Thuisbezorgd Adds Hidden Costs and Fake Discounts, Consumers' Association Says
The Dutch Consumers' Association says food-delivery platform Thuisbezorgd hides mandatory costs and advertises fake discounts, adding 2 to 4 euros per order, and wants customers compensated.
See more of Dutch Brief in your Google search results
The Dutch Consumers’ Association has accused the meal-delivery platform Thuisbezorgd.nl of hiding mandatory costs and advertising fake discounts, and is demanding that the company stop and compensate affected customers.
What the association found
From February 2026, the Consumers’ Association (in Dutch, the Consumentenbond) examined the ordering process and prices on Thuisbezorgd’s app and website. Under Dutch and European rules, any compulsory costs must be shown clearly before a customer starts an order. According to the association, Thuisbezorgd does not do this: charges for compulsory “service”, for bags, plastic packaging and sauce, are not visible at the start, and only appear during or at the end of the order.
The effect, the association says, is that an order ends up on average 2 to 4 euros more expensive than it first appeared. Alongside these hidden costs, its researchers also found what they describe as fake or dubious discounts.
Why it matters
The practice of revealing extra charges only at the end of a purchase, sometimes called drip pricing, is exactly what consumer rules are meant to prevent, because it makes it hard for people to see the real price before they commit. It is a growing focus for regulators: a European Commission sweep of online shops earlier this year found many were adding costs late in the process or displaying misleading discounts.
The scale at Thuisbezorgd could be large. The platform is the dominant meal-delivery service in the Netherlands, part of the Amsterdam-based company Just Eat Takeaway, with more than 6 million users in the country. Because the practice has probably been going on for years, a spokesperson for the association estimated that the total in hidden costs could run into the hundreds of millions of euros.
SPONSORED
You’re overpaying your accountant. And they still don’t call you back.
Neno gives you a dedicated bookkeeper, automated admin, real-time financial insights and a free business bank account. Everything your business needs, in one place.
No chasing. No surprises. No unnecessary costs.
A demand for compensation
The Consumers’ Association says it has been in talks with Thuisbezorgd about its prices since March 2026, but that the platform is still confronting customers with the extra charges and questionable discounts. It has now formally called on the company to remove all hidden costs and fake discounts quickly, and to compensate its customers.
“It is about a lot of affected people,” said the association’s director, Sandra Molenaar, pointing to the platform’s millions of users. “We want all hidden costs and fake discounts to disappear quickly, and Thuisbezorgd to compensate its customers.”
Not just Thuisbezorgd
Thuisbezorgd is not the only platform the association looked at. It carried out similar research into Uber Eats and found hidden costs there too. After pressure from the association, Uber Eats adjusted its additional charges in June, and the two are still in talks about further improvements and some form of gesture towards consumers.
The company’s side
At the time of writing, Thuisbezorgd had not publicly commented on the association’s latest findings. What is known is that the two sides have been in discussions about the platform’s prices since March. In the past, Thuisbezorgd has described itself as transparent about its pricing, but had not responded specifically to this new research.