Jul 17, 2011 09:41 AM
4533 Views
I am a red studio member since Jan 2010. Booking holidays have been the most frustrating experience for us for the last two years, and we have not been able to utilize the 7+7=14 days accrued to us over these two years. Why? Because everytime and anytime we call them, there is a stock reply that rooms are not available. In whichever resort we want. We literally have to beg and plead. At times the customer agent gets back with totally irrelevant dates. We wanted to book for winter season 2010 – all resorts we wanted were unavailable months in advance. We had to waste hours and hours on phone with the customer agents pleading for some solution. They will say something which doesn’t match with the on-line system – so I don’t know if there is something fishy in the reservation system that the agents or the company hold on to some bookings to be released to favoured parties or complaining parties when they want to. The whole matter is extremely opaque, frustrating and has to be escalated to consumer authorities.
We feel that lakhs of rupees have just gone down the drain, and we have been foolish to invest this money attracted by the great Mahindra name and by heavy company advertising.
Today July 16 2011 we wanted to book a holiday anytime for the next six months in Goa – astonishingly everything is sold out! They said bookings have started from July 1 – so six months in advance if CM cannot give assurance of a holiday plan, then what have we invested in! If their capacity is so inadequate why are they selling more and more subscriptions now – don’t they have the courtesy to plan their capacity, number of resorts, number of members so that their existing customers get a fair chance? I am assuming the company is straight-forward in making the pre-bookings, which is also in doubt and it is quite possible that they show everything booked and then release bookings later, for some hidden benefits.
Club Mahindra is turning out to be a fraudster, and if they don’t come out clean or get their acts together then within no time their name and brand equity will be rolling in the muck.
Nilanjan Das
