EMIRATES Review

My wife was traveling from Mumbai to Huston with my 2 year old. Since she was alone with the baby we took extra care to book the ticket

20 days in advance. She booked the ticket at Emirates Office in Bangalore for the Munbai-Dubai and Dubai-Huston flight. While booking she had made it clear that she will make the booking only if they can give her a seat on the first row on the 16 hr Dubai-Huston flight. While booking they said they will ensure that she will be given a seat in the first row and told her that because of some technical problem they cannot issue the seat number right then, and the will call back and give the seat number later. Taking their word she booked the ticket.

A week before the travel she call them to find out if the ’technical problem’ was resolved and if they could issue her a seat number. They told that we cannot give you a seat on the first row. Annoyed we talked to customer care for several hours. I even called from US to the US customer care but the call Lands in India. Their customer care was so rude they were telling us to talk the Bangalore office. They wanted us to give the name of the Emirates employee who made the booking. When we objected they even told me that it our responsibility to note the name of the Emirates employee who booked the tickets. Give me a break!! How many time do you walk to the booking counter and note the name of the person booking the ticket. We told them that we are ready to travel any other day when those seats are available. They were not even ready to do that. When we insisted they started giving dates 3 months down the line saying flights are full. I found over the net and told them that flights for next week are still open for new bookings. Then after several hours over the phone we they told us that those seats are only for passengers from Dubai and asked me why you Indian need those first row seats. I asked them to cancel the ticket and refund the amount, they started quoting unreasonable amount if cancellation charges (like 80% of the ticket price) saying that since we have already allocated you a seat that is going to be your cancellation charge.