Food delivery partners with Be Group gathered at the ride-hailing firm’s headquarters on Wednesday to demand the return of deductions that the Ho Chi Minh City-based company made over one-sided accusations of cheating a reward scheme.  

Canh, a delivery partner of BeFood, is one of dozens of partners who congregated at the company’s headquarters on Wednesday to protest its unilateral decision to deduct money from the partners’ accounts on grounds of “suspected cheating.”

BeFood is a local food delivery launched two weeks ago by Be Group.

To celebrate the launch of BeFood, Be Group ran a program to reward partners with VND5,000 (US$0.22) for each completed order. It also offered discounts to customers.

According to the program’s guidelines, partners were eligible for a reward only if they called customers to confirm each order, as well as took pictures of the order both before and after delivery.

Now, two weeks since the launch of the program, dozens of partners claim that Be Group has not refunded money advanced for customer orders.

The company also sent a notice to partners asking for verification of orders valued at VND150,000 ($6.6) or more within seven days.

Those who complied with the request claim that they still had funds deducted from their accounts, with many noting their accounts now show a negative balance. 

“The company said that the deductions were applied because of ‘cheating’ but didn’t offer any evidence,” said Canh.

The cheating Canh was referring to is the conjecture that many partners made fake orders and falsified proof of delivery in order to receive monetary rewards from Be Group.  

Canh was requested to clarify 58 orders in total and his partnership account currently shows a negative balance of more than VND4 million ($175).

Tran Thanh Tu, another BeFood partner who had VND55,000-115,000 ($2.4-5) taken from his account balance for ten orders, said Be Group’s accusations were unjustifiable.

“BeFood’s order control process is very strict, with orders automatically distributed by the company to partners so that it’s almost impossible for us to place fake ones and take advantage of the firm’s rewards,” Tu said.

In response to a Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper request for comment on Wednesday afternoon, a representative of Be Group affirmed that a certain number of partners violated its operating principles by creating fake orders and staging invalid trips to cheat its reward scheme.

Be Group also clarified that some cases were not “cheating” and those partners would receive their due rewards on March 15.  

Meanwhile, some partners told Tuoi Tre on the same afternoon that Be Group continued to ask them for further clarification after Wednesday morning’s gathering and promised a refund on March 15 once their trips are proved valid.

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