This is how a Zomato user ‘broke’ its customer service AI after chatbot failed to cancel his order
A Reddit post describing a customer’s chaotic encounter with Zomato’s AI-powered support assistant, Nugget AI, has gone viral after the user claimed he “broke” the chatbot while trying to cancel an order.
Sharing screenshots on the r/Zomato subreddit, the user detailed how the system repeatedly refused to connect him to a human representative, leaving him exasperated.
“I just broke the Zomato customer service AI, and honestly, it was my only option after the nightmare I went through,” he wrote.
‘All I wanted was to talk to a human agent’
According to the post, the ordeal began when the user mistakenly added extra items to his cart while rushing home with his one-year-old daughter. “I was on my way home with my cranky 1-year-old daughter and accidentally added a bunch of extra items to my cart and placed the order,” he said.
He contacted the restaurant, which agreed to cancel the extras but told him the final cancellation had to go through Zomato’s customer support.
“That’s when my absolute nightmare began,” the user wrote. “I got connected to this so-called ‘customer support’ AI that couldn’t understand a single thing I was saying. All I wanted was to talk to a human agent, but the bot kept refusing.”
Frustrated, he decided to test the chatbot’s patience. “I started spamming it relentlessly with ‘Let me talk to customer support’ and ‘Let me talk to an agent.’ It finally gave up—or, as I prefer to see it, I broke its algorithm,” he said.
By the time the AI responded that it was “escalating your concern to a senior support executive,” the order had already been picked up.
‘Too dumb to process basic communication’
The user expressed disbelief over Zomato’s decision to deploy the bot, saying it lacked basic comprehension. “I don’t understand why they even launched this ‘Nugget AI’ when the bot can’t understand basic human communication. I was literally trying to explain that I didn’t want food wastage, and it was too dumb to process it. A human agent would have understood instantly.”
He ended his post on a definitive note: “I’m done with Zomato. Never using this service again.”
Users share similar AI support struggles
The viral post struck a chord with hundreds online. One Redditor joked, “I see chatbots are not programmed to handle spams lol,” to which the original poster replied, “Yeah, most chatbots aren’t! Because when you’re building them, you don’t expect for spam.”
Another user said, “The same happened with me on Zepto last month. I spent 15 minutes repeating my texts before finally getting a refund and a Rs 200 coupon.”
A third commenter added, “The AI kept repeating the same thing over and over. I requested help from a live agent multiple times, but it didn’t assign the chat to one.”
