For any people looking to book a full holiday through MakeMyTrip, especially for Africa, please go through the below experience my wife and I faced, when we recently booked a Kenya holiday through them.
While one or two mistakes is understandable, MakeMyTrip folks did not do **ONE SINGLE** thing right. We have not even captured some other mistakes below.
The only good thing was that they had outsourced the actual tour in Kenya to an agency called **Safari Trails** . **Safari Trails did an outstanding job** and we highly recommend them. Best way to go to Kenya would probably be book your own air tickets and book the holiday itself with Safari Trails or a similar local agency directly.
List of MakeMyTrips screw ups:
We initially tried booking the holiday online through their call center. After giving us the booking id, the call center executive was supposed to contact us to guide us through the payment modalities. This person never contacted us and didn’t receive our calls for 3 days continuously when we tried following up from our end
We finally booked through MakeMyTrip’s physical Mumbai travel office at Mahim by making token payment through an executive called Sahhil Badlani. Our new booking ID was **IN1401B4S197587**. Kept following up for balance payment but they didn’t revert. When the concerned executive, Ms Sharayu Chavan, did revert after many follow ups, she sent us wrong travel dates. May instead of March! After we told her the error, she corrected the dates and told that since the dates were close we would have to pay the entire large balance amount i.e. 1 lakh 90 thousand approx by the next day itself. We still somehow quickly arranged funds and paid.
Payback loyalty points for our payment were credited to incorrect payback number. We followed up repeatedly and after that Saahhil confirmed around end Feb 2014 that its been credited to our correct payback number. However, till date today, we have not received the points.
Information on yellow fever vaccine required to travel to Kenya given by Sharayu was incorrect and outdated by at least 3 years. We figured the correct one on our own and got the vaccination done.
Tickets given one week before travel had incorrect travel dates.
Rectified tickets given 2 days before departure were not paid in full and we weren’t told about this. Got to know only at airport (at 5 am on a Sunday when no one from MakeMyTrip is reachable) where the airline Air Arabia told us they cannot let us board without the balance payment. They told us they accept only INR cash (no credit card). Had to withdraw 11k hurriedly from ATM (we usually don’t keep high cash balance) and almost missed our flight.
Sent mail to Sharayu and Saahil Badlani from Mumbai airport itself regarding this ticket payment issue and to escalate for refund with scanned copy of our payment receipt. however they didn’t bother to respond.
After our Kenya trip (the Kenya leg was handled very excellently by Safari Trails - a local agency) at Kenya airport while returning, we learnt that with effect from 1 march 2014 Indian govt needs both yellow fever and polio vaccination for Kenya travel. We weren’t told about the polio vaccine while our co-passenger who also booked through MakeMyTrip was told about the same. I was questioned both at Kenya airport and on arrival at Mumbai airport where I had to haggle with the authorities for 20 mins saying that I have got polio vaccine as a child, before they let me go. They could have quarantined me at Mumbai airport for 3 days (as has been done in past cases of no yellow fever vaccine) - however thankfully they did not do so for polio.
After we called and shouted at them, Sahhil replied saying that the excess cash we paid at Mumbai airport for our Air Tickets is being refunded. We also wrote a complaint on MakeMyTrip Facebook page. We got a reply saying that they will call us (took our phone number) and discuss. However, then we got a reply from their Facebook page admin saying that their Mumbai office has informed that the issue is sorted. They never called to understand the entire harassment we faced. Also, till date, we have not received the refund
Earlier this week(on 24th March), I wrote to Sahhil saying that my Payback points have still not been credited and gave him snapshots of my Payback card statement to prove this (he had confirmed they had been credited a month back). He totally ignored this mail. I again wrote a reminder yesterday. He again totally ignored this mail. After having lost patience, we called and after multiple tried got through to him today. Instead of being really apologetic, he kept arguing with me about what my issue was- getting money back, getting points, or the fact that he was not replying to mails- it was shocking behaviour.
So, net net, I have undergone endless harassment, not received my money refund yet, not received my payback points, and the executives still keep saying they have sorted everything out .
MakeMyTrip seems to be full of people who are liars or incompetent or both.
Debdutta Sanyal.