Zomato comes under fire as restaurateurs object to policy penalising for order rejection

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After Zomato released its order rejection policy which is drawing the ire of restaurant owners who are once again hit by the covid induced curbs and lockdowns across the country.

The issue flared up when a restauranteur Riyaaz Amlani took to the microblogging site Twitter and posted screenshots of the aggregator’s revised "order acceptance terms" with a sarcastic caption: "A true support to the restaurant industry when they are facing the most challenging time of their lives! You are a true Tyranicorn!"

According to Zomato, the policy email is only sent to restaurants that have four times higher rejection rate than the platform. "This has been the policy for the last eight months, and it is not something new," Zomato said adding that the policy has helped reduce the rejection rate by 50 percent already.

Wow just wow! Way to be an evangelist for the restaurant community! My friend @deepigoyal and Zomans slow clap! A true support to the restaurant industry when they are facing the most challenging time of their lives! You are a true Tyranicorn!

"Additionally, if one any given day, the orders rejected by the restaurant exceeds 3% of the orders and more than 1 order is rejected, the online ordering services of the restaurant will be suspended the Zomato the next day," Zomato stated.

Amlani told Mint that the rules are an “unjust practice". “They cannot use this opportunity when restaurant business is down," he said.
The food aggregator also pointed out that in all the rejected order cases, the company passes on all the collected refunds to the customers. "If an order is rejected after 5 minutes, we issue additional compensation (funded by us) as a token of apology to our customers for the inconvenience," it said.