William_Mboy
Explorer
The Enshittification of Swiggy
- Thread starter n1r0
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- enshittification swiggy
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.
badwhitevision
Forerunner
This is irrelevant to the point of discussion.
I used to regularly order at 3 AM from a place 20 KMs away that used to have super delicious food. It was from the outskirts of a tier 1 city to the city center. The order used to arrive in 35 minutes and would be good to eat. This was when Zomato Pro did not have a minimum order requirement or a maximum distance requirement. I saved quite a lot of money on delivery fees, while also being extremely loyal to Zomato. So loyal that I would only consider restaurants that were on Zomato gold and not others. Now I just freewheel on whichever platform I can get cheapest. I no longer find it to be useful to get a subscription, unless it's dirt cheap and I would anyway be paying that money for the delivery fees.
I understand companies have to turn profitable and make money, but they shouldn't be doing it by shitting on loyal customers.
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.
Oh and platform fee is hiked to Rs. 6
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.
So this strategy automatically means "hot food" is no longer possible/even a priority. Groceries are more profitable since
- delays are acceptable for them
- they own Instamart, so they have even higher margins on those items
Edit: It's showing only 3 months for 30 bucks for others I know
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blr_p
Oracle
Restaurant hygiene standards.
Not had any problems with food poisoning yet
Not had any problems with food poisoning yet
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.
blr_p
Oracle
That will be for users to raise these issues to swiggy through some public messaging. At best they will be delisted.
Or swiggy could be more strict and ask for some ID that can't be renamed without a cost.
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.
2-3 months ago I ordered from a knock-off restaurant (which doesn't even have a listing on Google Maps, had to go to Street View to see that it was a shitty hole in the wall kinda place) by mistake and got spoilt food. AI chatbot blankly said they will investigate and didn't even show an option to talk to a human agent or offer refund.
Edit: Oh another thing: has anyone else observed some delivery partners place your order on the footboard of their scooter, right next to their feet? If they don't have a bag, they can atleast keep it under the seat...
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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.
rsaeon
Herald
That's an automatic 1 star for delivery by me. Plus sharing of CCTV image with support over chat, no idea if any one of them have been reprimanded for it.
Delivery usually has two ratings with me, 1 star or 5 star. Tips are whatever I would spend in petrol to go and get it myself.
My food ratings are a little nuanced:
5 star — Excellent taste, decent serving size, good price.
4 star — Excellent taste, but either high price or small serving.
3 star — An option to consider when nothing better is available.
2 star — Disappointment of any kind (serving size or taste) for the amount charged.
1 star — Food poisoning and/or contamination.
I've been hospitalized twice for food poisoning from Swiggy/Zomato orders over the last five years or so. For the greater good, I'm not going to mention the symptoms I've suffered.
Both were orders were from unrelated cloud kitchens whose names ended with "Xpress" so now I completely avoid any restaurant with Xpress in their name.
I've also become incredibly intolerant of improperly cooked/stored food/ingredients. Basically, if I feel the need to sniff and see if the food's good or not? Automatic discarding for the urban wildlife.
If I have the slightest doubt whatsoever, I'm not having it. 1 star, block, register a complaint, never give them a second chance. I'm not ending up on another hospital bed with IV lines for any "benefit of the doubt" charity I have left in my heart for someone's livelihood.
edit: Also, every order I receive is put in the air fryer at the highest temperature for 1 to 2 mins before consumption. Not the cold stuff, obviously.
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Saw that both Swiggy and Zomato have started adding 10 bucks as festive season fees mirroring each other. They are literally operating like a cartel.
YeAhx
Forerunner
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.
Wish we had better competitors. Even grocery delivery apps have started to add charges like platform fee (from 0 to 5rs to up to 10rs now).
This will only keep increasing unfortunately, look at DoorDash/GrubHub/Uber Eat's business model in the US and you can predict the future for these too, this business in of itself is not a sustainable one, either the companies keep operating in loss or they hike fees. I'm not defending them but it is what it is.
As for me personally, I never really took to these restaurants and mostly just order Domino's/Burger King and If I feel fancy, I just go to a decent sit-down place.
As for me personally, I never really took to these restaurants and mostly just order Domino's/Burger King and If I feel fancy, I just go to a decent sit-down place.
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.
One example I can think of which will demonstrate this is ice-cream
Normal 1L milk is now costing almost 61-62/litre, if you make cream/cheese from it, you wont even get 100gms (rough idea from my cheese making endeavors) from it, how do you think even more expensive franchises are managing to give milk based ice-cream and not frozen deserts which are made of animal fat/oil churned with sugar? I doubt their prices are lower than 40rs/litre even if they do buy in bulk.
there was an ice-cream place (dont remember the name now) a couple years ago, where one scoop almost costed 150rs, and even I baulked at that, but the taste was the best and they guaranteed that they used milk without any additives to make it, thats 150 per scoop where even 50-60gm of ice-cream wouldnt have been there. And even the owner there said, this is the cheapest I can do if I need to have any sort of margin with Quality control, and that most customers like me baulked at the price.
Simply put, you need to cough up money to pay for good shit or convenience, and unless spending potential and the mentality changes on a large enough scale in India, companies would be forced to raise prices for the those in the minority who were already paying for it if they want to stay in business.
rsaeon
Herald
Yeah, I don't know how they're making any profit with people who stack discounts like me:
Delivery person showed me that he earned Rs 118 for the above order because he initially refused to take a Rs 100 tip.