Zomato Charged Full Cancellation Fee After Agent Promised Refund — Consumer Forum Remedy

Rohan Gupta, a salaried professional from Gomti Nagar, Lucknow, placed a food order on Zomato on 17 March 2025, amounting to ₹274. The app showed an estimated delivery window of 20 to 30 minutes. Over an hour passed. The delivery partner stopped responding to calls entirely.

Rohan contacted Zomato customer support at around 5:15 PM. He asked, directly and explicitly, whether he could cancel and receive a full refund given the delay. The support agent confirmed — yes, he would get a full refund. Rohan cancelled the order. He had the foresight to record that call.

What followed was infuriating. A message arrived shortly after informing him that a full cancellation charge of ₹274 had been applied, with zero refund. When he contacted support again, he was directed to email the grievance team. He did — with screenshots, a call recording, and a detailed account. The response he got back addressed only the cancellation policy in generic terms. It ignored the agent's explicit promise entirely.

Rohan had already tried following up on his own for nearly three weeks without resolution. When he approached Advocate Sudhir Rao's office, a structured consumer complaint was prepared — citing deficiency of service, unfair trade practice, and misrepresentation by the platform's own agent. The recording became the centerpiece of the evidentiary strategy, which a general follow-up approach had not effectively deployed. The matter was filed before the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Lucknow. The platform, faced with a properly documented complaint and formal legal notice, settled the matter by refunding the full amount along with a compensatory amount for the inconvenience caused — well before the first hearing date.

You can read about this case in detail at https://sudhirrao.com/zomato-cancellation-fee-refund-consumer-forum-complaint-indi/