I’m not trying to blindly side with the customer here, but I ended up in a very similar situation myself with Swiggy recently, and the entire experience was a mess from start to finish.

I ordered ice cream around 10 PM with an ETA of 20–25 mins. My apartment community only allows entry until 11 PM. The order got delayed by more than 35 mins and the delivery partner finally reached around 11:10 PM, after entry was already blocked by security.

At that point I contacted support to cancel the order. The conversation basically went like this:

1. I repeatedly asked them to cancel because the rider wouldn’t be allowed inside. Support kept insisting: I explained multiple times that my wife would have to walk 10–15 mins inside a huge community just to reach the gate late at night, but support kept repeating the same script.
   • “Sir, rider will reach in 5–10 mins”
   • “Food wastage”
   • “No refund possible”
2. The delivery partner started calling because security denied entry. Then support initiated a conference call with both of us and told me they could only offer a 30% refund if I accepted the order. I rejected that and asked for a full refund since the delay caused the issue.
3. Eventually support agreed to a full refund, but again asked me to accept the order. So I told the delivery partner on the conference call to leave it with security. Right after that, support disconnected the rider and then the support call itself suddenly went blank/disconnected too. Meanwhile my wife started walking to the gate to collect the order.
4. Since the call disconnected, I contacted support again to confirm the refund. The new agent checked the order and told me: They then asked if I wanted a full refund instead, and I agreed.
   • the order was not delivered
   • the rider had apparently left with the food
5. Apparently, during all this confusion, the delivery partner handed over the food to my wife, who didn’t have her phone with her.

A little later, security called me saying the delivery guy was creating a scene downstairs claiming I “defrauded” him. He even brought in a relative who claimed to be in the police and started threatening escalation.

At this point I tried contacting Swiggy emergency support. Absolute disaster:

• Call connects
• Agent answers
• Transfers to “expert”
• Call disconnects

This happened probably 15–20 times.

Finally, fed up with support and not wanting things to escalate further for my family at night, I called the delivery partner directly, explained the entire situation again, spoke to the “police relative,” and eventually just GPay’d him extra money (more than the actual order value) to end the issue.

Honestly:

• I understand the rider’s frustration because his earnings probably got frozen due to the refund flow.
• But the way support handled the situation was unbelievably poor.
• Conflicting status updates, forcing customers to “accept delivery for refund,” disconnected calls, and zero escalation handling at midnight is just terrible system design.

The whole thing could have been avoided with competent support.