‘Delisted Them’: Zomato On Claims About Suspicious ‘One-Dish’ Restaurants – News18

Last Updated:November 21, 2024, 17:10 IST

Zomato claimed to have “delisted” a few of the dishonest eateries.

Zomato has finally responded to criticism it received for having dubious ‘one-dish’ restaurants on its platform. Some of the fraudulent eateries on its app that might have manipulated the system to promote ‘prohibited items’ have been ‘delisted,’ according to the company. Following the appearance of dubious listings on Zomato, social media users began to conjure up several conspiracy theories. Some suggested that Zomato was aiding the ‘money laundering’ industry, while others thought the eateries were a front for the drug trade.

“We have identified all such restaurants that were potentially fraudulent and have delisted them from our platform. To solve this more comprehensively, we have also investigated all other restaurants which have a very limited menu on Zomato and might have listed prohibited items or worked around a way to list prohibited items,” the official account of Zomato posted.

“As per our policy, all restaurants listed on Zomato need to have an FSSAI license and we also actively block items such as alcohol, cigarettes/cigars/vapes from being listed on our platform,” the post added.

The restaurant aggregator acknowledged the aforementioned eateries were able to circumvent Zomato’s “checks by using generic food names such as, ‘Merry Berry’ and ‘Naughty Strawberry’.”

The company stated that to prevent such occurrences in the future, they have further reinforced their fraud checks to proactively identify such cases.

Meanwhile, these dubious eateries emerged in Chandigarh, last week, according to social media users, who charged ‘absurdly high prices’ for a single dish. Some of the dubious restaurants had no reviews at all, while others had been inundated with unfavourable ones, presumably to protect the operation from diners only trying to place an order.

“Came across some odd listings on Zomato in Chandigarh – so-called ‘restaurants’ that only offer a single dish, priced absurdly high. It’s got me wondering: could these be fronts for money laundering or some other shady business?” a Redditor posted.

As the post gained popularity, readers shared their opinions about what would have caused these facilities to appear.

A user said “Those look like flavours of juice that you put into your vapes. Pricing also looks consistent.”

Another commented, “True. I know of an exact such operation in another city, that essentially sells vape pens/cartridges. The price is almost the same, Rs 1000- Rs 1200 per item.”

One user pointed out that all the restaurants were in the same location ‘Nayagaon’, adding to the mystery.

The mystery was increased when a user pointed out that all of the eateries were in the same area, “Nayagaon.”