Improve mechanism to address consumer plaints, transparency in pricing-Centre to food operators

• The Centre has asked e-commerce Food Business Operators (FBOs) to provide a proposal on improving the consumer grievance redressal mechanism within 15 days- The Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution .
• During the meeting, major issues raised by the consumers on National Consumer Helpline of Department of Consumer affairs (DoCA) were discussed

Major Concerns:

• In the last 12 months, over 3,631 grievances have been registered on the National Consumer Helpline (1915) for Swiggy and 2,828 have been registered for Zomato.
• Maximum grievances against both companies were related to deficiency in services and followed by non/delay in delivery of product and delivery of defective/damaged product.
• Which violates norms under Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
• Including veracity of the amount of delivery and packing charges and the reasonability of such charges,
• Disparity between the price and quantity of food items shown on the platform and actually offered by the restaurant.
• Inconsistency in the delivery time shown to consumers at the time of placing an order and the time at which the order is actually delivered.
• Absence of any mechanism to separate genuine reviews from fake ones.
• Issue of customer information not being shared by the e-commerce FBOs with the restaurants, which impacts their ability to serve the consumer needs better.
• FBOs were directed to transparently show consumers the breakup of all charges included in the order amount such as delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc.
• Platforms must also show individual consumer reviews transparently.

Prelims Takeaway:

• Consumer Protection Act, 2019