Zomato may soon deliver your order faster if you pay more money

New Delhi,UPDATED: Apr 25, 2024 09:27 IST

Zomato is testing a new feature that will help you in getting your order faster. If you feel your order takes a lot of time to come but you want it soon, you can pay for it to avail Zomato’s priority delivery service. Notably, the option has not been rolled out yet. It is in fact being tested in cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai, as per a report published in Moneycontrol.

The report revealed that in Bengaluru, a customer had the choice to pay Rs 29 extra for a 16-21 minute delivery, compared to the standard 21-minute delivery time.Interestingly, Zomato Gold members are also subject to this additional charge, as reported by Moneycontrol. We've reached out to Zomato for comments on this change and will provide updates as soon as we receive a response.

So, Zomato is making some big changes to both its fees and its services, hoping to keep growing and making customers happy.

Zomato has hiked its platform fee by 25%, now charging Rs 5 extra on each order. This change impacts customers in major cities like Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. The platform fee is an additional charge on top of the delivery fee. Initially, Zomato introduced this fee at Rs 2 in August 2023, then increased it to Rs 3 in October and further to Rs 4 on January 1 this year.

Zomato's rival, Swiggy, already charges Rs 5 as a platform fee. Some customers even report seeing a fee of Rs 10 from Swiggy. This platform fee is a fixed charge on every order, irrespective of the order's total amount. While Zomato does have a separate delivery fee, Zomato Gold members, who are part of their loyalty program offering discounts and free delivery, still have to pay this platform fee.

Besides the fee hike, Zomato is revising its intercity delivery service, Legends. Launched in 2022, Legends promised next-day food delivery from specific cities but ran into trouble due to changes in its delivery method using pre-stocked items. Now, Zomato is reworking Legends, considering plans to extend it to longer-distance deliveries within cities and possibly to other countries, though these plans are currently paused. The head of Zomato's intercity delivery departed soon after Legends' launch, and the company is also facing a lawsuit over unfulfilled promises of the service.