At 8:06am I placed a food order from Cafe du Soloil directly from their website:
https://cafedusoleilva.com/
From their website I click on their Order Here button, which opens a SquareSpace order form:
I have ordered from this restaurant using this exact interface many times for years without issue (except sometimes they forget to include my coffee.)
I selected GooglePay (as I usually do) and received the exact same email confirmation that I always do:
I received the exact same confirmation texts that I always do, from the exact same phone number. Here you can see the tail end of my previous order and the start of today’s order, all in one text chain:
At 8:39am I left to take my dog for a mini-walk hoping I’d be back around the same time as the food order would arrive.
Almost immediately after I left my house, I received the text saying the order will arrive soon, and then the text saying they were dropped off. I called my husband from around the corner at 8:41 to ask him to bring in the food. I remained on the phone with him for 1 minute while he got up and walked to the porch. He said there was a car on the street in front of the house (assuming that was the delivery driver), but there was nothing on the porch yet. We hung up and he went back inside.
When I returned with the dog 20 minutes later, there was no order on the porch, and my husband had fallen asleep on the couch.
At first I assumed the delivery was dropped off at the wrong house (there is a very similar address nearby and we sometimes get each other’s deliveries). But when I clicked on the link to see the “proof of delivery” photo, it showed MY porch. And the photo has to be from today, because it shows our blue cooler out front that isn’t usually there:
In addition to the regular texts from the usual Cafe du Soleil number, I got another text from a strange new number that just said “Here” at 8:40.
My next thought, after realizing the food HAD been delivered to my porch, was that at some point after my husband checked the porch at 8:41am, but before I got back home at 9am, someone had just walked by and swiped the food off the porch, like a regular porch pirate.
But then we took a closer look at all the timestamps I’ve shown above, and we realized that no, that doesn’t make sense. I was in my front yard at 8:39 and there was nobody out there. The text showing a photo of our food was sent at 8:41, and my husband was standing on the porch talking with me from 8:41 until 8:42. That means the food has to have been both delivered AND stolen in the span of 1 minute. HIGHLY unlikely.
The only rational explanation we can come up with is that the driver themselves stole the food, meaning they took a photo of it, and then just kept it.
(This would be an ideal time to check our doorbell camera footage, but alas, the battery on it had JUST died earlier this morning. I considered swapping in the new battery before the dog walk but I wanted to get moving and meant to do it as soon as I got back instead. GAH!)
The big question is: WHY? What is the scam here? They just REALLY wanted some crepes and iced coffee?
We took a closer look at the photo, and we can’t see a drink (though the cooler kinda blocks the chair, plus historically this place has repeatedly forgotten to include the coffee.) But that got us thinking, maybe the food never even came? And there’s a scam where someone takes photos of bags on porches and pockets either the food or the money? So confused.
I texted back the mystery number (as seen above) but that person never responded.
I called the restaurant and told them I placed an order that I never received. They were clearly very busy (super noisy in the background, and I know there’s a big race in that neighborhood this morning), but at first they started saying the delivery might be delayed by a street closure. They said if I physically come into the store and show them my order receipt they can prepare the food for me onsite . Then I explained further, that we received the delivery confirmation and see a photo of drop-off, but that it was immediately removed and they might be having an issue with their delivery.
The guy then explained that they don’t handle their own deliveries and don’t do online ordering. It’s all through Uber Eats. I pointed out that I ordered directly from the restaurant’s website, which he claimed didn’t exist (even though I’ve, again, ordered from it many many times for years.) He asked for my name and then I gave it he said they never received an order from me that day.
Now I was even more confused, because I was thinking rogue delivery driver until this point. Now I’m being told that even my ORDER never came through, even though I paid someone money. I warned them that it that’s the case, they should know that somebody is mimicking their business to run a scam (which he denied.)
My next guess was that maybe, in my not-yet-caffeinated state, I hadn’t ordered from the regular website. Whether the fault lies with me, the business, or the driver, I need to go dispute these charges. So I logged into my credit card and saw the pending charge for today: it appears exactly like every other order I’ve ever placed from them (I can’t dispute the charge while it’s pending, apparently, but I will.)
This was the point where I also found all my former order confirmations in email and text (all screenshotted at the start) and noticed that everything indicates that I did, indeed, place my order from the real restaurant.
So now I’m back where I started. I’ve written this all out to help organize my thoughts, and I’m still lost, stuck here wondering:
WTF IS GOING ON HERE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Did the restaurant really never get my order, or was the manager just trying to get me off the phone?
Did the delivery driver steal my food? Why do a big elaborate fake delivery? What’s the end game?
Who has my money right now?
Did my food ever exist in the first place?
Is this just a kinda funny one-off story with some stolen food, or is this a huge major issue that’s going to haunt me for years?
Someone reading this has to have some insight. A similar experience, something you read on Reddit once, some sort of super obvious indicator that I’m just totally missing? Please help! My brain is breaking!
Helga without the H 