Government Asks Swiggy, Zomato And Others To Improve Grievance Redressal Mechanism

Government has asked food delivery platforms to improve grievance redressal mechanism

Department of Consumer Affairs has directed major e-commerce food business operators (FBOs) like Swiggy and Zomato to furnish the current framework as well as a proposal on improving the consumer grievance redressal mechanism within 15 days.

Secretary in the department, Rohit Kumar Singh gave this direction during a meeting held with major e-commerce food business operators.

The direction came in the wake of the fact that in the last one year, over 3,631 grievances have been registered on the National Consumer Helpline (1915) for Swiggy and 2,828 have been registered for Zomato.

During the meeting, important issues raised by the consumers on National Consumer Helpline were discussed, like veracity of the amount of delivery and packing charges and the reasonability of such charges, disparity between the price and quantity of food items shown on the platform and actually offered by the restaurant, inconsistency in the delivery time shown to consumers at the time of placing an order and the time at which the order is actually delivered.

Also the lack of any mechanism to separate genuine reviews from fake ones, was another important aspect, which was discussed in the meeting, official sources said.

The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) raised the issue of customer information not being shared by the e-commerce FBOs with the restaurants which impacts their ability to serve the consumer needs better.

Further, they claimed that delivery charges are determined and levied by food delivery platforms, who also charge a commission of around 20 per cent on each order from restaurant owners.

E-commerce platforms were directed by the department to transparently show consumers, the breakup of all charges included in the order amount such as delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc.

Also the platforms were also asked to show individual consumer reviews transparently and refrain from showing only the aggregation of reviews.