The Centre has asked e-commerce food business operators (FBOs) to provide a proposal on improving the consumer grievance redressal mechanism within 15 days, the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said Monday. In a statement, the ministry said that the direction by the Department of Consumer Affairs came during a meeting chaired by Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh with representatives of major online FBOs including Swiggy and Zomato as well as the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI). Nidhi Khare, Additional Secretary in the Department of Consumer Affairs, was also called to “discuss pertinent issues which affect consumers in this sector”. “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 statement said. As per the statement, maximum grievances against both companies—Swiggy and Zomato—were related to deficiency in services and followed by ‘non/delay in delivery of product’ and ‘delivery of defective/damaged product’. “During the meeting, major issues raised by the consumers on National Consumer Helpline of DoCA were discussed 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, 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,” the statement said. As per the statement, during the meeting, NRAI representatives 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. “E-commerce FBOs were directed to transparently show consumers the breakup of all charges included in the order amount such as delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc. Platforms must also show individual consumer reviews transparently,” the statement said.
