Everything now comes home: on-demand service apps and their teething troubles

Home services have become popular during the lockdown, but teething troubles continue

In March 2021, Bengaluru-based Ramya Shivaram (name changed) booked and paid a leading home services company to renovate her parents’ house. Cut to four months later. The company hasn’t finished the project or even delivered the material already paid for. “The execution team at Housejoy took more than 50% of the payment in advance and has failed to deliver. All they’ve done so far is to demolish one bathroom and have left it in an unusable condition. For the last two months, we’ve been pleading with the company to either refund the amount or deliver the materials. No action has been taken and the team refuses to acknowledge calls,” says Shivaram. There was no written agreement regarding refund or payments when the company was hired. “They only sent an email/Whatsapp message mentioning the procedure of payment. We were naive enough to believe that they would start the work once we made the payment, but they didn’t.” Online reviews are flooded with similar complaints against this company and others as well. As reported on consumercomplaints.in, a client booked Urban Company for painting his home this July, and despite paying an advance, the company is denying him service. Elsewhere, a carpenter from Housejoy went missing after receiving money from the client to buy materials. Another client says they paid ₹10 lakh, also to Housejoy, in February 2021 for house construction but when they cancelled the project a month later, the company ignored requests for a refund. ‘The only thing provided by Housejoy till date is a 2D floorplan of my house and a soil survey report. It has been four months and no one is responding’, states the complaint posted last month.