Dear Sir,
I would like to raise a complaint against the India Today group. Following are the facts of the case:
1. My wife had received a call from a representative of India Today Magazine stating that India Today group is offering to some select group a very interesting offer.
2. The person said that as per the offer, if I paid an amount Rs. 3, 200 I would get a free stay at any of the selected hotels across India for 2 nights 3 days for 2 adults & 1 kid including breakfast & dinner. This voucher would also allow me to get free air tickets to the location free of cost.
3. I double checked the offer with the rep. & asked him to confirm if the airfare included taxes.
4. He confirmed back to me stating that the airfare was including taxes & there were no hidden charges involved.
5. I confirmed the order & was told I would get my voucher within 7 business days.
6. To my horror, on the 7th day I got a big parcel of books & CD’s with an invoice of Rs. 3, 200.
7. The invoice did mention that there was a gift allocated to me for which I had to log on to their website & enter the mentioned password.
8. I was pretty disgusted, since the rep. never told me that the free gift would come with a bunch of books.
9. I tried logging in to see what this gift was but was thrown out due to incorrect login details.
10. I then tried calling the call center # that was mentioned to lodge my complaint. This was a # of New Delhi & I had to wait for atleast 25 minutes before someone answered me.
11. The person told me that my gift was not yet activated & that he would do it in couple of days. I re-confirmed that the facts that were stated to me during the offer was sold to me.
12. However, he said that the facts stated by the rep. were incorrect & that the airfare did not include taxes.
13. I informed that I was not interested in this offer & he asked me to send the books back if I wanted the refund.
14. In the meantime I had also send a couple of e-mails to their customer care & they too informed that my free gift was not activated & if I did not want the offer I was free to send the books back.
15. I sent the parcel back to the address where it came from & was even more surprised when the parcel came back to me with the reason “consignor did not accept”
16. Since then I have been writing mails to them but have not got a reply.
My concern’s here are:
1. The sales rep who called me the 1st time gave me an offer which was in no way related to what I got. He never mentioned about books to be bought!!!
2. The voucher mentioned on the invoice is not active till date
3. I needed to call the call center 3-4 times & wait for 20-25 minutes before someone spoke to me
4. The parcel that I sent was not accepted & I am being denied the refund of my money.
5. This is a clear case of fraud, misrepresentation & mental torture.
I would be obliged if you take this case up on your channel & at lease make innocent consumers wary of the fraud that the India Today group is involved in.
Please feel free if you want any other details re. the parcels/mails that I have sent to these folks.
Thanks,
Rohit
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