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'Y'all Going to Jail': Customers Received Free Food and Alcohol Due to DoorDash Glitch The app reportedly had technological difficulties on Thursday.

By Emily Rella

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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There's nothing quite like free food, and a spate of DoorDash customers received free grub on Thursday thanks to a technological glitch.

"On the evening of July 7th DoorDash experienced a payment processing issue, and as a result, some users were able to check out without an authorized form of payment for a short period of time," a DoorDash spokesperson told Entrepreneur. "We were subsequently notified that some users were placing fraudulent orders, and we immediately corrected the issue. We're actively canceling fraudulent orders, and are in touch with merchants impacted to ensure they are compensated for any unauthorized orders they may have received. We work to ensure that we are always offering the highest quality of service to the communities we serve, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by this."

The U.S.-based food delivery service was trending on Twitter through Friday after thousands of posts cluttered feeds with customers claiming to accidentally get free deals on everything from McDonald's to $1,000 tequila bottles.

The food delivery service recently made several updates to its app, including a new feature that allows customers to leave written reviews for restaurants after ordering and a "most-liked" tab that will allow customers to see top-rated restaurants in their area.

"We're always thinking about how we can make the shopping experience even more frictionless and relevant for our customers," Helena Seo, head of design at DoorDash said in a statement at the time. "With the launch of the Most Liked Items feature, we're saving consumers over 400,000 hours annually, reducing decision fatigue when deciding what to order. We're excited for consumers to find the delight in discovering new restaurants and dishes, trusted and loved by locals."

DoorDash's valuation suffered in pre-market trading earlier this week after Amazon announced a new deal with rival Grubhub that will grant Amazon Prime users a free year of delivery for orders over $12. Shares were down around 7%.

As of Friday afternoon, DoorDash was down nearly 59% in a one-year period following the post-pandemic burst of in-home ordering.

Emily Rella

Senior News Writer

Emily Rella is a Senior News Writer at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was an editor at Verizon Media. Her coverage spans features, business, lifestyle, tech, entertainment, and lifestyle. She is a 2015 graduate of Boston College and a Ridgefield, CT native. Find her on Twitter at @EmilyKRella.

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