Woman dines in restaurant to get 50% discount but Foodpanda promo disappears when it's time to pay

She confirmed that the promotion was still ongoing when she first stepped into FuFu Pot restaurant at Plaza Singapura.

So Stomper Natasha was surprised that when she went to pay the cashier after the meal, the promo no longer existed.

What happened?

"On Oct 20, I went to FuFu Pot at Dhoby Ghaut to have a meal because Foodpanda had a dine-in promotion where it was 50 per cent off," recounted the Stomper.

"I asked the staff whether this promotion was available to redeem. They promptly said yes and seated me, informing me that it is only valid for ala carte items. As such, I ordered only ala carte items, coming up to a bill of $74.

"When it was time to pay, we headed over to the counter. But to our surprise, the promotion suddenly disappeared off the Foodpanda app.

"This left us with no choice, as after checking for 5 minutes together with the staff, we all realised that Foodpanda took away the promotion suddenly. The staff then kindly helped us change an item to the promotional price so that we could get a slight discount, even after ordering ala carte.

"I found this disturbing and wrote to Foodpanda to obtain an explanation and, hopefully, a discount since the only reason I ate there was because of the discount.

"What happened shocked me. Foodpanda's help centre staff did not attempt to provide me with an explanation but abruptly ended my chat. This also occurred in my subsequent attempts at trying to clarify the situation with different help centre staff members."

View more screenshots of the Stomper's online chat with Foodpanda in the gallery.

She added: "I'm reaching out to Stomp as a last attempt and to warn others of the potential for Foodpanda to simply remove the promotion in the middle of your meal.

"Always remember to pay first, I guess."

In response to a Stomp query, a Foodpanda spokesperson said: "Unfortunately, the dine-in discount at FuFu Pot was temporarily unavailable due to an app update on the evening of Oct 20 – the same time that the customer was redeeming the discount.

"We have reached out to the customer to offer compensation."