Respected Editor,
Kindly note my grievance with regard to an airticket reservation made through Makemytrip.com on August 12 at 10.30 A.M. I booked four air tickets in Paramount Airways through this website for a scheduled travel from chennai to Hyderabad on August 19 (Booking Id FLT 00005632156). After the payment was processed, I received a mail stating that "due to communicaiton error, the reservation is not confirmed and an executive will be calling me in an hours time (evidence attached). As I did not receive any call till 4.00 P.M, I contacted the customer service and spoke to an executive by name Mr. Harsh, who in turn, expressed that, they are unable get seat availability with paramount airways and suggested me to try again for another airlines thorugh a fresh booking. Further he processed a refund of my money which they had charged at the time of booking. Subsequently I received an SMS stating that the money will be refunded in 14 business days. However on enquiry, the executive stated that he would ensure that the money is refunded with in 5 business days.
I am really surprised, with this kind of a process followed by this travel agency where they debit the amount even prior to issuing a ticket and then, don't repsond as promised and on enquiry they are refunding at their own set rule and regulations. In this entire process, I realised that, I have lost 5-6 hours of time, where I could have tried other alternate bookings, if they had confirmed the booking as promised. Further I also question whether taking money with out confirming the booking and refunding later with such a time lag is acceptable trade practice. Just for a comparision, if a booking is made through Indian railways website and due to any reasons, when the transaction is not processed the money debited is immediately refunded and a mail to the effect is sent to the customer.
I strongly feel that, strict action should be initiated against these travel agencies, to curtail such practices in the best interest of customers.
I would further like to add that this kind of practices lead to agencies showing huge collections and reflect good amount of bookings, which are not completed transactions. This may result in recording ficticious sale transactions in their records and show rosy performance. I hope they have enough Internal Control systems to take care of these situations.
0 comments