The Department of Consumer Affairs on Monday directed online food delivery platforms such as Zomato and Swiggy to submit plans on improving consumer redressal mechanism within 15 days besides furnishing details about their existing grievance redressal frameworks.

This direction was given during a meeting chaired by DoCA Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh with key e-commerce food business operators regarding consumer complaints received on the National Consumer Helpline. The meeting was attended by e-commerce FBOs including Swiggy and Zomato besides National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI).

“During the last 12 months, over 3,631 grievances have been registered on the National Consumer Helpline (1915) for Swiggy and 2,828 have been registered for Zomato,” the Ministry added.

Transparency in charging

Officials of DoCA discussed various issues raised by consumers including 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 among others. 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 and absence of any mechanism to separate genuine reviews from fake ones were some of the other issues discussed.

“E-commerce FBOs were directed by the Department to transparently show consumers the breakup of all charges in the order including delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc. Platforms must also show individual consumer reviews transparently and refrain from showing only the aggregation of reviews,” the statement added.

Consumer information

During the meeting, the restaurant industry body, NRAI also raised concerns that food aggregators do not share consumer information with restaurant partners impacting their ability to serve consumer needs better.

“It was emphasised that the right of choice for a consumer should be respected and the e-commerce FBOs were advised to allow consumers the choice to share their contact information with the restaurants, if the consumers want so,” the Ministry added.

The statement added that aggregators stated that prices of food are decided by the restaurants and they do have grievance redressal mechanisms in place.

“During the meeting, stakeholders acknowledged the need to address consumer grievances closely and develop a robust grievance redressal framework. They assured that the concerns raised in the meeting will be duly taken into consideration and the proposed improved and transparent framework will be shared with the Department in 15 days,” the Ministry added.

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