing stories about everyday experiences that anyone could encounter.

By Harlan Levy

Most times it’s easy to get refunds for items you receive that aren’t what you ordered online – like returning stuff from Amazon is just a short trip to Whole Foods.

But what happens when you get the wrong food order delivered?

Here’s my tale of the birthday party we threw at our house for our son (A.L.) last Tuesday, including his wife and two toddlers. The problem was that he plays tennis on Tuesday night and needed to be at the court by 7 p.m., and the next day was the 5-year-old’s first day of school, so they all needed to go home for the kids’ early bedtime. We therefore agreed to eat at 5:30 p.m.

“I thought to make our grilled chicken dinner [always delicious the way I grill it] more exciting,” my wife said, “we would order a special side dish from a local restaurant.”

When we mentioned that we had just eaten at Salt + Lime, a new Mexican restaurant in town, and that we liked the Mexican street corn best, she said that A.L. loves street corn.

But because we were running late we had no time to pick it up. So, we decided to have it delivered while I grilled the chicken, and my wife cooked all the side dishes.

My wife looked up Salt + Lime online and discovered that we had to order from Toast. So we ordered two orders of street corn and their particularly tasty chips and salsa.

Our son and his family couldn’t get to our house until 5:45, just as a DoorDash delivery man arrived, giving us two bags filled with salsa and chips. The other had food that wasn’t Mexican street corn: a salad and a quesadilla.

My wife told the delivery man that we were not going to accept it, since it was not the order we had paid for – at the price of $46 plus the $8 delivery charge. As for getting a refund, he had no clue what to do and left with someone’s order.

We called Salt + Lime, and the hostess asked if we could come over right away and pick up two new orders of street corn. But we couldn’t do that since our guests had just arrived.

Our tech-savvy son then took over the search for how to get a refund. He explained that since my wife had ordered the dish from Toast.com, but DoorDash had delivered the street corn that the restaurant had prepared, the question was which party had we actually paid. And we needed to know which of the three parties had made the error.

Meanwhile, we boiled some regular corn and sat down to eat, with A.L. telling us he didn’t really like street corn anyway.

After everyone had left, my wife searched in vain for phone numbers for Toast and DoorDash. She then called Salt + Lime and spoke with Chris, a manager. He surmised that there were three orders that had come in at the same time. The hostess had apparently handed the wrong bag to the DoorDash guy. Oddly, the restaurant had not received any calls about getting our street corn.

So, obviously, somebody preferred our order. Ha! He suggested we come over and get two orders of street corn right away.

“I told him we were no longer interested in corn, Mexican street or otherwise,” my wife said.

Chris admitted that he had no idea how we could get a refund, and he proposed that the next time we came in he would make sure we got two order of street corn on the house and a small discount on our meals. That is satisfying, especially since we found on our credit card notice that the $46 charge went to the restaurant.

As my always-ready-to-please-our-kids wife put it, “The best-laid plans of mice and moms (and Mexican street corn) can often go awry.”

Getting refunds

In the search for a refund we found a customer service number for Toast (617-682-0225) and had a civil chat with a Toast representative, who told us that to file a complaint and ask for our money back we had to email [email protected]. I did do that. Also, if you search for central.toasttab.com you’ll find your refund from Toast actually comes from DoorDash and, on that central.toasttab site check out DoorDash’s refund reason chart.

If you want to get a refund directly from DoorDash: Find the online order. Click to open the order for details. You’ll see a “Request Refund” option near the top, next to “Dasher Feedback.”

Now you know.

NOTE: If you have a consumer problem, contact me at [email protected] (“Consumer” in subject line), and, with the power of the press, maybe I can help.

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