Customer Refund Policy
Effective from: 2026-05-29
Bitte — Customer Refund Policy
Published: 2026-05-29 Audience: customers ordering through bitte.uk, a Bitte-powered white-label storefront, or the Bitte customer app. Where this is linked from: the Help Centre refund page, the "Request a refund" button on every order, and every rejection email sent to a customer whose refund request was declined.
When can you request a refund?
You can ask for a refund within 48 hours of your order being marked delivered. If your order is cancelled (by you, by the restaurant, or by Bitte automatically), you can request a refund at any time — the 48-hour window does not apply.
Note on the 14-day "cooling-off" rule
You may have seen that the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give online shoppers a 14-day right to cancel after delivery. That right does not apply to prepared food, hot meals, takeaway orders, restaurant bookings, or other perishable goods — the Regulations carve them out expressly. In practice this means there is no 14-day window on a meal you have ordered through Bitte. The refund route described on this page (48 hours after delivery for quality / accuracy issues, any time for a cancellation) is the route that applies. Your wider statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (goods must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose, and as described) are unaffected and run alongside this policy.
How do I request a refund?
From the order page on Bitte, tap Request a refund. You will be asked to:
- Choose what went wrong — pick the closest reason from the list (missing item, wrong item, food quality, late delivery, didn't arrive, other).
- Tell us what happened — a short message (up to 1,000 characters) describing the problem in your own words.
- Add photos if it helps — you can attach up to five photos (food, packaging, receipt). Photos are not required but they make the review faster.
- Choose how much — the full order amount, or a specific item / amount.
After you submit, you will get a confirmation email and the order page will show Refund pending. Our decision window is five working days after the merchant's 24-hour response window closes — so up to six working days from submission in total. If approved, the bank settlement window (the 5–10 working days your card issuer needs to post the funds) starts on top of that, once we send the refund instruction. The two windows are separate; see "How long until I see the money?" below.
What happens after you submit?
The request goes through three steps:
| Step | What happens | Typical timing |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant review | The restaurant has up to 24 hours to add their side of the story (privately to us, not to you). | Up to 24 hours from submission |
| Bitte decision | A Bitte ops reviewer reads both sides and the photos, then decides: approve in full, approve in part, or decline. This is our decision time, not your bank's. | Up to 5 working days after the merchant window closes |
| Refund issued + bank settlement | If approved, we instruct Stripe / PayPal to refund the original payment method the same day the decision is made. Your bank then takes its own 5–10 working days to post the funds — that delay is set by Visa / Mastercard / PayPal, not by us. | See "How long until I see the money?" below |
You will get an email at each step. You can also see the live status on the order page.
How long until I see the money?
Where a refund is not in dispute — for example your order was cancelled, was never accepted, or could not be fulfilled — we will issue it without undue delay and in any event within 14 days, as your statutory rights require. The dispute steps above do not apply to such refunds; only the bank settlement window below does.
Once your refund is approved we send the refund instruction to the payment gateway the same working day. From that moment, the time to actually see the money in your account is a bank settlement window set by your card issuer or PayPal — it is not Bitte deciding anything else, just the payment networks moving funds:
| Method | Bank settlement window (after we send the instruction) |
|---|---|
| Debit / credit card via Stripe | 5–10 working days |
| PayPal balance | 1–3 working days |
| PayPal-linked card | 3–10 working days |
These bank settlement windows are set by the payment networks (Visa / Mastercard / PayPal), not by Bitte. We cannot speed them up. If your refund has not arrived after the upper figure above, contact your bank first; they can confirm whether the funds are sitting in their queue.
What if my request is declined?
If we decline your request (in whole or in part), the email we send will include the reason. You have two further options:
- Reply to the rejection email with anything you think we should reconsider — new evidence, a clarifying photo, or a written account of what the restaurant said to you in person. Replying re-opens the case for a second review.
- Take it further — if you remain unhappy, you can raise the matter with your card issuer (chargeback right) or, where the order value qualifies, with the small-claims court. The rejection email tells you which of these applies to your case.
We aim to resolve every complaint at step 1 — most cases that get re-opened on new evidence are decided in the customer's favour.
Partial refunds
A refund does not have to be all-or-nothing. If only one item on a multi-item order was wrong, we will normally approve a refund for that item plus its share of any delivery fee or service charge. You can also request a partial refund yourself when you submit.
Refunds and your dietary requirements
Recording dietary requirements (allergies, dietary observance, VIP preferences) is a separate flow from refunds — see the Privacy / Data Sharing page in your account. Allergic reactions or wrong-allergen serving are a refund reason like any other; please describe what happened and attach photos if you can.
Refunds and frozen shops
Occasionally a restaurant's account is "frozen" because of unresolved refund debt to Bitte. In this state the restaurant can still operate its in-person business but new orders through Bitte are blocked at checkout. This is a separate process from your individual refund — if the restaurant you ordered from later becomes frozen, it does not affect your already-submitted refund request, which we will still review and execute through the original payment method.
Who to contact
| For | Contact |
|---|---|
| A refund question | support@bitte.uk (mention the order reference) |
| A privacy question (your data, erasure, etc.) | privacy@bitte.uk |
| A complaint about how we handled a refund | complaints@bitte.uk |
Independent dispute resolution
If our internal process above does not resolve your complaint to your satisfaction, you do not have to stop there. The following independent routes remain available to you at any time, including after — or instead of — our internal review: - Citizens Advice consumer helpline — free, independent UK consumer advice. Phone 0808 223 1133 (English) or 0808 223 1144 (Welsh). They can help you understand your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and what to do next. - Small claims — for monetary disputes you can bring a claim through the small claims track of the County Court, using the Money Claim Online portal at www.gov.uk/make-money-claim. The small claims track is designed for individuals to use without a solicitor and handles most consumer claims up to £10,000. We do not currently participate in a private Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. If that changes we will update this page and tell you when we decline a refund. Your statutory rights are unaffected by anything written in this policy.
How this policy fits with the rest
- The merchant-side rules (24-hour merchant response window, processing- fee carry, debt-freeze threshold of £500 or 30 days) are in the Bitte Restaurant Services Agreement clause 4.8.
- The data we collect during a refund request (your photos, message, the merchant's reply, our decision) and how long we keep it are described in the Bitte Privacy Policy §4 ("Process customer-initiated refund requests") and §8 ("How long we keep your data").
This document does not affect your statutory rights as a UK consumer (Consumer Rights Act 2015, Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013). Where those rights give you more than this policy, the statutory right wins.