Slow deliveries, cancelled orders and an Instagram hacker: Foodpanda’s bad start to the week

SINGAPORE — On Sunday (July 14), Foodpanda experienced technical difficulties that led to slow deliveries and customers’ orders being cancelled against their wishes. By Monday, the food delivery company’s problems were only piling up. 

Its Instagram account has been — and remains — hacked. At the time of writing, the account’s username has been changed to “OSAMA” and instead of the company logo, its profile photo is a picture of a masked child. 

Since Sunday, the account has seen vast fluctuations in its number of followers, from more than 20,000 before Sunday to as low as three at one point. All of its original posts have been removed and replaced by troll content such as Batman and anime videos. 

The hacker even began sending vulgar messages to at least one Foodpanda customer. 

The problems began on Sunday, when about a dozen customers took to Foodpanda’s Facebook page to complain that they had been waiting much longer than expected for their food to be delivered. 

One user commented that she had already waited one and a half hours, while another complained that his orders had been cancelled, and that the Foodpanda system would not register his new orders.

Over on Instagram, a Foodpanda user who only wanted to be known as Jenny posted a video with screenshots of her online chat with a customer service representative, in which she had demanded a refund after her order had failed to arrive after over an hour. 

In the video, the 23-year-old said she had tagged Foodpanda in an Instagram story on Sunday night, berating them for poor service.

In response, the Foodpanda account directly messaged her obscenities such as “dumb w****” and “b****” and demanded she take down her complaint. According to her, these messages were sent to her, then quickly deleted once she had read them. 

“Over the weekend, Foodpanda Singapore’s Instagram account was hacked,” Foodpanda posted on its Facebook page on Monday. 

“We apologise for any inappropriate messages you might have received during this time and we are working hard to resolve this issue."

The post also warned users not to respond to any activity from the instagram account (@foodpanda) for the time being. 

Foodpanda’s post did not say why it was experiencing delivery delays and cancelled orders on Sunday evening, or if those issues were linked to the hack. Neither did it say if delivery timings are back to normal.

A Foodpanda spokesperson told TODAY that the matter is now under police investigation.