Caviar - Order Food Delivery

Caviar used to be a great app. Top quality restaurants, working app, good service. But they recently merged with DoorDash which I have found to be a notoriously worse app. Since the merger, the app seemed to change and your delivery drivers are now from “Dashers”. When you order now and have an issue and try to chat Caviar sometimes their servers are down or you can’t get a hold of them. Your left to call the restaurant who may tell you your food has been ready for a half hour but DoorDash/Caviar hasn’t picked it up and is unreachable right now. Typical DoorDash problems. Although the app needs work and the DoorDash merger is disappointing. When I finally have been able to reach the company and explain various issues. Caviar does issue refunds and credits. This is a positive that some apps like UberEats or Postmates rarely provide. Caviar’s credits/refunds are close to the high level of Seamless/Grubhub. Only reason Seamless/Grubhub are better in this area is refunds and credits can be issued automatically in the app with ease if you run into issues. Caviar, as mentioned above can be difficult to reach and requires more explanation. Ultimately if the Caviar app improves the accessibility of their customer service and they continue to provide credits, I would consider changing my review back to 5 stars. On the other hand, if I keep running into these app issues or if they stop providing credits and refunds for issues I would lower the rating. I’m on the fence.

They have such a great selection of restaurants but service is SO unreliable! I have ordered maybe 5 times through them and the last three have all been really frustrating. The last time I kept calling saying that the driver’s location on the map was not updating and the estimated delivery time kept getting pushed back. The customer service people would just read the estimated delivery time and disconnect the chat without ever reaching out to the driver. Two and a half hours after my food had been picked up and still not delivered, I finally figured out that the driver had car issues and the order was cancelled (3+ hours after being placed). This same type of situation has happened two times other times with the driver having car issues after picking up my order and getting here super late with food that has been sitting out in a car for at least an hour after being picked up, and customer service just doesn’t really do anything to figure it out or get a replacement order sent. I get that car issues happen, but three times in a row with this app isn’t a great track record considering that this has NEVER happened with competitor apps. I was really excited when I found Caviar because of the really great selection of restaurants, but I ended up deleting my account after this last time.

I’ve been using this app for quite a while now, and although it’s very convenient and has great, high quality options, there are a couple things that I can’t stand. There have been countless late nights where I’ve ordered something on Caviar, and after waiting for 45 minutes, I’ll get a notification that my order has been canceled because the restaurant that I was ordering from is no longer available. It would be extremely helpful to have each restaurant’s hours posted somewhere that is easily seen by users. Also, this app is almost unusable after 10:30pm because almost all the restaurants are no longer available even when they haven’t actually closed yet and I can still order from them using other apps such as UberEats. Another small gripe is that the delivery time estimator is extremely off. Delivery times for each restaurant are usually at least 10 minutes underestimated and even after ordering delivery times change drastically, from 25-35 minutes to 45-55 minutes. Once the order has been picked up, it hilariously overestimates the time it will take to get to my location, often claiming that a two block distance will take 8 minutes to traverse. Not the biggest deal, I admit, but it can definitely be confusing when you first download the app. However, my overall Caviar experience has been a positive one and I truly appreciate the high quality of the restaurants provided. Keep up the good work and hopefully you guys will have some time to make these small changes that will have a huge effect on your users’ experiences.