A Zomato customer from Maharashtra, Radhika Bajaj, claimed that a delivery agent verbally abused her office staff due to a 10-minute delay in receiving the order. She explained that she was tracking the order and had made arrangements for someone to collect it, but the delivery agent reportedly arrived earlier than expected.
Bajaj, who has over 10,000 followers on X, tagged Zomato and its CEO Deepinder Goyal and expressed her frustration, asking “Due to 10 mins late in receiving the order this Zomato delivery boy started abusing my office’s personnel who went to collect the order. Zomato why don’t you focus on improving behaviour of delivery boys.” “The concern is just that no one has the right to abuse anyone like this. Everyone deserves respect. Be it a delivery boy or be it the CEO of a company!” she added.
In response to the post, Zomato’s customer care apologized for the delivery partner’s disrespectful behavior. “This is not acceptable and we’re committed to addressing it seriously. Please be assured, we’re looking into this matter and will reach out to you soon with an update,” it stated.
However, social media users were not pleased with the delivery agent being made to wait for 10 minutes. Many noted that deliveries are time-sensitive, and agents often have to hurry to complete multiple orders. A delay can impact the timing of other deliveries.
“But 10 minutes is kind of a lot… He cannot wait an extra 10 minutes just for 30 bucks besides the fact that he has already spent north of 40 mins to collect and bring the order to your destination all for those 30-40 bucks. If you want him to wait an extra 10 minutes then tip him well,” a user commented. To which, Bajaj replied: “He came early and we had already arranged someone at the time mentioned on Zomato. He came early and immediately we had to arrange some other personnel.”
Several other users on X suggested that Zomato introduce a feature to penalize customers who take extra time to collect their orders from the delivery executive.
“Give 5 minutes for the customer to collect the order. If they haven’t come in to collect the order in 5 minutes start charging them the amount so the delivery partner will not suffer. Whatever the delivery partner did is wrong but the reason for that is known. Earning,” another user added.
“Some people are not sincere/punctual and make wait for others thinking delivery boy’s time is not worth it! Zomato should start taking waiting charges like Ola/Uber for such people after 2 minutes,” a third user commented.
“If there is a price to pay, all these folk will be on time! For the delivery boy who has little margin, if he loses 10 min in every order that might not allow him to fulfill the required orders in a day to make his ends meet!” a user wrote.