Swiggy faces the heat for showing incorrect bill breakup

Swiggy has been facing the heat on social media since yesterday after multiple users found that their bill line items and bill total did not match, with the total shown on the app being higher than the sum of the individual line items. This discrepancy was first spotted and shared by Kingsly on X who accused the company of scamming users by overcharging them:

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. pic.twitter.com/JSgEq7yWUT

— ؜ (@kingslyj) September 21, 2023

Soon after this post went viral, many other users shared screenshots of their own Swiggy bills to corroborate this claim. Some users tried to get to the bottom of how Swiggy is calculating the total value. For example, one user shared that Swiggy is rounding up each cost item, and rounding down every discount.

Eventually, Swiggy responded that the calculation was due to a bug in how the bill and line items were displayed and informed that it had been fixed.

to a tech bug which our teams have fixed. Now back to ordering your favourite food! (2/2)

— Swiggy Cares (@SwiggyCares) September 21, 2023

Here’s a thread better explaining how a UX bug caused all this unwanted attention for the company and here’s an illustration by Swiggy explaining the same.

But despite this explanation, some questions remain unanswered: 

1. Why are some users charged Rs 2 and some Rs 3 as platform fees? (Based on the various screenshots people have shared on X, some users received a Rs 2 discount and some Rs 3 discount on the Rs 5 platform fee).
2. Why are bill totals rounded to the nearest whole number? (All Swiggy bills appear to be rounded to the nearest whole number, even though the company has previously charged exact amounts).

For the second question, Swiggy initially responded to Kingsly’s post stating they round off the amounts because of an RBI circular that requires them to do so and shared a link to the circular.

And Swiggy is claiming @RBI is forcing them to steal crores of rupees from their customers every year.

In what universe does stealing money like this without any notice "obviate unnecessary discomfort"? https://t.co/unFFqeH0zc pic.twitter.com/smiJcqh7yg

— ؜ (@kingslyj) September 21, 2023

But this response from Swiggy was quickly deleted and it turns out that the RBI circular that Swiggy referred to was for NBFCs, and Swiggy is not an NBFC.

After confidently blaming @RBI for this scam @Swiggy / @SwiggyCares has deleted their tweets justifying the loot.

— ؜ (@kingslyj) September 21, 2023

It continues to remain unclear as to why Swiggy rounds off the bill rather than charge the exact amount and why Swiggy posted and deleted a tweet referring to the RBI circular.

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Update (22 September, 6:15 pm): Changed headline from “Swiggy faces the heat for showing incorrect bill total” to “Swiggy faces the heat for showing incorrect bill breakup.” Added link to illustration shared by Swiggy explains the bug.

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