Stick Bills™

I am one of those who appreciates and welcome the conveniences technology has brought to mankind. So, naturally I’ve grown to love and trust to do most everything that can be done online, including banking transactions and shopping, which also include booking travel tickets. One of my favorite travel portals is yatra.com, and I’ve been using the site for quite some time.

To be fair, I’ve never had problems in using the site. And so, I didn’t have the need to contact their support. That is, not before Dec 6, 2009.

On that fateful day, I had the misfortune to (try to) book a flight ticket (Rs. 6877/-) scheduled for the next day. Everything went fine, and I made my payment from my onlineSBI account successfully. After that, when the page was redirected back to yatra.com, there was a message saying “The payment could not be processed”. And that was after my account has been debited.

So, I called up their support number, and I was told to contact them by email. I obediently did that. I included in my mail the details about the transaction, including receipt from my online banking account. I received a response to that email asking me to provide details! I believe they didn’t read the email, and they just send their reply with pre-written message.

I wrote them again, and they replied “they are looking in to it” and wrote them reminders again and again, and their reply was the same.

One email actually informed me that the payment reversal has been processed and that I’d get my money back within 5-7 days’ time. I patiently waited and there’s no refund in the given time.

I again contacted yatra, and they replied it will take 3-5 more days. I AGAIN patiently waited, and even after ten days, I didn’t get my money back.

So, I again wrote them, and they replied that they’ll look in to it. And they are still looking in to it after more than 3 months, with no apology or even a word from them, again.

I’d like to urge people to exercise caution when using YATRA.com. If you’re one of the few unlucky ones to have your transaction fail due to incompetence of yatra.com and their payment gateway, you are to lose your hard-earned money just like that.

I never thought a reputed company like YATRA.com would cheat their customers off their money. I understand that there could be some technical problem when transacting. What I don’t understand is that why it is so difficult to issue a refund for a ticket they didn’t issue.

So, everybody, avoid YATRA.com like a plague… there are scores of other travel websites out there that are more customer friendly and helpful, who wouldn’t cheat you off your money!

In: Airlines Posted By: Penglam [ ]