I had read the various, shocking and universally bad reviews here in Mouthshut earlier. Being the naive, clueless moron that I am, I had the audacity to ignore the judgement of all the reviewers and found myself in a bad position. My aging parents, my aunt and I had to go to Bangalore Railway station one Friday night . I had called the Meru call center that morning to book a cab for 9:30 pm (that was the easy part)
I recieved a SMS at 9:00 pm, providing the name of the driver and the car number. Almost immediately, the driver called up to say "I am stuck in a traffic jam..I cannot reach you before 10:00". I could hear the background noise..it was obvious that he was nowhere on a street...he was in a home or hotel. I also knew that there was hardly any traffic that day (having come home by the same route just few minutes earlier).
I knew that he had no intention of honouring the booking and was just trying to get me to cancel the same. I told him, "That’s fine..I will wait" and hung up. I immediately called up my brother and begged him to pick us up and drop us off at the railway station. I received a call from the driver
again-"The vehicles are hardly moving..I cannot reach you before 10:30 (and mind you- my home is just 4.5 Kms from the railway station). I again told him "That’s fine..I will wait" and hung up while
we all rushed into my grumbling brother’s car to drive to the railway station. Needless to say, there was hardly any traffic and we reached the railway station in 10 minutes.
That worthless excuse for a human being calls me again saying "there is an accident in front of the railway station and the vehicles are piled up and there is no way he can reach me before 11:00". I was in front of the railway station and there was probably one bus, 3 cars and 5 two wheelers in the road then. I lost it and started shouting-"I will wait until 2 in the morning if I have to..I have booked a cab and you have to pick me up. If you don’t I will see it to it that I drag you to court for criminal negligence and fraud. I have an uncle who’s a cop (which is true) and he has assured that he will provide the traffic updates for the whole day if necessary. I will prove beyond doubt that you were just trying to take us for a ride (no pun intended)". He immediately broke down and started begging to do no such thing. Apparently, the distance from my home to the railway station is not that much and is not very "lucrative". He further confessed that the he does such things all the time..and nobody had threatened him before (we have to admire his nerve!). He went on about "traffic..call-center people know about this..happens to all". I cut him off in mid-sentence and rushed to catch my train.
Beware of them..better look out for a local travels office and book a car when you want to catch a train or a flight. They may be expensive but in the end it will be worth it than going through all the nonsense and torture with this useless Meru cab services.