Some of these are removed before you ever see them
DoorDash screens reviews against its own guidelines on the way in, and one of its rejection categories is the complaint most restaurants assume they are stuck with. Knowing which is which changes what you escalate and what you simply answer.
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What the guidelines already filter out
Four points from the merchant documentation. The third is the one that surprises operators.
Public reviews are checked against the DoorDash review guidelines and may be rejected before they publish.
Moderation here is upstream rather than on appeal, which is why the visible set is smaller than the feedback set.
Profanity, harassment and discriminatory, threatening or abusive content are rejection categories.
The abusive review is the one class where escalating to Merchant Support has a clear published basis.
Reviews focused mainly on delivery issues, such as delivery time or food temperature, may be rejected as outside a merchant's control.
The complaint every restaurant thinks it has to absorb is a named rejection category. Read the review again and ask whose failure it describes.
If a published review breaches the guidelines, the route is Merchant Support rather than a form on the review.
There is no self-service report button to hunt for. Write the ticket, quote the guideline, name the order.
Escalating a review that should not have published
Five steps, and the first two are the ones that make the ticket worth reading.
Work out which category it falls into
Abusive or discriminatory content, or a complaint that is really about the drive rather than the kitchen. If it is neither, this is a response and not an escalation.
Pull the order
The order identifier, the time it was ready, the time it was collected. A delivery complaint is provable from the timestamps in a way a food complaint is not.
Contact Merchant Support with the guideline named
Quote the category. Support is checking a rule, and a ticket that says this review is unfair gives them nothing to check it against.
Answer the customer anyway, inside the window
You have seven days to respond privately, and that clock does not pause while a ticket is open. The escalation and the recovery are separate jobs.
Fix the thing the timestamps showed you
Half the delivery complaints that get rejected as outside your control were still caused by food finished ten minutes before a driver arrived.
Rejected on the way in, or here to stay
What DoorDash says it may reject
- Reviews that violate DoorDash terms, for example profanity or harassing language.
- Discriminatory, threatening or abusive content.
- Reviews focusing primarily on delivery issues such as delivery time or food temperature, which are outside a merchant's control.
What stays
- An accurate complaint about the food, the packaging or a missing item, which is the review this platform exists to collect.
- A low rating with no comment attached, which carries no guideline breach to point at.
- A review you dispute on the facts, since nothing in the published guidelines covers a disagreement about what was in the bag.
What GetSetReply does with a DoorDash escalation
We do not open Merchant Support tickets and we hold no relationship with DoorDash that could get a review pulled. We work the other half.
- DoorDash feedback arrives in your queue with a private response drafted for the Merchant Portal.
- The seven day response window is yours to work inside, which is why the draft is ready before you have read the review.
- Nothing is published on your behalf and nothing is escalated on your behalf.
Two pages worth having open
One is how DoorDash data reaches your queue. The other is the wording for the complaint that turns up most often in this category.
DoorDash is one of the places we watch
Every platform below lands in the same queue, so a DoorDash review and a review from anywhere else are read, drafted and answered in one place.
- Yelp
- TripAdvisor
- DoorDash
- Trustpilot
- Etsy
- Square
More DoorDash guides, and removal on the review sites
DoorDash review escalation, answered
From DoorDash's merchant documentation, cited with a date below.
Can a DoorDash review be removed for being about the delivery?
DoorDash says reviews focusing primarily on delivery issues, such as delivery time or food temperature, may be rejected because they are outside a merchant's control.
How do I report a DoorDash review?
There is no self-service report control on the review. If you believe a published review breaches the guidelines, contact Merchant Support and name the category.
What does DoorDash reject outright?
Reviews that violate its terms, for example profanity or harassing language, and content that is discriminatory, threatening or abusive.
Does an open ticket pause my seven days to respond?
Treat it as though it does not. The response window and the escalation run on separate clocks, and only one of them is under your control.
Can GetSetReply escalate a review for me?
No. We draft the private response. The ticket is yours to raise.
Where the DoorDash removal facts came from
DoorDash's own merchant documentation on how reviews are collected, moderated and displayed, read on the date shown.
DoorDash
Escalate the rare one, answer the rest
Connect the store and every piece of feedback arrives with a private response drafted for the portal.