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Comment by naoqj | Hacker News Reader

>If the restaurant has a relationship with the food delivery company, it gets charged a fee. These fees can be so high—15 to 30 percent in many cases—that the restaurant has no hope of making a profit from the order.

It's Google's fault that the owners of these restaurants don't know how to use Excel?

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It is Google's fault that they are forcing an elderly Thai couple, who have owned a restaurant in Wrigleyville for 20 years, to spend extra time and effort to figure out how to protect their meager profits from internet-based poachers.

That's an appeal to emotion, not a rational argument.

Restaurant owners should know the maximum fee that the delivery apps are charging (since they are signing the contract) and adjust prices accordingly. If they are "an elderly Thai couple" (because as we know old people and Thais are idiots) that has managed to reach old age without bankrupting their restaurant, surely they can calculate the impact of the fees of the contracts that they sign on their business.

How about this then? Many restaurant owners, including the ones I mentioned, are unaware of the existence of these unofficial ordering channels (websites, phone numbers). They claim that they did not sign up for any of this.

My wife recently was tricked into calling one of these fake numbers on a fake, but official-looking restaurant website. The person on the other end pretended to be the restaurant that we wanted to order from. But my wife grew suspicious when the person knew nothing about the menu.

You keep talking about contracts. But simply saying that 'you signed a contract' does not make it true.

Are you saying that these restaurants are selling food at 30% discount without even knowing what they are doing? That makes absolutely no sense.

To deny the impact of emotional circumstance on decisionmaking is itself highly irrational.

What are you saying learning Excel would solve for the owners? (honest question)

Indeed, owners should instruct staff to ask the ones picking up the order what they paid, and write it down.

The unaffiliated ponies picking up the order are paying the restaurant whatever the restaurant is charging.

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