I am a NRI residing in US and booked tickets for my parents to visit us from Chennai, India to US. I booked the ticket through Yatra India website and made a partial payment through NetBanking. Immediately got a transaction error and did not receive any confirmation from Yatra. My bank account showed a debit for the NetBanking and I immediately called Yatra US, they asked me to call Yatra India and I had to make international call to contact them.
I contacted them and Rep said their might be problems with payment gateway and will get back to me in 24 hours. No response, I call back again the next day. Again same response saying their Finance department will verify and will get back in 24 hours. No response, so I call again the next day asking when would they get back as money has already been debited from my account but booking not done yet. They said they will respond in an hour.
After 4/5 hours or so, I get an email from Shaloo Gupta for a higher price than the one I booked for, stating either I can book by paying the remaining amount for the new fare or they can refund. I again call them asking why price quoted was high. The response was since they got the money only that day, they are booking for that day’s price. I didn’t book the ticket or made net transfer for that money.
The same day I see the online price for the same itinerary quoted the exact same price I booked for. So I call them again asking to book the ticket for the online price shown which is exactly the same price I booked for. Meanwhile I also tried to make a fresh online purchase through my credit card for full amount for the same itinerary and got payment denied error asking to call Customer Support.
This time, Shaloo Gupta said she will call me back in 20 minutes(no calls as expected). I called them back again and she tried making the booking and got the same error message. I also tried called US Cusotmer service to see if they can book for the same price in USD and we can make payment in the US which they said they could not.
Having tried NetBanking, Credit Card purchase, contact customer service - all 3 options given in their website, we were left with no choice. This time we asked her to put us through to the Manager.
Someone by name Ankush Gupta came into picture and says this is a technical fault and they are showing a wrong price(low price) in the website, thats why booking gives error message.( They give error message but deduct money from bank account!). He said he will see what best can be done and call us back. Remember we are making all these calls during our night time to talk to India guys during their day time and all calls are international calls, everytime they put us on hold!
No calls and again I call them back. This time he quotes a different higher price. Finally Ankush called me and said I can either purchase at a higher price or refund me the money(this is what they have been saying for the last 3 days, don’t know why they say they will see what best can be done in every call!)
When I ask for a mail stating it was their technical fault, he says he cannot send email like that and after pressing he sends an email quoting our new higher price and refund option.
Frustrated with the kind of the WORST customer service and the kind of cheating they do I sent an email to cancel my transaction and refund the money. Not heard from them about refund yet and we have already spent lots of dollars in international call.
Quoting a low price online, making customer do online transaction, taking money from you and then asking you to pay a higher price or enjoying our money for 3/4 weeks in the name of refund is all the business they do! From my experience, they are real real cheat and they don’t really do the professional air ticketing business!
Had they been a professional and ethical business, they would have apologized for customer’s inconvenience and not penalize the customer with higher cost for their mistake of posting WRONG price in their website.
Not sure if anyone here has taken any legal action against them but if I face any trouble in getting the refund in a timely manner, I am planning on taking that step too.
DON’T EVER THINK OF DOING business with this company providing unethical services who are trying to fool around!.