With current traffic situation in metro/tier 1 cities even covering 7km during rush hour takes 30-40 minutes by which time any hot food will be cold so what's even the point of longer distance.
This is irrelevant to the point of discussion.
To op maybe as he ordered around midnight but this fact is relevant to majority which orders during rush time only or at least not during 11pm-7am time period & the reason why zomato/swiggy implemented it without any noticeable impact on their business (aka they were losing similar money as before or maybe a bit less now considering zomato share prices trend). Maybe they should introduce another plan for "larger distance deliveries" with appropriate charges but I think more than charges it has to do with customers complaints regarding such long distance delivery orders which led zomato/swiggy to reduce the distance else they could have simply launched a "gold pro" plan with up to 10-20km distance free delivery.
I'll allow it. The night time ordering was just the incident that triggered me to share the experience, and only one aspect of Swiggy's grand scheme to suck all possible profits from customer. The point was they couldn't deliver within the claimed time frame even when there's close to zero traffic, which indicated the customer was no longer the priority, they just wanted more orders fulfilled, even if delayed.
Swiggy has increased the minimum order value to 199 for free delivery now, so ordering for just one person is problematic: you either have to order 2 dishes, or pay delivery fee...which defeats the whole point of the membership.
Since they have established a customer base, they think they can increase profits by hiring fewer delivery partners, and requiring more no. of deliveries from each for higher incentives; instead of more partners delivering fewer orders each.
Good initiative as long as swiggy successfully distinguish "bad food taste reviews" from "bad food hygiene reviews".
What I've personally seen is restaurants/kitchens whose ratings have tanked, sign up again under a different name so they get a clean slate and are able keep serving subpar food to unsuspecting customers.
That will be for users to raise these issues to swiggy through some public messaging. At best they will be delisted.
The thing is it's not in Swiggy/Zomato's interest to have such checks in place, since they get a commission on every item ordered through them. They already list the FSSAI registration no of a kitchen, but it's hidden away. It would be easy for them to implement this check, but they don't care as long as they get paid.
I suggest to order only from restaurants that have at least a 3.9 star rating with at least 10k+ reviews or a 4.0 star rating with at least 5k+ reviews & a good amt of google reviews too. Swiggy post order delivery support has always been poor compared to zomato in my experience.
I noticed this as well. On top of having 15-25% commission rate that they charge per order, gst and govt taxes, their subscription based service where if you are like 1 km outside their free delivery radius you get charged for full KMs (instead of how it is in US where you only get charged for additional KMs outside the "free delivery" radius), paying peanuts amount of money to their delivery boys, and now this.
Zomato & swiggy are still running in losses & only recently started posting some small quarterly profits. They will become profitable only when ppl start spending more on their services which in turn will happen only if people at least in tier-1/2/3 cities have more money than now. US is not comparable to India in this regard because of entirely different food ordering/eating outside culture.
same set of costs though, the drivers need money to put in gas in their car/bike, money for maintenance, and then enough money to sustain their homes. and this is India, spending potential is capped both because of mentality and actual means, even people like us who earn more than decent, would baulk at expensive purchases and would rather prefer cheaper alternatives. Not taking any potshots, but its the reality even for me.
