Customer claims bug in sashimi, gets refund, then returns mostly-eaten food and trash

The photo is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]

A small business owner who refunded a customer’s full order after the customer claimed a bug was found in the food is facing public outrage after the customer ate most of the food and returned only trash.

According to SBS’ “News Hunters” on Thursday, the owner of a raw fish restaurant in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, identified only as A, recently received an order through the delivery app Baemin for premium sashimi and two bottles of soju worth a total of 100,000 won ($75), and delivered the food.

Thirty minutes later, A received a message from Baemin saying a cancellation request had been filed because “a bug was apparently found in the raw fish.” A agreed to the refund on condition that the food be returned so he could check its condition, he said. But Baemin canceled the order in full before the food was retrieved.

A grew furious after checking the food that the delivery driver brought back. The dish where the bug was supposedly found had been mostly eaten, with only four pieces of sashimi remaining. One of the two bottles of soju was gone entirely, and the other was about half-finished. The plastic bag was filled with trash.

A protested to Baemin, saying, “I never even got the item back, but the refund was already processed, and all I got back was trash,” and requested compensation for his loss. A customer service representative said, “Since (A) agreed to the order cancellation, a refund is not possible, and there is no process for filing refund claims related to foreign substances.”

“Even the delivery driver was stunned and said, ‘How can a person really do this?’ I am so sick of this,” A said.

A said he later received a photo of the bug from the customer but had no way to confirm whether it actually came from the food or was introduced from outside. “I have run this restaurant for more than a year and never had a complaint about bugs before,” A said.

As the controversy grew, Baemin changed its stance, saying A had not gone through the proper procedure and was therefore unaware of the relevant process, and pledged to guide him through the steps for a loss refund.

choigo@heraldcorp.com

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.