Zomato delivers wrong chicken dish to Hyderabad customer, then tells her 'please have it'
Zomato delivered the incorrect food order to a Hyderabad student and then asked her to “please have it” when she raised a complaint
In a bizarre incident, Zomato delivered the incorrect food order to a Hyderabad student and then asked her to “please have it” when she raised a complaint. The strange series of events unfolded when Hyderabad-based woman Ananya ordered chicken manchurian through Zomato. The restaurant instead sent her chicken 65 through the food delivery platform.

Ananya flagged the discrepancy to Zomato and managed to chat with a Zomato customer care representative (which, as many customers have pointed out, is no longer easy to do since Zomato introduced its AI chatbot Zia to deal with customer complaints).
However, even the Zomato representative, named Syeda, failed to solve Ananya’s issue. Instead, she was asked to “please have” the incorrect dish delivered to her.
According to a screenshot of her conversation with a Zomato representative that she shared on X, Ananya wrote: “I ordered chicken manchuria, not chicken 65.”
After a gap of five minutes, the customer care executive replied: “We request you to please have it… we are sure you will love it.”
“Average Zomato experience,” the Hyderabad student wrote while sharing a screenshot of the exchange on X.
The exchange has sparked much amusement on the social media platform, where it is steadily going viral with nearly half a million views in a day.
“So unexpected”
“I was frustrated but that response was so unexpected that I just burst out laughing,” Ananya told HT.com. She said that Zomato called her this morning and offered her a full refund for the incorrect delivery.
“I wasn't expecting much. It's a restaurant I regularly order from, so I know what they send me,” she explained.
Social media reacts
Some X users were tickled by Zomato’s response and shared their own experiences of hitting a dead wall while talking to customer care.
“Better than asking for photos of missing items,” wrote one person. Another said, “Zomato customer care is a joke. Scammers at best. I’ve switched to Swiggy.”
“I don’t know what’s with Zomato’s customer service team but I either connect with someone who lacks basic problem solving skills or the best customer support agent in the world who makes me feel like I just paid them 100Cr and they’ve to make sure I’m happy. Nothing in between,” a user noted.
“Hey Deepinder Goyal, improve your customer care responses, instead of just blindly running after profitability to keep shareholders happy,” X user Ishan wrote, tagging the CEO of Zomato.
Zomato replied to the post with its standardised response, writing: “Hi Ananya, we’re truly sorry for the trouble you have faced. This is not the kind of experience we ever wanted for you. Shoot us a DM with your registered phone number/ order ID, and we'll get things sorted at the earliest.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORSanya JainSanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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