Shoddy service, lost mileage points and booking glitches galore. Why should you ever visit aggregator sites for airline tickets?
Greed does not pay. Sadly, I found this to be true while attempting to book an airline ticket through an online portal called 'Cleartrip.com'.
I had used this service in the past, but once had an experience of the money having been debited and then the ticket not coming through and since then I had discontinued their services.
Alas, I was lured by an offer of one free ticket for each ticket booked and had a go.
Late evening on 29th July, at around 7:15pm or so, I filled out all the details for a Chennai to Pune flight by Kingfisher Airlines. It showed a fare of around Rs3,857. No sooner had I pressed 'submit' (or the equivalent of wanting to conclude the transaction) that I got an SMS saying that my bank account had been debited (I had used the net-banking facility of my banker) with the said amount. I started to smile on having successfully navigated yet another net-based transaction (you see, the BSNL Internet connectivity is such that it keeps going off, so to complete an online transaction, it is an achievement for me).
Alas, my smile froze. A message flashed online that the transaction had 'failed'. I had no clue of what happened. I checked my bank account. Yes, the amount had been debited.
So, I presumed that there was some glitch and called a customer support number of Cleartrip. I was a bit disturbed since I did not have any reference number. The lady who attended my call resolved that by checking with my email ID. Luckily, I was a 'registered' user and hence I had logged in with that ID. So, it was easy to trace and she gave me a Cleartrip ID number. She said that the ticket was not issued due to some 'link' not working! I tried to probe further, but got no farther.
She told me that my money would be 'reversed' immediately and that I could call in half an hour to check about the fate of my ticket, etc.
Alas, after an hour I could not get through in spite of several tries and so I kept it for the next morning.
Next morning, I checked my Cleartrip account to see if any ticket had been issued. No luck. I checked my bank account to see if the amount was credited. No. Cleartrip was still holding on to the money for a 'failed' transaction!
I called them up and once again was given a spin as to why the bloody thing did not work out.
Now, I got on to the website of Kingfisher directly and booked the ticket. Surprise! The fare was lower though they did not give any 'buy one get one free' offer.
Is Cleartrip justified in doing what it did to me? It is very clear that they did not give me the service that they had promised. And the fact that in spite of taking my money, they could not deliver is proof that they did not have any valid arrangement with the airline.
Cleartrip is clearly not my cup of tea. Henceforth, it is the airline website or a physical travel agent. Online travel brokers/agents are high risk and we have no control over the transaction. Take care, folks. Cleartrip is out. I have no clue about other such brokers and I have no intention of finding out either.
After Mr Balakrishnan's ordeal, Moneylife contacted Cleartrip for its response. Here's what the portal had to say:
Vishal Gupta, VP (operations) of Cleartrip attempted to explain the situation.
First, he claimed that Mr Balakrishnan's negative experience occurs in just 1% or 2% of the millions of transactions that are put through by Cleartrip. While this point is well taken, what did not elicit a satisfactory response from Mr Gupta is the chain of events after the booking failed.
1. Mr Gupta said that the refunds are made only after reconciliation to check that the money is credited to Cleartrip by the bank. He could not explain why Cleartrip wasn't able to get information about the debit at the same time as the customer.
2. He promised to check and say why the customer was told that the money would be 'reversed' immediately instead of saying that it would take at least 24 hours.
3. There is no explanation for why Cleartrip, which clearly had the customer's money, could not help complete the transaction, even though the first booking had failed.
4. Cleartrip claims to offer the best rate, but our columnist found otherwise. Mr Gupta said, "We still stand by the claim"; he went on to explain Mr Balakrishnan's case by saying that airlines have "dynamic fare systems" and prices change rapidly. This, however, means that aggregator sites cannot claim to offer the best rate.
5. Finally, as Mr Balakrishnan points out, booking through aggregator sites may actually cause customers to lose out on mileage points. It is also clear that you must risk booking, only if you have the funds to buy another ticket if you are unlucky enough to be part of the 2% failed bookings.
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I purchased about 40kAED worth of Emirates tickets on Cleartrip on 18 Oct, the web experience was great, and the payment department and the risk control department were very 'efficient' on making sure that I provided all my documents for them to process the payments immediately. when it comes to taking money from the customers, i would rate Cleartrip an excellence.
However, my nightmare started when I called them the next day to arrange stopovers on my itinerary which my tickets fare do allow stopovers arrangement. I attempted many times of calls, easily 30 calls and only 4 calls went through and at one point waited for 1 hr to be connected. The call centre representative was clueless, didnt understand the fare condition and refused to do the arrangement for me, until I had to educate them and tried my very best to rationalize and help them to understand how stopover should work. Even then, they could not act on it and PROMISED they would call me back within 4 hrs. I did not receive any calls, and I went through the same pain to call them again, and the second representative told me the same thing, and PROMISED they will definitely call me back on the change after they have to check with airline on the fee. (In which it is already on the web and on black and white, not sure what is left to check). Today I tried to call them again, and was put on hold for more than 1 hr, and I literally have spent half of my day trying to get hold of someone through the 800 number. Finally a representation named Sumit picked the call up and told me the SAME STORY, all the keywords 'promise', 'waiting for Emirates airline to revert', 'supervisor has left for the day'. I refused to naively believe on the promise this time as the trust has been bleached, I hold on to the call and told Sumit that I needed him to act on it, he reverted after a few minutes and quoted me a penalty amount of more expensive than my whole ticket, which is definitely not legitimate! Based on that, I told Sumit I would need to cancel these tickets, and he went on telling me all the charges which could have been well kept in the fine print. At this moment, I just think that this is just a con business Cleartrip is running and i decided Cleartrip is going to bear the consequence of the bad service.
I have no access to whom I can speak to in Cleartrip other than the inexperienced call centre staff, and I am left stranded. I have started some conversation with Emirates Airline and I know what my rights are very clearly and I want to make sure Cleartrip honors that. I hope someone in Cleartrip will read this and act on this immediately otherwise this will definitely be escalated tomorrow.
I have been a regular user of Cleartrip for last couple of years and am very happy and satisfed with their service. Their call center support staff is also very helpful.
I would also like to add that while chasing a cashback offer, I used ezeego and had a tough time getting my money back after a failed transaction.
I still regularly use Cleartrip for my Air and Rail bookings. Their air tickets might have a minor difference (Rs. 10-50 extra) than the airline websites directly. But that is a premium that I think most of the air travellers are ready to pay for good service.
I am willing to buy the argument and reasoning of cleartrip.
a) Book late at night or on holidays. Perception is that fares are lower then.
b) Keep the websites of other airlines open while transacting - in fact, use the search for fares function there too.
c) Play for maximum benefit on miles, these are really worth it if you do 5-6 flights a year or more.
d) Give rational feedback to the airline - the benefits are sometimes brilliant.
Good luck.
We booked an air ticket to the US for one of our employees. It was confirmed and our credit card was charged.
He reached the airport only to be told that there was no reservation in his name. He showed them the print-out from Yatra, but to no avail. He had to buy an air ticket on the spot for Rs. 18, 000 more.
Later, when we took it up with Yatra, we were told that the credit card charge had not gone through. Hence, the ticket was not issued.
On showing them the proof that not only had the credit charge card gone through, but even the AmEx invoice for the same had long since been paid, they refunded us the credit card amount in 45 days, but remained silent in regard to their major slip-up!
No amount of email to them sorted out the problem. Needless to say, we have altogether stopped dealing with them now, putting to an end over 75 lakhs of business that we had sent their way.
Promod Haque, ADA and Raghav Bahl need to take note of this, as does Dhruv Shringi!
Sincerely,
Rupin Dang
Wilderness Films India Ltd.
New Delhi