Well, I booked a bus ticket from Guntur to Bangalore on goibibo to avail a promotional coupon of Rs 50/-. The actual fair was 550 and after discount, it will be 500. It was showing fine with the discount and I went ahead for booking. I am through the payment gateway and the amount had been debited from my card. To my shock, after the payment, the site showed that there was an error and could not book my ticket. Without wasting any time, I called the customer service, and I was told that it was a mistake and they can book another seat for the already done payment. I didnt want that because I want that very seat. She said that the seat had been booked by somebody else and hence my booking was not done. I told her that it is blocked only because I was trying to book it and made the payment, but didnt agree to that. Finally at the call, I asked to cancel the payment and revert my money, and she said she would initiate that. The call took 15 minutes that too not a toll-free number(waste or time and money).
The next day, I gone over the mouthshut site and found that the payment gateway problem is not particular to me and is a very common problem. I have gone to goibibo site and found out that if payment is done and ticket is not booked, they will call us and book the seat offline in 4 hours. This is really ridiculous. The customer care people do not know this at all. What the heck!
I again called the customer care for the status. This time, the guy said that the cancel is not initiated and he will do that straightway and will send a mail immediately. The did not happen for the next few days. I checked the chart for the same bus and as I expected the very seat is still vacant. I again tried to book and this time I am lucky enough to book the same seat.
After reading the reviews in mouthshut, I thought I would not get my money back for the cancelled ticket. I thought for getting Rs 50/- discount, I lost Rs 500/-, quite embarrassing. I thought of putting my review to the goibibo team in the mouthshut as I have seen they somewhat resolved some problems here.
To my surprise after 4 days, I checked my account before posting the review and I luckily got my money back. Happy Ending:)
So I would say that there are problems with their service, but it had been finally went good with me(except for the time waste with the half-knowledge customer care people and their poor site).
Overall, this experience is enough for me. I would prefer paying the cost price and booking at other sites rather than going for discount and risking the entire amount with goibibo.