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Her family ate instant noodles for their final meal of 2025.
January 11, 2026, 10:33 AM
A Singaporean woman, 28, who was celebrating New Year’s with her family, received her foodpanda priority delivery dinner order eight hours after the order’s submission.
As a result, her family ate instant noodles for their final meal of 2025.
Food ordered at night
The woman, Lim, told Mothership that she had placed the order at 7:41pm on Dec. 31, 2025 and received her order at 3:40am on Jan. 1, 2026.
Due to the delay, the food arrived past the safe consumption period, she said, and was allegedly unrefrigerated for hours, resulting in it going bad.
Lim’s attempts to contact foodpanda’s customer service to request for a refund were also rejected and she was informed that her case would be recorded as feedback.
Ordered S$73.70 worth of food, paid extra S$1.50 priority delivery fee
Lim, a pandapro member, ordered four dishes and rice from Lao Huo Tang Signature at Tampines Mall.
The total cost of her meal was S$73.70 — S$71.60 for the food items, S$1.99 for the delivery fee, which was waived due to her membership, a priority delivery fee of S$1.50 and a platform fee of S$0.60.
Image provided by Lim.
When she successfully made the order at 7:41pm, the estimated delivery time was 45 to 50 minutes.
However, upon checking the app subsequently for the expected arrival time, she found that it had changed to 50 to 65 minutes without explanation and there was no option to cancel the order.
Image provided by Lim.
Food picked up hours later
At around 3:20am, Lim received a notification that her order was being picked up.
The delivery rider called and spoke to her, and mentioned how he had found it strange to have received an order placed at 7:41pm.
Image provided by Lim.
When probed, the delivery rider stated that the restaurant was already closed and he had to collect the food from outside the restaurant.
The food was eventually delivered at around 3:40am.
Lim said she had already fallen asleep by then.
She subsequently woke up and found the food at her doorstop at around 11am.
As it was not consumable, she did not take pictures of her order and threw the food away.
Attempted to contact foodpanda to no avail
Lim attempted to contact foodpanda’s customer support on multiple occasions.
On Jan. 1, the request for a refund was rejected as customer support stated that Lim could not prove the food was spoilt through smell alone.
On Jan. 2, Lim sent in another request, but was rejected once more.
The next day she contacted customer support again, but was told that the issue would just be “reported to the concerned team to help prevent this issue” from occurring again.
During her last interaction with customer support, Lim explicitly asked if she was “speaking to a bot or a live agent”.
The reply was that they were “a live agent”.
Lim said she understood that New Year’s Eve is a “predictable peak period”, but the platform should have the discretion to limit orders.
She said: “If a platform cannot fulfil orders within a safe timeframe, perhaps it should limit orders, suspend priority delivery options, or provide clearer warnings, instead of completing deliveries hours later with no resolution for affected customers.”
Mothership has reached out to foodpanda for comment.
Top photo from Lim.
