I booked 2 rooms in Hotel Inderpraksh, Udaipur on October 21, 2009 by calling the reservation number rather than booking online as I wanted a little more details about the hotel. The Travelguru website had the message bragging about their advantage that 100% of their inventory is booked in real time and it is not like where some tells you that your confirmation would be sent within 2 days only to be found out later that the deal is gone. So after I was told by the reservation representative Tanzilla that the rooms are available for 4 nights starting Dec 7, I made the booking and my credit card was immediately charged for the full amount. The booking ids given to me were TGUA0000219803, TGUA0000219803.I was sent the confirmation email. The reservation process was very efficient and this is where the good experience with Travelguru ends.
I called Hotel Inderprakash after a week to ensure that they indeed have a reservation for us and the manager (Lal Singh) at the hotel told me that he recalls the request in my name and had replied back that the rooms were available for only two days starting Dec 7 and not four days as requested, so the reservation was never made. In my conversation with him, I also found out that Travelguru does not send booking request directly to the hotel but through another intermediary Travel Made Easy. So when I called Travelguru to confirm, I spoke with customer service supervisor Kanchan Mohile on Oct 29 who maintained that Travelguru has a quota with the hotel and I need not worry about my reservation and asked for 48 hours to sort out the matter. Case id 35161 was assigned. I called after 2 days only to be told that they still have not heard back from the manager who handles the reservation and asked for more time. This continued for a few days and finally on Nov 12, I got an email from Kanchan regretting to inform me that they are unable to reserve room for me at hotel Inderpraksh. So Travelguru took almost 2 weeks to tell me what I had already known by talking directly to the hotel and not acting sooner to suggest alternate accommodation.
And if I had not been diligent enough to call the hotel, I would have assumed all along that I have rooms only to find at checkin that I really did not have a reservation even though the confirmation voucher shows the rooms as reserved for me. Travelguru gave me an option of booking me in another property and by this time I have had enough of it. I checked with Inderpraksh that they still had rooms for two nights available and then requested Travelguru to cancel two nights and give the refund, and book me for only two nights in Inderpraksh. I booked the remaining two nights on my own by contacting another hotel in Udaipur directly. The email from travelguru on Nov 19 stated that the refund will reflect in my credit card account within 10 business days. I got an email on Dec 10 that the amount was refunded on Nov 30 and my credit card statement confirmed that.
In future, I will book hotels directly rather than using Travelguru. I thought I will save time by using the services of Travelguru but in the end, I realized that I spent more time dealing with the customer support and only to find out the reservation never happened as originally requested. I might as well have spent this time researching hotels on my own and making a direct contact.