ChowNow: Local Food Ordering App Reviews

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the worst ordering app ever created. really.. seriously. any restaurant that partners with these charlatans at CHOWNOW deserve the loss of business using their app will cause. it is literally unusable. after trying to submit an order for one hour and continuously cycled through false error messages I gave up and ordered from a similar but different restaurant that used CAVIAR. Im sure my office’s $425 dollar order is not a big loss to the restaurant...but my future and continuing admonition against people ordering from any restaurant that uses CHOWNOW? well that is going to sting before long. restaurants should sue the developer for loss of business. don’t believe me? just try the app for yourself. but guess what, all these other negative reviews besides mine? wonder why theres so many?

Terrible Customer Service and No Added Value. I’m honestly enraged that I can’t give negative stars as ChowNow is a company that provides zero added value with a terrible customer service team. For a convenience company to simply confirm an order without checking with the restaurant leads to the issue of over promising and under delivering which leads down a path of a bad customer experience. To pile on top the customer service team upon following up was rude and attempts to place the sole blame on a small local restaurant. The representative I spoke with couldn’t answer any questions regarding how their process works or how to prevent this error moving forwards. I’m honestly amazed at how terrible my overall experience with ChowNow was and will surely avoid any interactions moving forwards. I’ll be waiting for my failed order refund as I have absolutely no confidence in this company, the way they operate, the way they treat their partners or customers.

Great idea. Horrible execution. Placed my first order for a local BBQ restaurant. Estimated delivery time was about 45 minutes. No problem. An hour later still no delivery. I checked my bank and my card had been charged. I called the restaurant and was told that my order had been picked up at least 30 minutes before. I live less than five minutes away. As I was hanging up the phone I received my first text update from ChowNow giving me a link to track my order. Basically told me nothing but the driver’s name. 15 minutes later still no order. I call the number on the link and the driver answers. He lies and says that he is at the restaurant right then and would be there in 10 minutes. 20 minutes later, 1:45 after placing my order my wife calls the number for the driver and he hangs up without saying anything. She calls back and no answer. I call the restaurant back and they explain the ChowNow actually collects money and sends them the order. The manager apologizes and remakes my order, even though they will not get paid for the second order. Meanwhile it has been over 2 hours since placing my order and paying a delivery fee and tip. I end up going to get my remade order. The original order never showed up. I will never do business with ChowNow again.

Need to stop abusing notifications. I’m going to have the mute this app because of all their ads when I don’t want to. I would like to be notified if my order is going to work or if it’s cancelled for some reason, and that’s all. I know times are tough for restaurants but I’m looking for a job myself and don’t have the time to deal with their constant notifications. They have a setting to stop emails, but not ads via iOS notifications which are way more obtrusive. I will be blocking their app this week if they don’t solve this. Aka give me a notification to let me know you have or I will be moving my orders elsewhere. Thanks for your hard work.

Poor accountability. The delivery driver picked up the order and then disappeared for a couple hours. When I asked for a refund, they needed to get DoorDash to process it (why are we not using DoorDash then?) but when I received the refund, they had gotten the restaurant to refund their portion but they kept the delivery fee and tip. The restaurant had done their job but the delivery service took no responsibility for their part of it. I am now driving down to give the money back to the restaurant with a huge tip! and explain to them why I’m never using this service again. We all make mistakes, but when they made the restaurant pay for THEIR mistake, that was the end for me.

Better way to order in. We’ve been really happy with ChowNow during the Covid shutdown. They have all our fave local restaurants, the app works great, and we feel good about choosing an option that doesn’t gouge restaurants with expensive fees when they’re already struggling like other food ordering apps. It’s an awesome way to support local eateries so they’re still here for us when this is all over.

Completely Useless. I ordered food through this app. I ordered it for pick up and meant to order for delivery. Realizing my mistake, I called customer service. They said, “let me see if I can get someone from the restaurant to deliver it because Doordash can't take the order number.” I know the restaurant can't deliver. If they did deliver, I would call them and have them deliver. If I reorder, they could get doordash to deliver the food, but that I would have to pay for both orders because the food from the first order was made. I can call the restaurant, and they can tell me they don't deliver. I can place an order on doordash. It wasn't bad enough that even the concept of this company is a useless waste of human thought. Let's talk about the service. After not finding any place in the app to reach customer service, I searched it on google. After holding for 15 minutes, I got a rude and unapologetic representative who had no concern for this issue whatsoever. He had the gall to blame the restaurant for not having the staff to deliver the food. Zero stars for this platform. Zero stars for the guy working there. Do not use this app, they are THE third party that no one wants.

Didn’t take my order but it sure took my money!!. Ruined my FIRST order. It appeared to take my order, my money, and then when I tried to find my order in the app, it turns out my account wasn’t technically created. I signed up, and STILL no evidence of my order was under my account in the app! At least it showed up in my email. I had to call the restaurant to see if the order sent— it didn’t. I should have just called the restaurant, this was a total waste of my time. No help/support links in the confirmation email?? Just passes the buck to the restaurant? Sketchy! I should have read the app reviews first, and my bank shows the charge has gone through. Very upsetting.

VERY POOR DELIVERY SERVICE. This was my first time ever ordering online for a food delivery. Website was very easy to use and understand but the delivery side of this has been horrible. I ordered something that takes 5-7 minutes to make, it told me 45 minutes wait, okay no big deal I’ll wait. Order confirmation said delivery at 2:28, I’ve been standing in our lobby for 20 minutes waiting and checked the status and it’s reset to order received. I called the place I ordered from and they said the food has been waiting on the driver, so now I’m getting 30-45 minute cold food. I had to use the app because my vehicle is in the shop down the road, and I’m 7mo pregnant and can’t walk to get lunch from where I’m at. Will NOT be using this service or door dash again, as I see chow now is powered by door dash.

Good in theory but there’s a reason it’s cheap. I understand now why we have to pay extra money on other delivery apps. It’s so the food actually gets to us in a reasonable amount of time and so that someone can actually help you when there’s an issue with your order. I like the idea behind this app but overall, I can’t recommend it because you’ll probably end up having no idea when your food will show up (it will probably take a lot longer than if you used other apps) and ChowNow does not provide much support/information to the customer. They just say to call the restaurant. Instead, I’d recommend sucking it up and paying more on other apps or just go order to go from the restaurant itself.

Doesn't work properly. App doesn't show open restaurants that deliver to your address by default. After manually applying both filters, I went through the trouble of selecting an entire order only to be given an error message that the restaurant doesn't deliver to my address. It's two blocks away and delivery is currently available on competitor apps. This is not user error; I work in tech. It would also be great to see some type of photo or graphic next to the list of restaurants to choose from instead of basic text. I try to use Chownow, because they are more fair to local restaurants, but the app needs to greatly improve UX.

Awful experience. I ordered from Mr. Empanada at 11:21am. They just now received my order 12:21pm to actually start working it. The manager of the restaurant originally called me and asked who was coming to pick up the food and I had no idea because I don’t know how the service works. I went to the Mr. Empanada‘s (Lutz) website to order the food and this is the platform they gave me. My frustration is that the manager of this restaurant was extremely rude and frustrated with me because I had no idea why my food wasn’t being received on their end. On top of that I asked if I could just cancel the order and get it refunded and he said he couldn’t do it on his end that I had to go through your company to cancel it. I tried calling and got no one to picked up and your chat feature is not user friendly at all. I would not recommend this platform to any restaurants and will steer clear of any restaurants using it because of the fact that the customer service is horrible not only from the restaurants that apparently use it, but from your app as well.

Worst delivery service!. I had a group of people over and we ordered pizza from a local restaurant in town. All was well until the order was 20 minutes late. I held my patience until it was almost a half hour late. I call the pizza place and ask if our food has been picked up and they say it did around 25 minutes ago. I waited for almost an hour and a half and the food has still not arrived. The website now says that our food has been delivered but is no where in sight. I check down the road, infront of the garage, nothing. I emailed and called “Chownow” and got zero response. After around 15 minutes of trying to get ahold of someone, we talked to her and she was extremely helpful. She told us the the driver had put in the complete wrong address and delivered our food to a closed business on the other side of town. Please don’t waste your time and hunger with the app!

Terrible app. *****EDITED ON APRIL 26, 2022***** I moved and forgot to update my address/zip in the app and the app could not process my order. Fine. I updated the info and I still could not place an order. Turns out, ChowNow has flagged my credit card number and email as fraud and won’t let me use them anymore with them and they cannot remove the flag. I created new accounts with my other email addresses with the same card and now have those emails flagged. I then finally created another account with a private email that I never use to sign up with and my debit card and it worked. It’s been a couple weeks now and I just tried to place another order and it now also doesn’t work. COMPLETE GARBAGE. *****EDIT***** ChowNow customer support saw my review and reached out to get this resolved. I explained my situation and they said it was an easy fix…I’m not sure why they couldn’t do this from the beginning.

No accountability at all. I placed an order for pickup at a restaurant called XXX (omitting for privacy). Went to the XXX location, couldn’t find it. Asked around, no one had heard of XXX. Looked up the address and it pointed to YYY. Went to YYY, they said they don’t use ChowNow anymore and they didn’t get any order and couldn’t refund me. Went to ChowNow customer support, they try to contact XXX and get no response. They claim they can’t refund me because the money was already in XXX’s account and that they could only refund it with XXX’s “authorization” (despite it not being an actual restaurant). TLDR: ChowNow will allow fake or deactivated restaurants to take money for orders without providing the food and won’t shut these accounts down or refund your money. ChowNow doesn’t hold itself accountable and doesn’t deactivate fake/closed restaurants but will take your money regardless. You’ve been warned.

Terrible service- never showed up. I would not recommend this service. We placed an order through the app for delivery because we can’t leave the house due to broken leg and illness. After 1.5 hours and no delivery, we called the restaurant to confirm the order was received and they confirmed that the order had been ready for over an hour and was supposed to be picked up by Chow Now, but nobody showed. No notification from the company that we wouldn’t receive our food and now we have to start looking for an alternative when we should have had our dinner over an hour ago. The restaurant confirmed that this was not the first time it’s happened. We won’t be using the service again.

Very easy to use for pick-up, but.... This is an aesthetically appealing and well-functioning/designed app. It’s simple and easy to use, and gives me access to restaurants who would rather not deal with other services. However, could you PLEASE make an “Order History” tab that displays all of the past orders we placed through our accounts? Restaurant name and location, items ordered, total bill, and date ordered would be super helpful! Please and thank you!!!

Good Intentions, NOT Easy to Use. I was excited for this app because it benefits restaurants but it is HORRIBLE and not user friendly at all. There’s no way to track your current order(s), so we ran into our order not being accepted by the restaurant even though the app sent a confirmation email. You have to turn on a filter to even ensure the restaurant is open (so you can put together an entire order just for them to tell you it’s closed when you want to check out). The app also doesn’t tell you when a restaurant is “offline” until you’re done ordering and ready to check out. I’ve also placed the order, didn’t receive it, and then looked the restaurant up, and it had been shut down completely. I really want to use this app for restaurants, but it is so difficult to order from, and after numerous failed attempts, I’m not trying again.

Small fixes could go a long way. I support Chownow’s mission of reducing costs for restaurants and hope they succeed! With that said, there are a couple of glaring problems that would be easy to fix: The app defaults to pickup rather than delivery and defaults to “current location” rather than a preferred saved location (and the GPS is always a couple of houses away at my location). Further, there is no way to update the location/drop-off preference once the order has been placed other than to contact the restaurant directly and hope that they pass along the message to the driver. Unless you’re careful to change both of these settings each time you order, you may be forced to go pickup the food when you intended to have it delivered (like every other delivery app) or, spend the evening with one ear out of the window waiting for the food to arrive at your neighbor’s doorstep. Not ideal, but this could easily be fixed if the app allowed you to save preferences to default to delivery and a preferred address. If they resolve these problems, I would use this app exclusively.

Horrible (and costly) user experience.. I’ve had so much money go to waste because the app somehow “forgot” that I selected delivery and put my order in as takeout. What makes it even worse is there is no way to contact the restaurant from within the app, which is weird because the whole point of this app is they are working closely with restaurants unlike GrubHub or Uber Eats. It’s obvious the developers spent time and energy making the UI look amazing, they should do the same with the UX. I really want to support local restaurants by using a platform that’s not gauging them with outrageous commissions. This ain’t it though.

DO NOT USE THIS APP. This app took my DELIVERY order, sent no confirmation, has no order info on the actual app (the only way I know it was ordered was through my credit card charge) and then when I call to find out where my food is, the “customer service” tells me that I placed a Pick Up order (why would I be calling about a pick up order? Why would I put my full address in for a delivery order?). He then accused me of lying about the delivery order, told me to walk 20 blocks and go pick up the food myself, and then kept me on hold for 20 minutes to report that they cannot reach the restaurant and are unable to refund me. Now I have to go through my credit card company to refute the charges. It should also be noted that the “customer service” “man” laughed at me and talked over me the entire time. This is literally fraudulent and gross. Will never use this app again.

Straight forward and simple. I seee these bad reviews from people that just don’t get it! This app is a service that the restaurants use to provide online ordering. The business conduct the delivery and food preparation times. Never had a problem. The people that complain ha e the stupidest problems and/or are the people that you read in the news that look for apps like this to scam and get refunds from! Soooooo simple

Doesn’t send the whole order.. When I ordered my food for me and my kids everything was great. I got the email for my receipt and the estimated time my food would be done. My kids and I left, drove 20 miles to get our food and then back home we went. Well part of my order that I paid for never got sent to the restaurant. I paid for it, but they didn’t get the order to make it so she didn’t get her food. I didn’t think much of it when I was picking up my food because the total on the receipt was the total that I paid. The meal just got converted to gratuity. I called the place after we got home and asked if it just got missed. My card got charged the full amount and there really wasn’t anything they could do and we didn’t really want to drive 40 miles round trip for her food. Pretty tough for a restaurant to take care of their customers if the apps they are using aren’t reliable.

Stay Away. Ordered from this app for the first time. Two hours later no pizza. Called the restaurant and it was still not picked up. The restaurant said we had to call the delivery company. Tried and tried getting ahold of someone through Chow Now. Never answered. it finally arrived after two hours, and there was no doorbell, rang or anything. They literally threw our pizza on our front porch among all the June bugs. It was disgusting. Thankfully the restaurant is going to make it right, but it was actually the delivery company that should have answer their phones and made it right. I will never order through them again.

Terrible. Awful delivery experience. Right after I placed the order I got an email confirming my order, I saw that my card had been charged, and then I received a follow up email telling me when it would be delivered. The delivery time came and went. Then an additional 45 min came and went. I tried to use the ChowNow chat function to figure out where my food was. I was kicked off of their chat twice. No one gave me any information, no explanation, no apology, no refund, nothing. More than 2 hours after I placed my order it was delivered freezing cold. Their expectation management and customer service is awful. If things are going to be late, that’s fine. But you have to tell the customer that. Not surprising that it’s powered by DoorDash and that it’s awful. I guess I should be happy they didn’t steal $600 from me this time.

“Noble,” but basic. ChowNow really bangs the “help local restaurants” drum loudly. Whether their guilt-inducing, almost mob-like advertising (buy from us or the restaurant gets it) works is not the subject of this review. What is though, is the really poor quality and vast incompleteness of the app. We’re all used to the Doordashes, Uber Eatses, and Grubhubs of the world. Yet this app seems to ignore the (not even very high) standards set by those apps, lacking so much functionality and being so user unfriendly that I don’t even feel like getting into details, just like I don’t ever feel like using this app. The direct-ordering mobile web experience ChowNow sells to restaurants is actually so much better than this app. If you want to use a ChowNow service to order from your local restaurants, you’re better off hunting for the restaurant website and ordering directly from there.

Great concept, terrible execution. I love the restaurant selection and being able to order from local places without going though the predatory competitor apps, so I order from ChowNow as often as I can. That said, the app itself needs some work. Always defaults to a wrong nearby address, even though I have mine saved in there. The filters seem to work only sporadically, so sometimes pickup-/takeout-only options show up in delivery, and it’s not clear from the interface/tags which restaurants have delivery or just takeout (the tags are sometimes wrong). Restaurants say they’re in your delivery area per the location filter and then tell you they’re too far away after you’ve already selected your food and are checking out. There should be a place for restaurants to add a description and delivery notes separate from the menu itself. Also, you can’t add special delivery instructions, which has been tricky for me when I live in an apartment building and need no-contact delivery during COVID. Needs work!

Almost. This app is almost really great. It’s easy to use but missing so much information! I can’t view order history. And once I place an order the only info I have is my email confirmation. The order I just placed is gone from the app. There is also no contact info for any help desk within the app. In the email, they only give you the restaurant to call. Not very good customer service, eh? These things are pretty fundamental and new app or not- customer service should be on point from the start. Customer service hasn’t been bad- it’s just not even available at all...

Locavore. This is my go-to when I’m home or traveling. I always find delicious. unique food from independent restaurants with thus app. The functionality is a game changer. I’m always short on time, but don’t want to miss out on local gems. When I order for pickup, I skip the line, but still say hey to the people working at my favorite neighborhood restaurants. Delivery is super easy too. And their customer service is amazing. I love great food & I think the restaurant business is super tough. I know these guys have a restaurant friendly model. I found them from one of my local go-to restaurants & have loved it ever since.

Hard to use, very bad UX design. This app is always set to Pickup. I always have to remember to set it for Delivery or after 45 minutes I realize the food isn’t coming and I have to go and get it. It’s also waaaay too easy to accidentally thumb your way out of the restaurant menu and back to the search results, and when you tap on your restaurant again to resume your order, guess what? It’s re-set to Pickup again! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go and get my food or call the restaurant to beg them to bring it. This is glaringly poor design. I can’t find any way to set Delivery as my default option. Please fix, as my favorite Chinese restaurant is only on this stupid app and I’m basically ready to give up and just call them on the phone like a stinking caveman.

AVOID! Terrible. Used this service after reading that the restaurant keeps a bit more profit, so we figured we would give it a shot. A terrible mistake. Chow Now hosts restaurants but then never takes responsibility when the restaurant acts poorly and unprofessionally. DoorDash and GrubHub take it very seriously when there is an issue with my order (which is rare) despite it not being their fault because they know how to keep customers. ChowNow customer service rep was the least helpful and offered to do NOTHING after they couldn’t get in touch with the restaurant. I waited for my food for almost 2 hours and all the customer service rep said was “I’m sorry, the only thing I can do is try to get you a refund” after he wasn’t able to get anyone on the phone. Unprofessional. Poor service. Clearly not a smooth process like their competitors. We will not order with ChowNow again and will stick to the delivery companies who actually appreciate customer loyalty.

YOUR INFO IS NOT SAFE WITH CHOWNOW. My account was hacked two weeks ago. I got charged $130 for noodles from a restaurant on the other side of the country, and even got the email confirmations and a phone call from the delivery driver. I canceled my credit card, asked Chownow to delete my account, and then set up a new account with a new email address. My new account was used today to order food in another state. I tried to contact customer service again, and they told me they wouldn’t be able to delete my account for up to 45 days and to contact my bank about the charges because they would not refund me or the restaurant. I’m now canceling my second credit card in two weeks. The scariest part is that I never saved my card info to my chownow accounts, yet whoever was able to access my accounts were still able to use my credit card. IF YOU VALUE YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION STAYING PRIVATE, STAY AWAY!!!

Has some issues. I really want to like this app since they say they don’t take fees from the restaurants, but I couldn’t create an account with my email - just kept getting an error that either my email or password was wrong. Finally gave up and got signed in with Google - not my preferred way to do it. After finally getting the account set up and placing my order I discovered the app is geolocating my address incorrectly so I had to call the restaurant to correct it and then figure out where in the app to change it, but it still defaults to the wrong address, so that’s going to be an issue every time if I’m not vigilant 🤦‍♀️

App needs improvement to compete. I like the idea of supporting local restaurants without them being gouged with fees for every order. This app needs more features to compete though. For instance, I receive emails with promotion codes from the restaurants I order from the most but I can’t enter them in this app. I have to use the web version to enter promo codes. It would also be nice to have a history of all my orders in the app and be able to contact restaurants from within the app. The reliance on email for this seems a bit archaic these days. Improve the app and I think more restaurants will join and you can seriously compete against Uber and DoorDash.

Buyer Beware. First-time users beware: when you install ChowNow it will attempt to draw in your personal info but will not ask you to verify it. The app got my address wrong (pulled it in from the map but identified the wrong street address) and somehow listed as my phone number as the land line I had disconnected years ago. So when I placed my order, it was delivered to the wrong place, the driver called the wrong number, and I had no idea because - oh yeah, this part is great - the app gives you no notifications at all. There’s not even a record of my order (but my credit card was billed just fine). Absolutely horrible user experience. If this is the only alternative to UberEats, the only real alternative is not ordering at all.

Fraud Experience. This is not just terrible experience. This company is fraudulent company. Here is what you will experience. They will send you fake promo codes for 15% for example. When you place order promptly, be careful and they don’t apply. If you order anything that’s a bit expensive, this will ruin your budget easily! There is no order review at all. If you go through the ordering process as if you are using Uber or DoorDash, you will lose real money. Their customer service is horrible. Orders cannot be canceled even if you call them, both restaurant and chow now immediately after the order, you cannot cancel the order or change the order. When you call chow now, they put you on hold for hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Obviously, they are not going to allow you to apply those fake promo codes that they send you. Everyday, if they get 5 dollars for free from each of the orders put incorrectly under the influence of their fake promo codes, that will make them a fortune already. This seems their business model. Do not use their service. Be very careful.

No customer support, no order status/history. 1. There seems to be zero customer support in the app. 2. There seems to be no way to view or confirm current pending pickup orders, giving me zero confidence that my order will actually be fulfilled. See below. I placed an order for pickup for a pint of ice cream three days from time of order, and after I completed the transaction, there is no way to view the order in this app, transaction number, status, receipt, or anything. To the developers: - It would be great to have a status of all orders, ie “your order isn’t ready yet,” “your order is being made,” “your order is ready for pickup!” - it would be helpful to have the ability to confirm current and past orders within the app. - it would be great to link your customer support within the app. Without any of this I have no idea if my order was received by the ice cream shop, no way to cancel or confirm my order or followup for customer service.

Better interface needed. I would rather have money go to restaurants than predatory apps, which is what I like about this app. Use it carefully though! The app does not filter delivery versus pickup, even though it gives an option, restaurants that do not deliver are still shown and there’s not much indicating that. It also is one click from menu to order... and it needs an extra step. I’ve accidentally ordered pickup and there was no way to cancel other than calling the restaurant. I had to use one of the bad apps to reorder the same food since I didn’t want to ask the restaurant for a refund and have them throw away food.

No customer service. At all.. After placing an order I was notified it would be 59 minutes before I could pick it up. Too long for me, since it was just on the way home and I didn’t want to wait that long. I called both the restaurant and chownow immediately, and could not get either to answer. 10 calls to each over the next 10 minutes.. no answer from either. I actually stopped at the restaurant to cancel my order 43 minutes before the scheduled pick up time for the ice cream cone, milkshake and order of fries . I’ll just skip the hassle next time.

Great idea but company needs to educate restaurants better. I prefer to use ChowNow over any other delivery app because more of the money goes to the restaurant and it’s delivered by employees, but about 90% of the time I place an order I have to call the restaurant 15-20 minutes after my order was supposed to be delivered, and I find out they were confused thinking an outside driver would be picking it up. Please provide more education to restaurants that sign up to be on ChowNow, if they don’t understand that they’re supposed to be delivering the food the whole value proposition of the app disappears. I’m trying to support employees rather than the exploitative gig economy, but I would like my food to occasionally show up on time and without me calling to explain to the restaurant how ChowNow works!

The WORST food delivery app. I’ve spent quarantine ordering a lot of food from a lot of apps, this is by far the worst one. The only reason I use it is because a local restaurant I like is only available on ChowNow for some reason. First of all, the app works through DoorDash, another food delivery app that’s way better than this one. When I choose ASAP delivery, it tells me it’ll be 20-30 minutes, then gives me an estimated delivery time of an hour. There’s no way to track your order in the app, you have to use a link they send to your email, which then takes you to DoorDash’s website. There’s no way to view past orders to leave a review, which is BEYOND frustrating when you end up with missing items, which happens 90% of the time when I use ChowNow. Save yourself the headache and get another app.

Customer Help. I ordered food from Burger 7 using ChowNow. I placed my order and submitted my payment. I receiver confirmation that my order was received and should be completed soon. I went to the restaurant to pick up my order, and the restaurant was closed. I NEVER received my order. I called to inquire about my food, and payment that was taken from my bank account. They told me up to 7 business days for a refund. I must wait up 7 days to receive my money back in order to eat? There was no problem taking my money immediately in exchange for their service, but the service was never performed. Misleading, and deceitful business. I will never use their services again. There are plenty other food ordering services that I can use to put up with this terrible service.

Unable cancel orders, no acct history, slow customer service. An incredibly limited app. I placed an order and a few minutes later I realized the delivery option needed to be changed. The restaurant said to cancel and resend. Ok, that sounds easy enough... I went to the Chownow app to do so, but there’s a problem, I can’t find the order anywhere on the app. Poof, it’s gone, then I see the app doesn’t provide any order/acct history at all. I looked for a help interface in the app and..there is none. So I went to their website and used the chat. I wait some 10-15 min b/t the robo interface passing me off and a rep responding. Guess what the rep said “oh just cancel and re-order” How the F am I supposed to do that? Rep offers to reach out to the restaurant. Ok, let’s try it...I wait another 15-20 mins with a “only thing I can do is cancel and get a refund. Want to do that?”. So now Chownow wants to screw the restaurant b/c of their own incompetence in design and operations. At least Chownow ends the IM convo on a winning note “I am sorry you feel that way. Should you need anything else, please chat back in anytime...Have a good one!” “Have a good one”, are you serious? I felt like I was in the middle of a comically cruel scene from HBO’s Silicon Valley. I give it 2 stars since creating the initial order is fine and I haven’t had issues with amounts charged to my card. Which is like giving credit for tying your shoelaces and not drooling on yourself.

Awesome Customer Support. I just used ChowNow for the first time and the interface was easy to use and everything went smoothly but I forgot to enter my rewards number for the restaurant. So I thought I had time and would just ask customer service via text. Maria helped me and since the restaurant was closed at the time of order she said she would call them and she advised I just double check when I pick up order. No customer service had ever offered to call! They tell me to call! So amazing! It was my mistake and she was willing to take time to fix it?! That’s totally awesome customer service.

Fraudulent orders on my account. I was recently a victim of fraud on my chow now account. Chow Now refused to issue a refund directly, and they have no safe guards in place to detect fraudulent orders. The orders placed were in a location many states away from my usual orders, for amounts much higher than my usual orders and twice in a row. My previous order history showed that I had never ordered twice in the same day before. All of these things should have triggered some warning in the system requiring extra validation. I caught it and had to call the restaurants to cancel the orders myself as well as my bank and chow now directly. It was a frustrating and time consuming effort. If Chow Now wants to take the responsibility of holding card information for its users, it needs to have better safe guards in place and processes for fraud.

Bad Service. Sent my order to the wrong location by accident. I called the restaurant and I was told to contact ChowNow customer service. So, I did. In order to get a refund, I was told by the customer service rep that ChowNow has to call the restaurant to see if the restaurant will approve the refund. They did not approve the refund because food was already made. Which I understand. It’s just overwhelming when the place you sent the order by Accident is an hour away from you. Other apps would have done a better customer service. Might delete this if they make a better job.

Level of hatred? 10 out of 10. This app needs to get its act together. We used it for the first time today and ended up in a crowd of about 35-50 people - all getting angrier and angrier as we waited LONG past the time your app told us. If it’s going to take an hour and half TELL ME, don’t LIE to me so I wait on the hot sun with my little kid. Meanwhile try to ask a question? So many other people were angry they were swarming, totally ignoring social distancing guideline that were clearly taped off. Holy. Crud. All over bagels? Sad frustrating and a huge waste of time when honestly I needed to be getting ready for the first day of school tomorrow. And what did the angry people on the line say? “I never heard of chow whatever before” “there’s a reason for that!” Next - tell me if you’re going to use my Google name or my credit card name!!! Just put it somewhere in the email to me so we don’t waste time!!! I wish my adorable indie restaurant never tried you.

Algorithm errors. I like the overall notion of ChowNow and the offerings, but I find that customizations in orders often end up incorrect in my shopping cart on checkout unless and until I go back several times to fix it. Similarly, it toggles from delivery to pick up to the point where i pay careful attention on check out to make sure it’s still delivery. This time it was clearly delivery and went through as a pick up. I didn’t find out until the order never showed up. I won’t be ordering through ChowNow again unless and until ChowNow sufficiency fixes this glitch and provides assurances it won’t happen again. This space is too competitive between Seamless, Postmates, Caviar, etc to put up with that utter lack of reliability.

Beautiful app, great restaurants!. I really love how clean and easy to use this app is. I knew that some of my local restaurants used ChowNow and had their own apps but I love that I can see all of the restaurants that use them with this app. I’ve even found a few new (to me) restaurants that aren’t on some of the other ordering platforms! I’ve had no trouble ordering and my deliveries have been seamless. I like that I can pick up my food myself as well - unlike Postmates.

Good Local Access to Restaurants, App Needs Enhancements. The restaurant selection is good and I hope it continues to expand. The map is not ideal, as it seems to approximate my location, but doesn’t quite nail my address. I wish I could just enter my address once and have that come up as my default setting. I like that the app sends an email confirmation with the restaurant’s phone number, but it only provides that option once after the order is given. If you want to check on your order and call, you refer to the email, and not the app. There should be added functionality where location details and other messages can be sent to the restaurant after the order is placed, prior to delivery.

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Local Support Fee Breaks concept. I used this app almost weekly to order my sushi from my favorite restaurant and go pick it up. I ordered today March 25th 2022 and all of a sudden there is a $0.99 support local fee. I checked my last order and the fee wasn’t there on March 16th 2022. I feel like charging the diners $0.99 per order breaks the concept of a commission free app. Especially considering the restaurant is paying you a flat fee for the service. I’ll simply call the restaurant from now on. I deleted the app.

More pictures please. I really like this app & like that restaurants get more of the money. But the app needs more pictures on the search page. The name of a restaurant and a cuisine isn’t appetizing—i want a bit of visual cues as well. That’s my one complaint as a seamless user—i think they do a great job at using visual cues.

Doesn’t remember your setting - always set to pickup. I actually like the simplicity of the app. It is fast and easy. But there is a big problem. The app always sets your order for pickup by default. You have to remember switching that to “delivery” every time you use it. I forgot doing that many times and had to call the restaurant. Luckily the restaurant now also started to accept other ordering app, so if ChowNow doesn’t fix this annoying problem I will be switching to that. This is not difficult. There are two ways to correct the problem: 1. Allow the user to select pickup/delivery default in app setting. Or 2. Remember the pickup/delivery setting used last time and automatically select it.

Chow Now more like Chow Never!. The customer service i called was ok. However everything else was absolute garbage. I feel horrible for the people who have to waste their precious time using this app. The food would have been completely fine if we had ever gotten it! Our driver took an eternity and delivered it to the complete wrong side of town. I emailed and called multiple times but never got a response. After multiple hours of trying I finally got a refund but still no food. Overall 0 stars! Do not waste your hard earned money or precious time on this god awful creation!

Costly Flaw. The app has a flaw there if you change the pickup time but spend too much time in the app it reverts back to ASAP as the pickup time. They won’t refund you when this happens because despite you paying ChowNow 99¢ each time you place an order they will tell you to get a refund from the restaurant. I’m deleting the app and ordering over the phone at the restaurant despite being ordering online being easier for myself as a deaf person.

App breaks all the time with Cloudflare proxy. ChowNow engineers need to fix their rate limiter. The app frequently becomes useless when using the 1.1.1.1 cloudflare proxy / VPN. A dialog pops up “it appears you have no connectivity” - no, my phone is doing just fine. I suspect there is a brain dead IP rate limit not taking into account the myriad of shared IPs, VPNs, proxies out there. Tried to find “report a bug” on the support site and there were no options, so hopefully a negative review catches attention. Happy to revise once fixed!

Terrible; Don’t use. I wanted to use a service that charges restaurants less but never will I use this app again. My food is now twenty minutes from the expected time, which was an hour from the time of order. Total wait time of 1.5 hours so far. There is no way to call ChowNow and the “chat with experts” button makes you wait only to eventually tell you that no one is available. Just check out there faq where they tell you that there is not yet a mechanism to track your order.

Worst delivery app. I placed an order this morning for breakfast from a local restaurant. I accidentally placed the order for pickup but no big deal; I can drive to get it. I get to the restaurant and find out they are closed today. Issue #1: why did the app let place an order to a closed restaurant for pickup today? Now I need to cancel the order. Issue#2: there is no place in the app nor in the confirmation emails to cancel your order. I go to their website to cancel the order and we get to issue #3: they don’t cancel orders without restaurant approval. They can’t get approval from a closed restaurant.

Continues to block my ordering. I order frequently from the same 3 restaurants- all Of which unfortunately use ChowNow. Every time I use the app it takes me at least 5-5 attempts for the order to go through and for the app to verify my credit card. (Receiving “payment cannot be processed error) I always have to re-enter my card number at least once. In between attempts the app also makes me wait w a t least 3-5 minutes between attempts (receiving message - you just tried to submit an order please wait a minute). Very inconvenient app

Annoying Preset. I am pretty annoyed that this is a food App that is meant to help you order your food faster and for some reason the default on it is pick up and not delivery so now I have at least one time with my family lost money because we’ve had to use Uber or Lyft to go pick up our food because we are family with multiple disabled people… It is an annoying bug and it makes no sense no other food service defaults with pick up as the first option

My favorite app for food service!. Chow now has helped a lot of smaller businesses within the Columbus, OH area when other wise they’d be closed due to the pandemic. They have most of my favorite small restaurants and they don’t have ridiculous delivery charges like other apps.

It’s easier on the app. That’s a lie.. Wont be using Boston tavern anymore. This horrible not user friendly app ruined a very expensive dinner for company. Oh we’re not taking orders our kitchen is too busy…. Would have been easier if the app said that. After trying to navigate its garbage programming. And shame on Boston tavern. After eating there weekly for months. It’s easier to just call. Not download anything. Not get served ads. And be told by a person what can and can’t be done. Don’t use this app or Boston tavern.

Great app + Support independent, local restaurants. The ChowNow app is very user friendly, it's a lot of fun to check out their map feature and discover new restaurants. Most importantly, after speaking with my favorite restaurant about ChowNow, they do not charge a fee to the restaurant on every single order like GrubHub, Eat24, UberEATS, etc. Bottom line: if you support local restaurants USE THIS APP

Awful needs some work. Not cool , I started using this app two days ago and already have had multiple pretty unreal issues. Who leaves food outside of a building in a busy city and not to someone’s door during a pandemic??? And that’s just one of the issues I experienced. I really wanted to love this app especially after learning the predatory behaviors of other food delivery apps but without going into too much detail this was a pure disappointment. Deleting the app today.

Awful since they were “powered by DoorDash”. Every time I ordered from DoorDash, I had a bad experience, so I stopped using them. Now, my favorite food delivery is operated by my least favorite food delivery. And true to form, I received yet another incomplete order, yet while paying a high delivery fee. I only live 1 mile from the restaurant. The restaurants who used ChowNow used to say that it was better for the restaurant owners than DoorDash or Uber eats, etc. I don’t know if that’s true or not but is definitely not better for the customer.

A glaring problem. I usually have no issues when ordering via this app. However I’ve noticed a glaring problem. With some app updates the app will now log out your account. Now this wouldn’t be a problem if the app forced relogin. However I was able to make it all the way through an order and pay, only to find out the app wasn’t logged in and it set me up for pickup instead of delivery. I had even used Apple Pay and left a tip! Please force account login (or verify no account) and then reverify pickup vs delivery orders before submission!

Worst service in the space. From a consumer standpoint this might be the worst service in the delivery space. I’m using part of the hour and a half I’ve been waiting to write this review. I was shocked when this was just a middle man to only just subsequently become a door dash order (for 20% more no less). All I could have done that myself, saved 3 bucks, and the food wouldn’t have taken forever and I could have tracked my delivery through their app which this app is incredible of. It literally gives you a web based door dash link. This is horrible. AVOID.

It will fail you sooner or later. I ordered food for delivery and no delivery driver accepted the order. I’ve never had this happen before. I double checked to make sure I ordered it to be delivered and yes I did. And hour and a half later, the order was sitting at the restaurant with no driver accepting it to deliver. I had to drive to the restaurant and get it myself. The app makes it near impossible to contact support and when you do. You will wait for half and hour at least like I did. I chose to hang up and get my own food. But they still charged me a delivery fee and the tip.

Bad interface, slow delivery. We started using ChowNow because we heard it was more fair to the restaurants. But it’s not worth it. Either delivery has been way slower than Seamless because the restaurants don’t pay attention or focus on these orders. Plus, if you do pickup and delivery from places that can burn you because the setting sticks and when you think you’re getting delivery the food is sitting waiting to be picked up with no warning or confirmation. We’re switching back to Seamless, unfortunately for the restaurants.

I ordered White Castle on app but they said there no order on their system. So here’s what happened tonight I ordered White Castle on app When i went there They said something went wrong with system The order from ChowNow didn’t go through So at least I pay for whole thing on their system So they just give me my order But don’t know if the payment went through at The White Castle Fremont not ChowNow This so confused Just don’t get ChowNow it like they slow at ordering the food on app I give them 1 star Worst time ever

AVOID AT ALL COST!!!. Don’t waste your time or money! They don’t actually do their own delivery, they just contract with others like DoorDash. They confirmed my order and charged my card, didn’t hear anything for an hour and a half. Called the restaurant and they said the order was picked up a while ago. ChowNow has no way to contact customer service in the app, had to hunt it down on their website. They couldn’t help me because they had no info on the delivery driver, they had to contact DoorDash and still nothing. Never got any food. AVOID THIS APP!!! You might as well use an actual delivery service since that’s what they do anyway.

Excellent customer service. When I was updating my credit card, I was being charged by my bank for attempted orders that didn’t get to the restaurant. When I contacted the customer service, agent was ready to explain that my ChowNow account was active again and that the charges in my bank account will drop after 1-2 days.

Stole my money. When I ordered off this app, the restaurant called me and said they did not deliver to my address. They told me to call the support line to get a refund due to the fact that I never got my food. I have been on the phone for an hour on THREE separate occasions, no one has answered. Even tried to contact them online, no answer. Tried to get them to contact me, no phone call. Still haven’t gotten my refund, still on hold. This is the WORST support line I have ever encountered and frankly, if I didn’t get my food and they never contacted me back; they just stole my money...

Way better than other apps. I hate cooking so I use delivery apps too often, this is by far the best one. really easy to navigate and filter - I've never had an issue with it. Plus, I love that the money goes directly to the restaurant. This will be replacing my other delivery service apps!

Dangerous location selection, otherwise great. Every time you order it quietly guesses your location...poorly. Good enough to pass a cursory glance, but bad for accurate delivery. It does this even if you have a saved address. Worse, if you mistakenly use the bad address, it gets added to your saved addresses. Just make sure to manually specify your saved address every time and it's fine.

Best Take Out App!. This app is amazing and has all the features and add in sections you need! I hate ordering take out when you can’t specify certain things you want/don’t want. I especially love the fact that this app helps my favorite local Dallas Vegan spot, Tiki Loco, and others all over the US stay in business during these tough times without charging these places tons of money!

Trash. Website and app are garbage. I have ordered multiple times from restaurants that use this service as a means of delivery partner and it doesn’t give an option to review food, or dispute things wrong with the order. My account history isn’t even on here so I cannot dispute any charges that way either. Most recent order today, food was not delivered because I was busy with my sick child and driver wouldn’t leave food on porch. So now I have no food, and I’m out $40. Thanks for nothing

Cant’t cancel orders. I was excited that a local diner that I absolutely live was now available for food delivery through and app. Want available on the other popular ones. I placed an order that was supposed to be for delivery. But it defaulted to pickup without my noticing. Went to try to cancel the order. There is nowhere in the app to cancel the order. Call the diner. No way to cancel it on their end either. So I had to put my sick child in the car and drive up to get it or be out my money. Please fix your app and provide a way to cancel orders.

Fraudulent Use of My Account. This evening there was a fraudulent order placed on my account shortly after I placed my order. ChowNow did not email me to confirm that order otherwise I would have canceled it and changed my password. Where is the security? How did this happen? Customer service on the chat was poor. The agent ended the chat without answering my questions. I’m left to dispute this with my credit card company and will be canceling my account. If you use ChowNow, beware of fraudulent use of your account.

Love ChowNow. Whenever I am in the mood for pickup or delivery, I turn straight to ChowNow. Open up the app, and right away, all the closest spots to my present location are displayed. Makes the experience incredibly easy. The video at the top is a great touch. CN is my go-to, and it just continues to get better. Highly recommend food-seekers and restaurants alike use ChowNow.

Need a final check order page w delivery option. There needs to be a final page for the customer to double check all info. As in make sure “delivery” is selected. How many times have I had to go to the restaurant because of initial setting is on “pick up”. And I can never get through to the restaurant to cancel and reorder and it becomes so complicated.

Please don’t make pick up the default option. Great app, great concept. Writing this review to let you know that I have had to call multiple places and let them know that I meant to select delivery but accidentally selected pick up. I feel like it should default to whatever I selected last. Thanks!

Giving local restaurants a bad reputation.. Ive had numerous issues using CN for the first time. I tried to order on my phone but the websites buttons didn’t work- annoying but okay. Created an accnt on my computer and placed my order. Order never shows- annoying but okay. I had to scour the internet for a way to contact CN about my order—irritating and not okay. In the end, I still don’t have a resolution. I will be disputing charges w/ my bank and deleting my account. I advise you all to do the same.

Terrible customer service and app. They’re terrible at telling you if a restaurant is closed. You have to place your order first, wait 30 min, then you’ll get an email saying your order didn’t go through and 2 weeks later you get your money back. Now when you place an order when a restaurant is closed they have it ready for pick up the next day it’s open, in this case it was two days later. I always select pick up and made asap. But now the new update places your order the next day the restaurant is open and you’ll lose your food and money. Don’t waste your time or energy on ChowNow

This app is the worst.. Par level, considering this app among all others, it has to be the absolute worst. I am astounded by the very existence of this horrible waste of space. There is 0 accountability for deliveries, no way of tracking. No way of verifying what you actually ordered or when you ordered it. And apparently, the default setting for orders is “pick up” so if you order something and don’t reposition the toggle to say “Delivery,” you will wait for hours for a dish that will never come, because they thought you were going to come and get it, as if it were 1997. I’m irate and I will never do this again, despite how much I love Garage Pizza

Great App, but it’s missing one thing.... Most times when I’m ordering food, it’s the same items over and over. Please add a ‘recent orders’ section where I can just find the restaurant I want and reorder the same selections without having to select each item separately. Thanks!

Bad app. Very limited - many restaurants give no option to add a basic request like “no onions.” It doesn’t work at all if you have a VPN - it will just keep saying no connection even though every other app on the device works just fine -but ChowNow will take you in an endless loop of logging in and then saying there’s no connection. Seems like a major oversight. The app also has no option to contact support or report an issue. Compared to DoorDash and Grubhub it is very limited and not a competitive app.

Poor app experience. Please put more development effort towards the customer experience. The app defaults to Pickup with every launch. Please save my most recent operation as the starting option. NSUserDefaults is a simple starting place to implement. If you insist on making Pickup the default, add an extra step before showing the restaurant’s menu that allows me to clearly choose Pickup or Delivery. Why not just default my location to the saved address added to my profile? The app always chooses a location that is across the street or down the block.

Gives back to the local small businesses. I love ChowNow because of how the restaurants don’t pay as many fees and so more money goes directly to support our smaller and local businesses! It’s a great way to support our neighbors during these hard economic times, and the app is super easy to use, and the emails are always prompt. I’ve never had any issues with the app or service so far!

Love supporting local!. I am so glad I found ChowNow after discovering how much money those other apps take from restaurants. It’s been a great way to find new spots after moving to a new city, really excited to try it when visiting other places as well (when we are traveling again!).

They won’t refund me. My food never arrived and they won’t refund me. The driver tried to call me but I had input a wrong number, I will admit that. But I was waiting in my driveway, he did not show, and when he arrived according to the app (he did not), I called him and couldn’t get through. I called the customer service immediately and couldn’t get through for 45 minutes. He dropped off my food at a house that looked nothing like mine. They refuse to refund me. Don’t use this service.

Just use the services they do!. Worthless. What’s the point of a service that places online orders if you never receive them? ChowNow is trying to squeeze in as an extra layer of fees and complications to skim off orders you’d usually just place with other services, which they use. Except they’re really, really bad at it and when they screw it up, there’s no notice from them and their customer service is useless. One representative flat out lied and said the order was refunded to get rid of me. Nope, not refunded. Avoid these parasites.

One huge flaw. I really like this app but have one big problem with it. I ordered food and then had to wait for the restaurant to email me the delivery time. When the email said it would take two hours, I tried to cancel it. There is nothing you can do through the app to cancel it. I called and emailed the restaurant and left messages to cancel the order. They showed up at my door 2.5 hours later. There needs to be an easier way to either know the the delivery time before agreeing to pay or to cancel through the app.

They use door dash drivers and they stole my food. What the title says. They charge over $10 for delivery and then don’t even have their own drivers. One time I ordered and the driver canceled my delivery and dropped it back off so I had to go pick it up. The second time I ordered the driver picked up my $130 order and then canceled my delivery and kept the food. Essentially stealing $130. Save yourself the trouble and use literally any other app. PS - there customer serves almost impossible to get too. Took my almost 20 min to get on the phone with someone to fix the issue.

Why does it default to a random address?. Normally I would give 1 star, but giving 2 since it’s a better deal for local restaurants than the competition. The app defaulted to a random nearby address. I had assumed it would ask for the address during checkout but I used Apple Pay and - nope! Some stranger is going to get my food. Why would you design an app like this? Shout out to the customer support folks who probably have to deal with this issue a lot.

Great concept and works perfectly. I have used ChowNow app several times and its worked seamlessly and correctly. Im surprised to see others review say they had a bad experience. I moved away from door-dash and grub-hub to help local restaurants and after talking to a few owners they all told me they prefer ChowNow. I wont be leaving the app...

Scam. Ordered delivery from a local restaurant, a few minutes later start getting updates from the restaurant that my order is ready. Contact the app to let them know and of course ZERO response. 15 minutes...30 minutes...40 minutes... no food, but I’ve now received 4 alerts from the restaurant that the food is ready but no delivery driver has picked it up. ChowNow doesn’t respond to emails, but they took my money for NO FOOD. It’s a total scam that HURTS small businesses. Don’t believe any of these good reviews. Apps pay companies to give fake reviews and build up their app rating. This is a ZERO STAR service.

Can’t look up an order. Was in restaurant and couldn’t look up order on ChowNow website or app, so I couldn’t confirm what was ordered. Order was wrong. The email confirmation offers zero info on what was ordered. There is nowhere for me to put in an order number in the app or mobile website. I wish I could add screen captures to this rating of the screens I have to work with so you could see what I see. If you don’t let this app share your location you get nearly a blank screen. No menu to put in an order number. Very frustrating.

Amazing app!. I happy to have an alternative to the other apps that doesn’t destroy the restaurant businesses. They do use Uber eats to deliver which isn’t the best, but I usually order pick up anyways. Never had any issues with the app. There is a 99 cent order fee but its a very low cost to support the back end of the app/website imo. Im glad they added in the ability to see previous orders!

Terrible app, worse service. The app will randomly switch from delivery to pickup and not let you know, which will leave you wondering where your order is. Also there’s no order tracking in the app or email sent so good luck tracking that down. (Hint: credit card chargeback) Plus no number to contact for customer support. And the worst thing of all is that they expect you to call the restaurant to fix the issue, when you’re using them to help the restaurant in the first place! Stop making the restaurants clean up your mess!