Over the last couple of days, several users took to X, formerly Twitter, to complain about and highlight that online food delivery platform Swiggy has been charging an extra amount by rounding off their total to the nearest whole number and adding an additional Rs 3 to the order value. Swiggy has now issued a clarification about the same and said that it was a technical bug and customers were only charged the actual amount at the time of placing their orders.
A user, @kingslyj, took to X, and stated that he noticed that all Swiggy transactions "were for whole figure amounts, while other card transactions still had paisa amounts". He said in the post, "Dug a bit and discovered @Swiggy used charge the exact amount to the paisa once upon a time but have since started salami slicing." In a follow-up tweet, he shared the screenshot of the order value and other charges levied by the platform. "And it's not Swiggy just stealing a few extra paisa per order. Eg. 626.57+35.24+2.00+28.00-52.99+33.09 = 671.91 Instead of adding 9 paisa to round up to the whole rupee, @Swiggy charges Rs.3.09 extra instead. Absolutely no justification for this," he added.
"At Swiggy's scale, even 10 paisa per order would add up crores of rupees per year. And this amount is being tacked on **AFTER** tax. So how are they accounting for crores of extra income they are literally stealing without providing any service to or even informing customers?" he remarked.
Deepak Shenoy, Founder and CEO of Capital Mind, also shared a similar experience on the platform. "Holy moly. This is actual fraud and I found that @Swiggy is doing this even for me! Here's my last order and it adds up to 255.60. But they charge 259? This stinks. It can't be some random error, it seems to be on purpose to add rs. 3 extra. What's going on?"
In another tweet, Mr Shenoy said, "Turns out it might just be a display error. There's an extra rs 3 discount on every order. Platform fee of rs. 5 discounted to rs 2. But in the invoice it shows plat fee of rs 2 only which is the missing rs. 3." He added that, like a lot of users, he is "confused" since he does not keep track of what discount he gets when he orders from the application. "Saw the invoice and added things up. Isn't malicious, so no fraud," he said.
Many people shared their experiences and claimed that they saw a huge discrepancy in the total bill value.
Swiggy responded to Mr Shenoy's post and explained that it was a technical bug which the teams had fixed. "Some users may note incorrect discount amounts in their order history page. However, users have actually paid as per the prescribed discount amount during the checkout. Customers have paid the correct amount. This discrepancy in order history and actual paid value is due to a tech bug which our teams have fixed. Now back to ordering your favourite food!" they said.
