Makemytrip.com is Trash. Review on Makemytrip

Reasons To Avoid Doing Business With makemytrip.com (mmt)

R1. Mmt screens incoming calls --- I am absolutely convinced.

R1.1. If you select “new booking” from their phone menu they will take your call.

R1.2. If you select “existing booking” they will either (a) not pick up the call at all, or (b) place you on hold, then disconnect you after sixteen minutes on hold.

R1.3. If you select “dial an extension”, if you happen to have an employee’s extension number, the employee is free to decide whether or not he or she wants to take your call. Chances are she'd rather not.

R1.4. Only if you complain on their FB site will their “Department of Customer Delight” (yes that’s what it’s called) step in and respond to your phone calls.

R2. Mmt will try and shake you down for any extra change they can extort.

R2.1. The terms printed in my ticket said a $350 charge will apply for any reschedule + any fare difference.

R2.2. When I requested a reschedule they wrote March 10 to say that I will be liable for $610 + $50 mmt service fee + fare difference.

R2.3. I wrote back to say I’d be damned. I pointed at the terms in my ticket.

R2.4. They wrote back again, same day, to say that they will charge me $350 + 5% service tax on (airline penalty + fare difference).

R2.4. On April 4 they asked instead for $350 + $50 service fee + fare difference.

R2.5. Mmt finally offered to sell me a reservation for $350 plus a fare difference of $490. They were being extra nice to me, they had the temerity to suggest. That sums to $840. I said surely there’s a cheaper ticket online. They checked and they said: ah yes, you can get a new one-way ticket for $670. Please go book it at the mmt website, they suggested. I'd have to be such a damn fool!

R2.6. Should the idea that they need to get me a good fare not have occurred to them of their own?

R3. Some employees are careless. Some lie.

R3.1. Here are “phone numbers” an employee sent me by way of email: “For any further assistance we are available round the clock on our toll free number 1-800-11-8747 / … / 95124-4628700 (Any Landline).” Neither of these numbers clearly makes any sense. And their availability is not 24/7. It is 0/0.

R3.2. An employee wrote in email, and later told me on the phone, that she had called me April 2, at about 4:30 pm. My phone shows no missed calls that afternoon or evening.

R4. Phone manners

R4.1. The greeting is delivered by a lady who sounds like she’s about to pat your a.s and chide you playfully for pinching her again. She’s extra-jocular, and sports a Hoxbridge accent from Gurgaon. She is actually a typical specimen of the sort they appear to catch around here for telephone jobs.

R4.2. The hold announcement repeats ad nauseam every five seconds. Fifteen minutes of that is enough to drive anyone crazy.

R5. Shuttle-cock strategy

R5.1. If you get in through the “new booking” route, the India office will tell you that since you made your booking in the US their “US Department” will call you. They most certainly will not.

R5.2. If you get in again through the “new booking” route, the India office will tell you to call their US office at a 1-800 number, which you cannot call from an Indian phone.

R5.3. Then they will suggest you live-chat on-line with the US office.

R5.4. The live chat agent will disconnect you most abruptly at the drop of a hat. There is no chat transcript. Before the agent disconnects he will ask you to call the India office.

R5.5. After two chat sessions, there will be no more chats. Your chat budget is done. You will get an unresponsive yellow screen that asks you call the India office, and gives you a 1-800 US number for good measure.

R6. Bottom line

R6.1. I have wasted at least 40 hours waiting on hold, calling, getting cut off, and writing email messages to mmt.

R6.2. I was nearly a no-show (my ticket would have voided) on my original return date because mmt would not pick up my calls for five days, nor call back, or in any way process my change of reservation. I had to call the airline directly, in panic at the last minute, to cancel my return reservation.

R6.3. Shoot yourself in the foot before you think of doing business with this terrible company.

Be a good Samaritan. Please forward to every traveling person you know.