Zomato Review – Terrible and Pathetic, Nothing Else

I was never much of a user or fan of online food delivery services but that was mostly just because of my personal reasons. I do not like ordering food from restaurants that I have not seen. It’s crazy I know but I just have this weird thing about knowing the quality of the place and their hygiene before I eat their food. Most of the known restaurants anyways have their own delivery service so I never even felt the need for installing any of the food delivery apps like Zomato, Foodpanda, Swiggy, etc.

But as they say, when the entire world is going in a certain direction, you cannot afford to be left far behind. Food delivery services are fast catching popularity and last weekend, I too decided to give Zomato a try only because my friend installed the app on my phone on his own and made me order.

Zomato Review

He was visiting my house and we both decided to order something south Indian. It was a rainy day and water was pouring down from the skies since the morning. I called the 2 south-Indian restaurants near my place but because of the monsoon, neither of them was delivering orders at home. And that is when my friend suggested Zomato, installed the app on my phone and we ordered south Indian from a restaurant that I have never heard the name.

The Order

I live in an area where my house is not at all hard to find. I have ordered food from several different restaurants before and they all delivered easily. This time, however, the guy from the Zomato never arrived. After waiting for about 45 minutes, my phone rang but the call got disconnected before I could answer it. A few minutes later, the phone rang again for a few seconds and the call dropped again. The number that the call was coming from was a centralized landline number, not a cellphone. I knew it was the Zomato delivery guy calling me so I waited for him to call me back again but my phone did not ring again for the next 15 minutes. The guy did not also arrive at my home but instead, I got a message that my order has been canceled.

The Delivery

I then tried calling back the number but the call was not completed. So instead, I Googled the restaurant that I ordered from and called them. They told me that the order was out of their door and the delivery guy did not bring it back. I told him what happened and was really shocked by his response. He clearly told me that this was not the first time it was happening and I was not the first customer. In his words, this regularly happens with prepaid orders.

Rather than delivering the food at the doorstep (which is what the company is all about), their delivery guys will call the customer a couple of times and if they did not get an answer, will cancel the food and eat it themselves. They cannot do this with COD orders because in that case, the money has not been paid yet. In my case, however, the delivery guy rang my phone for a few seconds as an excuse that he did ‘call me’ before canceling my order. In short, I paid and he ate.

Customer Service

I then went online to Zomato website and opted for their customer service chat option. Without doubt, that was the worst customer service agent I had ever encountered in my life. Some of the language he used was “Why you talking tension? I am checking na. Have patience or call the phone. It is your fault, why did you not answer your cell. He called you na, he tried”. In the end, he told me that he cannot help me; and asked me to drop an email filing a complaint if I had a problem with their services. On his suggestion, I dropped an email but there was no response for 3 days. On the fourth day, I got an email back saying that their delivery guy called me “numerous times”; and then canceled the order so it was my fault and there is nothing that they can do.

I replied to that email asking why did their guy call me rather than knocking at my door. Are they delivering food over the phone at certain meeting points? If I was to go out and get food from their delivery boy, I may as well have walked to the restaurant only. The whole idea of Zomato was to have someone come to my home and hand me over the food. Most of all, why did the delivery boy not return the order at the restaurant and ate it himself? But as expected, I did not receive a reply to this email.

Zomato – Conclusion

Final verdict, Zomato is the worst ever company I have come across in terms of customer service. My recommendation is that you do not use them; and in case you do, make sure you that are not paying for the order in advance. Otherwise, the money will go out of your pocket and someone else will have a happy meal. It is a terrible and pathetic company, nothing else.