Yatra’s business strategy is very simple.
First advertise lower fares/attractive deals on their site to lure customers.
Once the customer has made the payment, then start checking with the airlines/hotels etc if the deal
can be done. Meanwhile the customer thinks that his/her deal is confirmed as they have paid up full
money(in some cases Partial Payment, more on that below).
- After a few days tell the customer, sorry the new price is XYZ, the customer who all this while thought
that the deal was finalised and has now missed getting a good deal and knows that its painful
to get a refund is now royally stuck. Im sure 80% of the time they will go for the new price.
So good profit for Yatra, onto the next unsuspecting fool.
- The Partial payment is the biggest scam, you basically pay them upfront for a ticket/deal which is
not booked, not confirmed, price not finalised, so you are paying them for god-knows-what.
Realising this, I made a full payment at time of booking, still did not get tickets issued. Till I hadnt paid
up, I got many many calls from Yatra staff, asking to pay up and helping me pay using different
credit cards as one credit card didnt have the limit for the price of 3 international tickets.
But once I had paid up, these guys disappeared and I had to keep calling them to issue my tickets.
After many calls and no tickets, and reading similar issues on net, I asked to cancel my tickets
and asked for a full refund and now face a battle with them to get the full refund back, and buy
tickets at higher costs elsewhere as Ive missed out on some good prices being offered by airlines
earlier.
Ive read of several cases where people have made full payment, Yatra has given them a confirmed ticket and only after reaching the hotel/airline, they have realised that its not booked. Imagine the
plight of such a traveller.
Stay very very far away from Yatra, book your tickets from airline websites or hotel websites directly
even if at higher price. Ive defn learnt my lesson even if at quite a cost and headache.