Jul 29, 2008 04:54 PM
15946 Views
Ever since Meru launched in Bangalore, I have been a regular user of Meru for going to the Airport. The cabs are clean and spacious, drivers polite and the experience pretty cool...
Well atleast it was till yesterday.
For a change, I needed to go the the railway station to catch the early morning shatabdi rather than a flight. Called up Meru at 1:00 am and requested for a cab...The first agent looked at my records(they have a CTI based on your cellphone number) and 'confirmed' a cab for me to go to the airport from my home.
When I told him I needed to go the railway station and not the airport, he placed me on hold for 5 minutes, before disconnecting my call (or maybe the call got magically disconnected after hearing the toot toot of a train)
Well, I called up again after sometime, and the second agent flatly refused to take a booking for the railway station, stating that no cab drivers would agree to go to the station as it was peak time to go to the airport at 5:00 am...
After cajoling him that I was a regular customer and other BS...he finally 'spoke to his manager' before confirming a reservation.
Now in my previous encounters, if I had booked a 4:00 am cab, the cab would showup atleast half an hour early and the cab driver would call on my cellphone. However, today that was not to be.
When I had still not got a call at 4:45 am, I tried calling the driver. The call was disconnected after 3 rings. Slightly apprehensive, I called up the call center asking for a status update. The agent said, the driver was nearby and would call me in 10 minutes.
I tried calling the driver again but the call was disconnected AGAIN. Feeling slightly, irritated, I called the call center again. This time, the told me that there was a problem with my original car, and he had assigned a new driver who would be reaching my place in 10 minutes. When I asked him, where the new driver was, the told me 'nearby' and gave me his cellphone number.
After 5 minutes, when I called the new driver, he told me that he was still near Hebbal and would take atleast 25 minutes to reach my place. It was not 5:20 and I was royally irritated.
Upon calling up the call center, the same agent said he was sorry and understood my frustration and was just trying to help me...When I asked him to explain whey the driver had not shown up, you wont belive the line I got back from him. He said, " Sir, we are a professionally run organisation so please dont use bad language or some s**t like that".
Yeah right. You Meru. Here I was about to miss my train to chennai and not only had your cab not arrived on time, but your agent was giving me grammar lessons. Finally the cab did not show up and I had to take an auto.
While in the auto, I was seeting at how irritating the whole experience was and had mentally made up my mind not to use Meru services ever again. But now that I am in a slightly better frame of mind, I guess I will use them again when I need to go to the airport. However, I will carry a knife and slice the back seat covers before leaving. Am sure it will do me more good than ranting and raving about it here :)
To all others, please use meru at your own risk. They are interested in only going down the 40km stretch to the airport.
Booking reference number: AG2A3382 (Date 29th July, 2008)
