Enabling Restaurants to
Reclaim
$3–8k Monthly
Ionio partnered with an emerging restaurant technology venture to conceive, craft, and deploy DisputeDine—an automated platform that contests fraudulent refund claims across major delivery services.
The Costly Affliction
Delivery platforms such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub now constitute thirty to forty percent of a typical restaurant's revenue. Yet within this prosperity lies a pestilence: Fraudulent refund claims.
"Order never arrived." "Food was cold." The platforms often approve these refunds without question. In vulnerable locations, this afflicts five to fifteen percent of all delivery orders.
For an establishment conducting $50,000 monthly, this translates to $1,000–$2,500 vanishing each month into the ether.
The Silent Drain
Restaurant owners often remain unaware of the magnitude—small refunds accumulating into substantial monthly losses.
Manual Disputes
Filing disputes manually requires navigating three separate platforms, each with unique processes—ten to twelve hours weekly.
Slim Margins
With restaurant margins of three to five percent, every dollar lost to fraud directly threatens survival.
A Fractured Ecosystem
Most restaurants operate across DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub simultaneously—each with distinct merchant portals, dispute procedures, and evidence requirements.
None offer APIs for dispute management. Each guards their dispute process behind layers of authentication and deliberately obscure interfaces.
The Trials We Overcame
"The absence of official pathways demanded we forge our own."
No Dispute APIs
Major platforms deliberately exclude dispute filing from their interfaces. We could not rely upon clean endpoints. Instead, we engineered sophisticated browser automation to navigate their systems.
Evading Detection
Platforms actively hunt for automated systems. We engineered human-like behavior: randomized timing, natural cursor movements, and careful session management to remain invisible.
2FA Interception
Automating logins with two-factor authentication is challenging. We built a system to intercept email codes and inject them into the automation flow in real-time before expiration.
Reliability at Scale
Managing credentials and sessions for forty-five accounts daily requires robust infrastructure. We constructed a distributed job queue system to ensure consistency.
The Solution Wrought
A complete platform that transforms dispute management from a weekly burden into an automated revenue recovery engine.
The Journey Undertaken
Weeks I–II: Discovery
Logged into merchant portals manually. Documented every step of the dispute process with meticulous care. Produced wireframes and visual mockups.
Weeks III–IV: Infrastructure
Backend API development. Database schema design. Payment integration. Initial automation proof-of-concept to test platform login feasibility.
Weeks V–VI: Automation
The complex phase. Implemented browser automation flows, two-factor authentication handling, job scheduling, and detection evasion mechanisms.
Weeks VII–VIII: Launch
Interface refinements. Analytics dashboard. Production deployment. Successfully onboarded the first twelve locations.
The Fruits of Our Labor
Staff previously devoted ten to twelve hours weekly. Now they invest none. The system operates autonomously.
Across twelve locations, we reclaim nearly fifty thousand dollars monthly that was previously surrendered.
For establishments on slim margins, recovering revenue flows directly to the bottom line as pure profit.
Wisdom Gained
Revenue Recovery Creates True Value.
Saving money often proves more valuable than earning it in low-margin industries. Four thousand dollars saved monthly translates directly to profit.
Automation Without APIs Is Achievable.
With proper technique—randomization, session management—browser automation becomes a viable enterprise strategy when official interfaces remain closed.
Reliability Demands Infrastructure.
Production automation requires distributed queues, retry mechanisms, and observability—not merely scripts that function in isolation.
Crafting Solutions Where
Others Cannot
For ventures seeking to automate complex workflows or recover lost revenue where traditional paths do not exist—I