In the UK, millions rely on food delivery apps for convenience, but what we are actually buying into is a systemic failure of service and a legally engineered ethical crisis. This is not just about a missing portion of chips; it’s about corporate negligence that simultaneously rips off consumers and exploits vulnerable workers.

We demand the UK Government take urgent legislative action to compel Just Eat, Uber Eats, and Deliveroo to operate under a framework of accountability. The current system is rigged for corporate profit and against public interest.

1. Systemic Refund Denial (The Blame Game)
When your order arrives late, cold, or incomplete, the platforms employ calculated liability arbitrage. We are trapped in a customer service vortex where the app blames the restaurant for the food quality, and the restaurant blames the app’s self-employed courier for the extreme delay. These platforms use their terms and conditions to create contractual ambiguity, intentionally denying genuine claims and forcing honest consumers to resort to chargebacks or Section 75 claims with their banks—a proof that the internal resolution process is broken.

2. The Exploitation Loophole: Your Cold Dinner is Subsidized by Illegal Labour
The precarious “self-employed” status of delivery riders allows platforms to evade responsibility for providing basic employment rights like minimum wage, sick pay, and holiday entitlement. This intense pressure to earn per drop, not per hour, creates a demand for the cheapest, most desperate labour possible, fueling widespread illegal account sharing.

Verified reports confirm that platforms have offboarded thousands of accounts due to this illegal sharing, which often involves undocumented illegal migrants—many housed in asylum accommodation—who are then underpaid, overworked, and operate in a shadow economy with zero recourse. These vulnerable individuals become the targets of immigration crackdowns, while the multi-billion-pound platforms profit from the cheap, disposable labour pool that the system itself created.

We refuse to let our convenience be funded by human exploitation, illegal immigration and structural irresponsibility.

We call on the UK Government to immediately implement the following actionable solutions to protect consumers and uphold ethical standards:

1. Mandated Full Refunds and Liability Shift
Enact legislation to hold delivery platforms legally responsible for the outcome of the entire delivery process. This must include mandatory, auditable, and immediate full refunds for verifiable service failures (e.g., extreme lateness, food arriving cold or incomplete), shifting the burden of proof away from the consumer.

2. Close the Exploitation Loophole
Take definitive steps to legislate a proper "worker" status for riders, guaranteeing basic rights like minimum wage and sick pay. Furthermore, impose severe financial penalties on any platform found to facilitate or structurally enable illegal account sharing and the exploitation of vulnerable workers.

3. End Predatory Algorithmic Batching
Introduce regulatory oversight and limits on algorithmic practices, such as aggressive order batching, which compromise food freshness, rider safety, and guarantee service failure.

4. Penalise Evasion and Unresponsiveness
Introduce significant fines and regulatory action against platforms that deliberately delay, ignore, or obstruct valid consumer complaints and refund requests, thus ending the systemic practice of liability arbitrage.

By signing this petition, you are demanding that the UK government stops allowing these giants to profit while evading all social and legal responsibility. We demand fairness, integrity, and accountability. Sign now to end the era of cold dinners and cold ethics.