Hungry end to 2018 as Zomato service goes down

Rush of orders on New Year's Eve leaves customers hungry

Customers at a Zomato stand. Pawan Singh / The National

A popular food delivery service has blamed technical problems and high demand for a failure to fulfill some customers’ orders on New Year’s Eve.

Zomato, which allows customers to order food for collection or delivery through an online app, was deluged with complaints from people who were left hungry despite paying for their takeaways.

Many customers who ordered from the app on Monday night were assured their food was being prepared, only to be told much later that their orders had been rejected.

Cash was also taken from some customers' bank accounts despite orders failing to be delivered. Users have since been warned it could take up to a week to be refunded.

“Last night was one of the busiest nights for us in the UAE,” a Zomato spokeswoman said. “The traffic on our platform was very high and our systems took time to scale due to the high load.

"Due to this we were unable to process some orders. The refunds for all orders that we were unable to process due to the technical issues have been initiated and we are also reaching out to users with resolution for other related issues that they may have faced due to this.“