Coupang Eats to compensate 100% of settlement amounts after outage; lump-sum payments by the 16th

[Financial News] Coupang Eats will compensate merchants for 100% of the settlement amount for delivery food orders canceled due to the service outage that occurred on the 9th. Payments will be made in a lump sum by the 16th without affected merchants having to apply separately, and advertising fees will not be charged for orders canceled during the outage. As small-business groups press for meaningful compensation for losses, Coupang Eats appears to be moving quickly on compensation measures.
According to the delivery industry on the 11th, Coupang Eats is carrying out compensation procedures for merchants on its platform in connection with the service outage that occurred from 12:30 a.m. to 2:31 a.m. on the 9th. Coupang Eats said the outage was a temporary error that occurred during a system upgrade, disrupting in-app order payments and delivery systems for about two hours.
Coupang Eats has decided to pay 100% of the settlement amount—equivalent to that for a normal sale—for orders that merchants accepted during the outage but were canceled due to a system error. Settlement will be made automatically, with no need for merchants to separately prove their losses or apply for compensation. Advertising fees will also not be charged for those canceled orders.
As a result, merchants will also be compensated for losses on food they received orders for and finished preparing but could not deliver. Compensation is scheduled to be paid in a lump sum by the 16th. On the morning of the day of the incident, Coupang Eats texted store owners an apology and information about its compensation plan.
The measures came as small-business groups called for relief for affected merchants. Five organizations, including the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprises and the Korea Foodservice Industry Association, called on Coupang that day to transparently calculate losses caused by the outage and put together meaningful compensation measures, including refunds of advertising fees. They had particularly stressed the need to provide relief to food-service workers who rely heavily on delivery sales and merchants on the platform who paid advertising fees but were given no opportunity to make sales.
A Coupang Eats representative explained, “We are also directly apologizing to customers and providing them with specific information about compensation,” adding, “We are actively responding at the brand level to ensure that customers’ dissatisfaction over this service outage does not carry over to stores.”
The representative added, “We will do our utmost to upgrade our system management framework and take thorough measures to prevent a recurrence so that we can provide a more stable service going forward.”


[email protected] Choi Hye-rim Reporter