42 food delivery riders arrive with same order at same home due to app glitch

Manila: Ordering food online, only to be met with dozens of food delivery riders outside your home as the result of an in-app glitch.

Unfortunately for a girl in Cebu City, The Philippines, a simple order of chicken cutlets turned complicated when her food app glitched.

The seven-year-old was staying at home with her grandmother, since her parents were both at work. They left her a smartphone so she could order some lunch for herself and her grandmother through the foodpanda app.

According to SunStar Cebu, it wasn't her first time ordering food online. In fact, she had done it many times before with no issues.

However, this time around, things didn't go as planned. Due to a sluggish internet connection and some random erratic behavior from the app itself, the girl unknowingly ordered her chicken cutlets 42 times.

It was the result of her repeated tapping when the app decided to malfunction.

The November 25 incident resulted with 42 foodpanda riders arriving outside her home, each bearing the same order of chicken cutlets, along with rice and french fries.

What would've initially cost US$3.93 (PHP189) now amounted to a whopping US$165.06 (PHP7,945.25).

According to her neighbor, Dann Kayne Suarez, who recorded the incident in a Facebook Live video, the girl was visibly scared and upset when the 42 riders showed up outside her home.

"What happened was the girl continued tapping on the app – unaware that there was already an error in the system," says Suarez.

I mean, who can blame her, right? All she wanted was her chicken cutlets.

"The child cried. I pity her because she did not know what had happened," Suarez recalled.

Despite the chaotic scenes, the neighbors banded together and bought most of the excess orders from the foodpanda riders.

This way, the majority of them wouldn't have to leave empty-handed.

I guess it was a happy ending for almost everyone, except for a few foodpanda riders who didn't manage to sell their orders.

When contacted by local media outlets, foodpanda did not respond to the incident.