Apr 06, 2013 02:28 PM
1153 Views
Booked an air ticket for my family yesterday from Singapore to Chennai. I wanted to use my US credit card in India for booking. The air fare was 41000 Rs in Air India Express. Since Air India express site had issues taking my US credit card details, I switched to Makemytrip not wary of the consequences!
Initially, when I tried to book it myself, I thought the system would automatically convert INR to USD and deduct money from my Card. But it did not. It gave me a "Page cannot be displayed". So I called up customer care and the lady on phone told me that the fares have gone up now but not reflected on the site yet, which is why my online transaction did not go through.
I then asked her what is the prevailing fare. She said its 49900 Rs. Since I did not want to waste more time (as she gave me an opinion that the fares will keep rocketing up) I decided to book it over the call. I asked her to book it. She made the booking but asked me to make the payment myself. I got the booking ID and went to their payment site. It had two sections.
One with a label that said I had to pay 975 USD. And the other, a text box allowing user input for the USD. This itself was confusing. Why should the system ask me to enter the amount ?? Then I did a small math for 975 USD which is what the site asked me to pay. Based on yesterday's exchange rate (54.8 Rs for 1 USD) I found that the rupee equivalent of 975 USD was way higher than 49900 Rs.
I asked her why? She told me - Sir what do you think is the correct amount. I did the math again for the amount of 49, 900 and told it is 912 USD. She said - OK sir. Please go ahead and make the payment for 912 USD. I wondered how someone could cheat by about 60 dollars initially. But since I wanted to finish the call I made the payment.
Now comes the real agonizing part. When I received my itinerary, it did not have any price. So I went to Air India express site, keyed in my confirmation number and checked. It showed me that the ticket cost was only 42 K roughly, which translates to 784 USD only! I have been calling up customer care since then to get an explanation on why I have been charged 912 USD when the fare was only 784 USD.
I should tell this is one of the worst customer service experiences I have had. They put me on hold for 30 mins, then someone comes up and asks the details. He would hang up and would not call back. An SMS will be sent that the call was dropped. But nobody would bother you to call back. Finally, after 4 long hours of calls I managed to get a representative.
He asks me to get the screenshot of the Air India express site with amount details. Initially he also asked me - Sir if you booked yesterday and saw an issue, why are you calling today? You should have called yesterday! I reminded him that it was the 10th time I am calling since yesterday.. They are such bad associates!
Now I am just keeping my hopes alive that I will get the difference amount credited back to me. But it wont be surprising if they play gimmicks with me. Need to know if there is any legal course of action that I could take. Any ideas?
