Zomato Customer Sparks Debate Over Online vs Offline Food Bill. Here’s What Company Said

The customer who shared details of his order for Rs 689 (after applying a discount of Rs 75) claimed that it could have been purchased for Rs 512 (including CGST and SGST) offline.

Food delivery app Zomato logo on T-shirt

Source : ANI

The pandemic has forced many changes in our habits, and one of the biggest changes is the convenience of ordering food online from delivery apps. However, customers tend to overlook certain aspects while ordering food at the click of a button. A Zomato customer named Rahul Kabra recently highlighted the price discrepancy for ordering food online compared to eating food outside. The customer, who is a performance marketing manager in Mumbai, according to the Linkedin profile, shared the bill of his online order on social media drawing attention from several users. 

The customer shared details of his order comprising of veg black pepper sauce, vegetable fried rice, and mushroom momo on Zomato for Rs 689 (after applying a discount of Rs 75) which he claimed could have been purchased for Rs 512 (including CGST and SGST) offline.

In a LinkedIn post, Kabra mentioned the  price difference stating, “Cost escalation 34.76 per cent per order at Rs178 = (690-512)/512” and asked, “assuming Zomato brings visibility and more orders to the food service provider, should it charge such high price?”

“I must say me being a normal value-driven Indian customer, at the end of the day will always make a price to benefit comparative analysis as an end result of any higher pricing,” he noted.

Hitting out at the food delivery platform, the customer also warned against the pricing startegy saying, "The point is, customers are happy and willing to pay a price proportionally to the benefit derived from cost escalation, but this is not very elastic and can snap when stressed out of proportion, and that's what the pricing gurus at these start-ups much understand to keep the revenue healthy and flowing!"

The post garnered more than 11,880 reactions and 1,854 comments.

The food delivery platform responded to the query saying, “Hi Rahul, Zomato being an intermediary platform between a customer and a restaurant, does not have any control over the prices implemented by the restaurant partners on our platform. That said, we have conveyed your feedback to the restaurant partner and have requested them to look into this.”

The board of Zomato has recently approved its acquisition of Blinkit for Rs 4,447 crore in an all-stock deal. Blinkit, which operates in over 20 Indian cities, delivers products ranging from milk, fruits and vegetables to electronics.

Launched in 2010, Zomato has also expanded to countries such as the United Kingdom, South Africa, Sri Lanka, South Africa, New Zealand, Brazil and more.