Chennai: The vehicle stops, the delivery agent takes the food parcel from the crate and is found savouring a few scoops of biriyani. After repacking it and trying to bring an ‘intact’ condition, he tastes the dessert from his order.
This video showing a Zomato employee eating dishes that are meant for delivery has gone viral in the social media and has created a huge furore. It has planted the seed of doubt among several users who have been raising questions seeking answers. And this shocker has come just days after staff of Swiggy, another popular food delivery platform, staged a protest disrupting services.
“We have found that the video was shot in Madurai, the person in the video is a delivery partner on our fleet. We have spoken to him at length – and while we understand that this was a human error in judgement, have taken him off the platform,” Zomato said in a statement.
However, Zomato is not the only player, we have UberEats and Swiggy as competitors in the business which can face the music of this incident.
“The video has raised severe suspicion on us,” said a food delivery agent. Asked whether he faces issues with customers, he said, “There have been times when we were denied of payment when they opt for Cash on Delivery. The reason they cite is delayed delivery. It is either traffic or delayed pick-up from restaurant which cannot be controlled by us, a mere delivery agent.”
Another agent attributed hunger and the inability to afford as the reason behind the Zomato man’s act.
“Though such incidents are not so common, but we have to admit they do happen. The executive can be hungry or when the customers order food from good restaurants, a few of us might want to take a bite to get the taste as we cannot afford to shell out more all the time,” said the agent.
Following this controversial happening, Zomato has said it would take a slew of measures to prevent such things from occuring again.
“We take this very seriously and will soon introduce tamper-proof tapes, and other precautionary measures to ensure we add an extra layer of safeguard against such behaviour. Additionally, we will educate our delivery fleet of over 1.5 lakh partners to highlight or escalate any such deviations to us,” said the company.