This was the first time I had booked via Goibibo. Booking was a good experience but looks like they do not handle cancellation and refund requests well.
I need to place a complaint against the Goibibo bus booking department. Due to their negligence in processing my cancellation request on time, I am denied refund on bus booking IDs GOBUS5366a1391320924 and GOBUS8d1521391321300.
I booked both the tickets on Feb 2nd.
Feb 3rd - I got information that after various accidents and mishaps happened with private bus operators in Andhra Pradesh state, the A.P. Govt./RTO were restricting private bus operators from traveling into the state. I called up both Kallada travels & KPN travels and inquired and they said that their vehicles were having restrictions in traveling into A.P. state and their buses will not be traveling to the state for atleast one more week. I immediately raised a cancellation request on the Goibibo website.
Feb 5th - Since, I did not get any status of cancellation or refund from Goibibo, I raised a query on the website.(Ticket number [bus-458956]).
Feb 6th - I got a reply telling that my case was being looked into as a priority. On seeing this email and the word ’priority’ they used I was convinced that Goibibo would be in contact with the operators and would get my refund processed ASAP. I put immense trust on them with this email and thought that refund request would probably take some time and did not send any reminders.
On Feb 10th, I dropped a reminder email. On Feb 14th - I got the response from Goibibo telling that both the buses I booked, traveled without any kind of restriction and because of this my refund would not get processed.
Let me stop the timeline for now here and bring something to your notice. The first travel planned was on Feb 7 and return on Feb 10. As mentioned, I had raised the cancellation request on Feb 3rd, 4 days before the first trip planned and I got the informational response only on Feb 14, which is 4 days after the return trip. I find it very difficult to understand why there was such a delay in contacting the travel operators regarding the refund request.
If Goibibo had contacted them atleast when I raised the query on Goibibo site on Feb 5th, I think we would have known earlier that the bus operators were functioning. I put immense trust on Goibibo, which was why I did not contact the travel operators again to confirm.
After I got the negative response, between Feb 14 & 18, I called up the bus division of Goibibo and complained about this. On the basis of this, various tickets were raised in the next few days.([bus-466535], [bus-468643] and [bus-468644]). I got the same negative response that refund will not be processed and to contact the bus operators directly.
Feb 18th - We called up Kallada travels and KPN travels. Both the operators said that, they never got any information from Goibibo that the passenger had raised a cancellation and refund request. They said that the booking IDs shows status as ’Seat booked, not traveled, not cancelled’ and so there was no fault from their end and they can’t process the refund.
This makes it very clear that Goibibo was very negligent when I raised my cancellation request on Feb 3rd and did not contact the bus operators. Even though they sent a courtesy mail telling that my request was looked into as a priority it was obvious that they were only sending an email as a formality and that they didn’t actually look into it.
Now, they are trying to misrepresent facts by telling that they never got any cancellation request from me on Feb 3rd. I have multiple emails as proof. During Feb last week, I contacted Goibibo’s customer care and I was promised that I would receive a call from the relevant person regarding this. But other than just many emails going up and down, I never got a call.
I am at a total loss of Rs.3370 for the whole round trip (Rs.1685 each side) which is a lot of money for individuals like me. I humbly request Goibibo to look into this matter with huge importance and priority and give be a positive response by arranging my refund. I need to get my refund, since the only mistake I made was putting great trust on Goibibo.