Hyderabad: Swiggy fined Rs 25,000 for artificially increasing delivery distance for Swiggy One members

Hyderabad: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Ranga Reddy, has ordered Swiggy food and grocery delivery service to pay Rs 25,000 towards punitive damages for collecting delivery charges by deceiving consumers and artificially inflating the delivery distance when using the Swiggy One membership.

The commission ordered Swiggy to pay Rs 5,000 as compensation for causing mental agony and inconvenience and Rs 5,000 towards the costs of the complainant. Apart from that, it also ordered to refund of Rs 350.48 (with 9 per cent interest) and a refund of Rs 103 collected as a delivery partner fee from the complainant.

Case details

The complainant is Emmadi Suresh Babu, a government employee and a resident of Balanagar in Hyderabad. To avail of free delivery for a specified distance, he purchased a Swiggy One membership. On September 27, 2023, when he ordered food online through Swiggy, they collected Rs 103 for 9.7 kilometres.

After obtaining Swiggy One membership, Suresh Babu once again ordered the same food on November 1, 2023. But this time, the distance was increased to 14 kilometres instead of 9.7 kilometres and thus to evade the benefit of free delivery for a specified distance, the opposite party inflated the distance and collected money from its customers.

Due to this, Suresh Babu, who obtained the membership for free delivery was forced to pay Rs 103 towards delivery charges. When the complainant questioned Swiggy about this, they replied that the delivery route could be modified using the mobile GPS and tried to avoid answering the queries. Suresh Babu, who wasn’t convinced by the explanation, approached the commission for redressal.

Despite the notice served, Swiggy failed to appear before the commission when called. On seeing the absence and due to the non-filing of the written version within a stipulated period, Swiggy was set ex-parte.

Considering the facts of the case, the commission noted that since it is possible that a number of customers of Swiggy were cheated due to the inflation of the distance, as seen in this case, is nothing but unfair and deficiency of service towards the complainant and other customers who are using the facility.

In view of the above observation and discussion, the commission ordered punitive damages on Swiggy, further directing them to discontinue the unfair trade practice by inflating the distance while using Swiggy One membership. The complaint was decided accordingly in favour of Suresh Babu and he was entitled to the reliefs awarded as mentioned above.