Zomato Cracks Down on Fraudulent Restaurants Listed with Prohibited Items
Zomato Cracks Down on Fraudulent Restaurants Listed with Prohibited Items
The company announced that it has removed certain fraudulent restaurants from its app that may have manipulated the system.
Zomato has announced that it has removed several fraudulent establishments from its app that were found to be manipulating the system to promote ‘prohibited items’.
“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 that have a very limited menu on Zomato and might have listed prohibited items or worked around a way to list prohibited items. 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,” says Zomato.
The restaurant aggregator acknowledged that the mentioned establishments managed to circumvent Zomato’s verification processes by employing generic food names like “Naughty Strawberry” and “Merry Berry.”
Recently, social media users highlighted the emergence of questionable restaurants in the northern Indian union territory of Chandigarh, which are reportedly serving a single dish at excessively high prices.
Some of these establishments lack any reviews, while others have received a significant number of negative comments, potentially as a strategy to deter customers who are merely seeking to place food orders.
“Those look like flavours of juice that you put into your vapes. Pricing also looks consistent,” said one customer, while another wrote: “True. I know of an exact such operation in another city, that essentially sells vape pens/cartridges. The price is almost the same, ₹ 1000- ₹ 1200 per item.”
A user highlighted that all the restaurants were situated in the same area, ‘Nayagaon’, which added an intriguing element to the situation.
Certain users speculated about potential conspiracy theories regarding the offerings of the restaurants, while others expressed a desire to experience it firsthand to discover what they would receive.
