48% people unhappy with online food delivery platforms’ grievance redressal, survey finds

According to a survey by LocalCircles, 88% people want govt to implement 'stringent food packaging standards', while 70% say high fees and surcharges remain key concerns.

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New Delhi: Online delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato may have witnessed a surge in demand for food delivery during the lockdown, but customers are not too happy about how these aggregators handle grievance redressal for substandard quality of food, a new survey has revealed.

According to a survey conducted by community social media platform LocalCircles, 48 per cent of the people surveyed are happy with these platform’s customer service, 39 per cent of respondents said no refund/replacement happens in the case of substandard food, 88 per cent want the government to implement a “stringent food packaging standards”, while 70 per cent of them say high fees and surcharges remain key concerns.

The survey covered 307 districts, which included 63,000 responses. Tier 1 district respondents made up 44 per cent of the total respondents, while 33 per cent of respondents were from tier 2 districts and 23 per cent from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.

“The study focussed on understanding key concerns of consumers, how customer service of food aggregators was functioning, along with concerns surrounding food quality, behaviour of food delivery personnel and what could be done via standardisation and information display to make the service more consumer-friendly,” the survey noted.

Positive rating for food delivery personnel

Food delivery personnel, however, received a positive rating, with 60 per cent of the respondents being happy with their behaviour and just 18 per cent expressing discontent.

While this is a good sign, consumers have also expressed a demand that “information be displayed about the food expiry date/time and common standards be followed on how food is packaged.”

“All in all, the food aggregators here will have to find a way to deliver information that consumer desires, better grievance redressal and well-packaged food, compensate delivery personnel fairly and do this while ensuring that the service stays affordable for small-ticket orders of INR 200 or less,” the survey noted, adding that the only sustainable means to achieve this is by securing higher discount from restaurants.