Bouquets and brunch can be expensive, but some DoorDash users paid extra for their gifts this year. Mina Yi (@cowsmad) posted a video this past Mother’s Day detailing her issues trying to redeem DoorDash’s “Send Mom Flowers” promotion, which charged her an extra $75 instead of deducting it from her purchase.
As of publication, Yi’s video has over 44,000 views on TikTok.
What was the DoorDash Mother’s Day promotion?
“I got scammed by DoorDash on Mother’s Day,” Yi claims as the video starts. “This didn’t just happen to me. This happened to hundreds and maybe even thousands of other people, and I came with receipts.”
The DoorDash promotion was announced on its page on April 25, in a post titled “Send Mom Flowers, Get Up to $75 in Gifts with DoorDash.” It offered DashPass members $75 off a DoubleDash order if they bought flowers alongside it. For non-DashPass members, the offer was $50 off.
The offer applied to “participating merchants,” and the non-flower DoubleDash order had to be from a single retailer of the buyer’s choice. The announcement listed Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and ULTA among DoubleDash options. It also specified that customers needed to add their DoubleDash order to their cart within 15 minutes of adding the flowers.
The fine print of the announcement post does mention a “minimum subtotal” of $40, but this subtotal only applied to one of the other Mother’s Day deals they announced in tandem with this larger promotion.
Mother’s Day mishap
Yi states that she read the full Terms and Conditions DoorDash posted for their Mother’s Day promotion. She wants to clear up some “common misconceptions” about the promotion. Namely, she wants people to know that there isn’t a “minimum spend” amount listed in the Terms and Conditions.
Rather, the Terms and Conditions state that it applies to “qualifying stores,” meaning that if you used the DoorDash app to shop for flowers at participating retailers, the promotion should have worked. Yi says that a friend of hers had trouble with this specific aspect.
“They would make a qualifying floral purchase, then be taken to the DoubleDash page, and it would show you all the qualifying stores for that $75 credit off,” Yi relates. “They would go to a participating retailer, make their basket, go to checkout, and $75 wouldn’t be deducted from the total.”
Yi says that while that issue was “really shady,” what happened to her was “a lot shadier.”
Shady, yet shadier
Yi purchased flowers alongside an order from Ulta. The Ulta page also had the Mother’s Day promotional banner, which she shows on screen. When she went to check out, with the $75 deduction, her total was $16.01. She also shows those receipts on screen.
Then, on Mother’s Day, DoorDash sent her a surprise—and not a good one.
“Today is Mother’s Day. So I ordered the flowers to get delivered today,” Yi says. “And after the flowers and my Ulta order got delivered, they decided to charge my card $74 and 90-something cents.”
She says that the rules of the promotion don’t stipulate having to spend an amount equal or greater than $75 to qualify.
“I guess my specific total came out to be like $74 and 90-something cents,” she explains. “And at the time when I was purchasing, it said my order qualified for the promotion and deducted $75 off. So now they’re going back on their word and charging me an extra $74.91.” She also clarifies that she added everything to her cart within the 15-minute time requirement.
Many such cases
After explaining her personal situation, Yi pulls a tablet out and scrolls through a few Reddit threads where people posted similar experiences.
“This one specifically started two days ago, where people are experiencing the same exact issue as me,” she says, displaying the tablet. “Where they were told that $75 was deducted from the total, would pay the remainder, and at the time of delivery, would charge that extra $75 on top of that.”
She pulls up two other Reddit pages, including one called “Mother’s Day promo scam,” in which the poster explained an almost identical issue. Other Redditors commiserated about their similar experiences in the thread. Another large point of contention with customers was DoorDash’s support response.
“I did receive a refund and a $25 DoorDash credit,” the OP said in an edit. “I only spoke to chat through the app, and they kept ending the chat. The refund came today and I haven’t heard anything from them, they just refunded it.”
Yi recounts DoorDash giving her friend problems as well.
“My friend was on chat support for almost two hours last night, and the best solution they came up with was that they would just cancel their order,” she says. “They were not compensated for their two hours of time trying to get their chat support. They went through 10 agents. Most of the agents just ended up hanging up and ending the chat on them.”
“So, DoorDash support sucks.”
Yi clarifies that she doesn’t believe DoorDash is intentionally scamming all their customers, but criticizes them for not being prepared for a glitch like this.
“If this is a system error for a company that’s as large as DoorDash, this should not be happening,” she says. “Proper support should be in place for when these things do occur.”
She then reveals that she also had a negative experience with DoorDash’s customer support.
“I had no estimated wait time,” she recalls. “I feel like that’s the bare freaking minimum you can give to a customer.”
She finishes the video by asking commenters to share their stories about the promotion and saying she’ll try to reach DoorDash one more time before disputing the charges at her bank.
@cowsmad I was scammed by doordash on Mother’s Day #doordash #doordashmothersday #mothersday #scam
♬ original sound – mina
Conversation in the comments
Commenters were outraged by Yi’s story, and many of them offered up their own experiences with the Mother’s Day promotion
“THIS EXACT THING HAPPENED TO ME,” another person shared. “I order $77 from Ulta, with fees my total was $13.55, my credit card was charged $88.43 and I have screenshots of everything. Support wouldn’t help, theyd end the chat.”
“Literally me,” Yi answered, followed by a crying emoji. “I’m so sorry this happened to you… hope they get their ish together and resolve things for everyone soon.”
On the other hand, some commenters reported that their transactions went well.
“I keep seeing people have this issue but it was completely fine for me!” a commenter said. “I ordered a $10 flower bouquet and then got $75 of grocery from smart and final. It got delivered this morning. No issues for m.”
“I’m glad it worked for u,” Yi responded. “I know it worked for some ppl around me but there are so many ppl that followed the rules and got scammed.”
DoorDash joins the battle
One account in particular drew some attention in Yi’s comment section.
“We’re so sorry this happened,” the official DoorDash account commented. “Please DM us!”
Yi responded with a video. In the video, she tells DoorDash that she assumes they’ll help her now due to her visibility on TikTok. She’s still upset on behalf of all the other people who shared her experience, though.
“How about all the other people in my comments experiencing the same things?” she asks. “The people in the Twitter posts, Reddit threads, Facebook groups. All spending several hours trying to speak to a representative, only for their issues to not be resolved.”
One final update
In her final update video, Yi explains how DoorDash eventually resolved her issue.
The company directed her to their customer support email via direct message. Yi sent an email to customer support, but no one responded within the following 24 hours. When DoorDash DM’d her again, asking if her issue was resolved, she told them no, and received an email and a phone call shortly after.
Yi ended up getting a refund, extra credit for DoorDash, and an extension on her DashPass. However, she expressed that she was hesitant to use DoorDash in the future, and doubted she would have gotten anything back had she not been an influencer.
“Although my problems were resolved, it doesn’t make me feel good, knowing that there are so many people in my comments who are struggling to be heard,” she concluded. “So hopefully DoorDash gets their stuff together, and everyone gets their problems resolved.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Yi via TikTok and Instagram direct message, and DoorDash via email.
Update 12:14pm ET May 14: A DoorDash spokesperson said the company reached out to customers who were charged despite the promotion.
“Over the weekend, a small number of customers reported being incorrectly charged after utilizing our Mother’s Day promo,” they said. “Our team worked quickly to resolve the issue, and the promotion was running correctly the majority of Mother’s Day weekend. We’ve reached out directly to the customers affected to make things right and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
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