Are you thinking about Club Mahindra Holidays Membership? or have you been approached by Club Mahindra team? Just wait…. Think about this first.
I have read couple of reviews about club Mahindra holidays. I am afraid that these are written by their internal people only. My review is a bit long but I suggest to read it completely and carefully to avoid the problem later.
Availability of rooms in any season is the secondary issue. The primary issue is something else which is more serious than availability of rooms. Club Mahindra Holidays is the most customer unfriendly company, I have seen in my life. You will be surprised with the kind of experience, I got with them.
Members are not allowed to talk to any of the departments directly. The moment you call up their help line, you will be told in a polite manner that you will be approached by someone from their team. Your request is taken and the person will call back. In my case, name of their call center officer was Rinku. This is what her role is. However, you won’t get any call. The similar experience will happen if you call up their branch. At branch, I talk to telephone operator. You cant reach to anyone beyond telephone operator. Even if you insist or scold them to transfer this line to some senior person, you will be clearly told very politely that no one is available, “You must wait for our call”. Not only seniors but even concerned person will not attend your calls as the process is such that concerned department will call you back. In case, out of frustration, you write complaint mail, one automated response will be sent(and each time you write anything) which will say that we will respond you in 2 working days. However, you won’t get any response, especially when the matter is about cancellation of membership. The only person who is available to talk is the relationship manager(in my case, he was Shadab Akhtar) who has sold you the membership. However, no matter how polite he is, he doesn’t have any rights to keep you in touch with any senior managers who can help you out. Hence, there are only 3 persons with whom you can talk and they are RM, operator and call center, irrespective of your problem. Basically, this company is customer unfriendly and they are not bothered about it. You will not be able to find any hierarchy in the organization, if you ask them and not even it is mentioned on their website. On the website, there is one section called feedback where you can put your complaints. Trust me! I tried that too but nobody is bothered about it.
I came to the conclusion that I have got cooling off period of 10 days and somehow they want to finish my cooling off period. Post cooling off period I have not option to back out as per their rules.
This is not all. Another serious part is something for which we have bought such an expensive membership i.e. availability of rooms in given time. There are 4 types of memberships i.e. Purple, Red, white and blue in order of preference, purple will get highest preference and blue the lowest. Irrespective of color of membership, you are going to suffer. Look at some of my observations that I have drawn from my online login account(I have done analysis on availability of rooms over next 4 months in a spread sheet but there is no provision to upload it here)……
1) Look at Dubai and Austria property. It is not available for next 4 months(starting from 5th January till 5th of May, irrespective of membership type. If rooms itself are not available preference will not make any sense here.
2) Most of the locations have different peak/ off season months. One location will call March an off season and another will call it peak season. Due to this, it is not matching with school vacations. 3) I tried planning my tour for 3-4 days. It is not at all matching with the logical sequence in which I want to go due to unavailability of rooms. If I go by rooms availability, my travelling becomes too time consuming and expensive. Not just this, you will have to change your vacation destination as per their availability. 4) At many places, if Sunday is available, Saturday is not available and vice a versa. For studio apartment/ 1 bedroom, there is a minimum nights booking rule of 2 days/ 3 days respectively. Now, how can I book 2 days when only 1 day is available. Hence, for us nothing is available. 5) For white membership, booking is not available during school vacations, public holidays and festival days. Blue is only for rainy days. 6) Look at the nearby place like Ganpati Phule. It is not available most of the time. 7) At many locations, they do not have any properties. E.g if you are planning Kashmir, you get a room only in Srinagar and nothing in Gulmarg, Sonmarg, Pehelgam etc. On an upfront basis, you will like this membership and will think that it is so good to be true. However, once you land up, you will be in trouble.
I will call it kind of fraud and appeal you to save other by spreading this as much as possible.
