Instamart customer says delivery man made her feel unsafe at 11pm: ‘Shaken, angry, deeply disturbed’

Screenshots of the customer's interaction with a Swiggy Instamart customer care executive. (Image credit: @protagonist_xig/X)

A Swiggy Instamart customer has alleged that a delivery executive turned up at her home with another unidentified man close to 11 pm to demand payment for a partially delivered order, an incident she said left her feeling unsafe in her own home and shaken about using online grocery platforms.

The customer, who goes by the name The Protagonist on X, shared a detailed account of the incident on Sunday, tagging Swiggy and Instamart. The post has since garnered close to 80,000 views and triggered a broader debate around customer safety, data privacy and platform accountability.

According to her post, the incident began around 7 pm when she received only part of her Instamart order. She raised the issue with customer care and was issued a refund for the missing items. "At 8 pm, the delivery executive called from a Swiggy number, saying the refund would be cut from his payout and asked me to pay him directly. He also asked for my personal number, which I refused, telling him he’d just delivered to my home and didn’t need it. He didn’t come then. I went to bed."

The situation escalated later in the night. At around 11 pm, she said two people rang her doorbell. “It was the same delivery executive, now with another person, asking me to come outside to take the order,” she said. She spoke to him through her home camera system and asked him to leave, telling him it was not an acceptable time to return.

The delivery executive, however, refused to leave, repeatedly pleading that he would lose his entire day’s wages if the issue was not resolved. “He wouldn’t go until I threatened calling security,” she said. Only then did the two men leave.

“What scares me most is the aftermath,” the Instamart user wrote. “Now I have to think twice before doing something as basic as ordering groceries online, because I don’t know who might show up at my door or what their intentions are.”

She described herself as “shaken, angry, and deeply disturbed”, adding that the incident went beyond poor service. “This wasn’t bad service. It was a failure that made me feel unsafe in my own home.”

I don’t think I’ll ever order from @Swiggy Instamart again. Tonight around 7 pm I received a partial order and then got a refund after raising the issue in cc. At 8 pm, the delivery executive called from a Swiggy number, saying the refund would be cut from his payout and asked… pic.twitter.com/tJgESGRBE3

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— The Protagonist (@protagonist_xig) February 1, 2026

Swiggy Instamart reaches out to customer

Screenshots shared alongside her post appear to show a chat with Swiggy customer support shortly after 11 pm, where she informed the platform that the delivery executive had come to her house late at night, refused to leave, and that she had to threaten calling the guards. In the messages, she repeatedly calls the behaviour “unacceptable”.

Swiggy responded publicly to the post, saying: “We would like to address this over a call. Please share the order ID, so we can look into this.”

Social media users flag concerns about customer safety and privacy

The response, however, did little to quell criticism from other users on the platform. Several people questioned why a delivery executive had access to the customer’s contact details after the order was marked as refunded, and why he was able to return to the customer’s residence hours later.

“For a second, let’s assume their concern was genuine, and they may end up losing their wages,” one user wrote. “Even in that situation, they should not be requesting or calling the customer or harassing them this late.”

Another user flagged what they described as operational failures. “In this day and age of GPS tracking, Swiggy can’t even track and pre-anticipate such nuisance issues?” the post read.

Others pointed to a lack of clear protocols. “The companies should have clear instructions and guidelines so that neither their earnings are affected, nor they contact the customer for anything other than delivering the order,” a user said, recounting a similar experience involving a partial delivery and confusion over cancellation and reordering.

Some reactions took a broader view, linking the incident to concerns around privacy and customer security in India. “Things will never change in India. Privacy and customer security is a big joke,” one user wrote.

The incident comes at a time when quick-commerce platforms like Instamart, Blinkit and Zepto are under increasing scrutiny for their labour practices, customer grievance redressal systems and data handling policies.

Swiggy has not, so far, publicly detailed whether the delivery executive violated company policy or what corrective action, if any, has been taken. The customer has not indicated whether she has been contacted privately by the company since the initial response.