After complaints from restaurants regretting their contracts with the food delivery service Uber Eats, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is signalling it will commence an investigation.

Restaurants signed up with the California-based ride-hailing service in hopes of connecting with more customers.  But they found fault with Uber's policies, including charging restaurant owners a 35 percent commission, and requiring restaurants to pay a percentage of refunds even when whatever goes wrong is the Uber driver's fault. 

"We have three bits of the law we can deal with here," said Rod Sims, chairman of the ACCC.  "One is business-to-business - are they misleading the people they're dealing with? 

"Two is, are they engaged in unconscionable conduct, putting all the conduct together?

"And thirdly, are the terms with which they work unfair?  So, there's a lot to look at there," said Mr. Sims.

The restaurants complain that the contracts were written to inoculate Uber from all responsibility.

"When you look in the contract, it says something different as Uber claims it's not a delivery service - but a technological platform," Jeannie Paterson of Melbourne University's law school said to the ABC.  "And the contract also says the restaurant owners (not Uber) are responsible for quality control, even when the drivers have taken the food off their hands."