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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Yes they have to ask for permission to present themselves as an agent of the company, which they do when they present their own phone number as the restaurant phone number. So I imagine the lawsuit will have many legs to stand on.

This is business, which has many rules. Its not just 'do whatever you like as long as it makes money'.

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>Yes they have to ask for permission to present themselves as an agent of the company, which they do when they present their own phone number as the restaurant phone number. So I imagine the lawsuit will have many legs to stand on.

Except they don't. In fact, they register domain names and set fake websites that say they are the restaurant when they're not. They set up phone numbers that route through Grubhub/Seamless and charge their outrageous commissions even for pickup orders.

While there are many places where delivery services are useful, in places where delivery was already ubiquitous (e.g., NYC), the high commission fees and deceptive practices have forced many low and mid-priced restaurants to close because orders through these services take all their profit and a bunch more, making businesses that had been profitable for years or even decades unprofitable and forcing them to close their doors.

Aside from reducing the number and diversity of restaurants, sucking profit out of such transactions that are way beyond any value provided will also end up costing consumers (that's you) more too.

cf: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless... https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/15/21260609/grubhub-phone-ca... https://www.eater.com/2019/8/6/20756799/yelp-grubhub-phone-n...

Are they claiming to be the restaurant? Or just saying you can phone this number and get the advertised product, which is true?

>Are they claiming to be the restaurant? Or just saying you can phone this number and get the advertised product, which is true?

Here's an example. The site linked (menupages.com) is owned by Grubhub/Seamless. The telephone number is not the actual phone number of the restaurant, and attempting to order through this site gives no hint that you're using Grubhub/Seamless.

https://menupages.com/tropical-sensation/953-amsterdam-st-ne...

While search engines seem to have backed off putting GrubHub's fake websites near the top of searches, this has been a widespread practice by them for a long time[0]:

"The company has registered a lot of fake websites. GrubHub has registered either a bit more than 23,000 websites, according to the New Food Economy, or 34,000 over the last nine years, per the New York Post’s report. The last domain GrubHub registered was in May, when the Post detailed the company’s practice of creating phone numbers for restaurants in order to drive up its own sales."

[0] https://www.grubstreet.com/2019/07/everything-you-need-to-kn...

> Yes they have to ask for permission to present themselves as an agent of the company

That's not necessarily true (yet), that's literally what this legal case is about.

No, that is already true under existing law. Presenting yourself falsely as an agent of a company, and profiting from that, is fraudulent misrepresentation.

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