How online booking portals could be cheating you (Sudden cancellation of tickets)

Disclaimer: This article is published in interest of the consumers to create awareness of malpractices of online portals in this era of digital India.

It's the end of the year where everyone is in the holiday mood in winter. This year with Christmas and New Years coming on a Monday no one would leave the opportunity to plan a long weekend and also the bus portals who play the discriminatory fares card.

I was planning my Christmas trip to Goa this November and needed to make travel reservations from Goa to Mumbai. Since the trains were already overbooked and flight prices soared I was left with the last option "Bus". So I decided to take a look at the various portals online as it is convenient than booking through an agent.

I found a bus operated by Atmaram travels on redbus portal whose fares seemed reasonable and decided to book it on redbus.com.

I immediately logged in and booked my ticket for 25th December on Atmaram and phew I was relieved until I get an SMS from the customer care number of Atmaram bus a few days later saying that the bus is cancelled. This raised doubts of how they can cancel the bus so early, did they predict that there would be a breakdown or the driver would call in sick...no that was too good to be true.

SMS from bus operator

 So I did a search on Redbus for an alternate bus and I was surprised to see this:

The 3rd listing is the same bus I booked with revised fare

According to Redbus it says I have booked this bus in the past, but this was my first booking on of Atmaram on Redbus. Being coming from a technical background I understood that it’s the same bus listed on the system but off course the price was doubled. So I called up Atmaram customer care and an arrogant man answered the phone. Initially he was saying the bus is cancelled but after I assertively said that the same bus is listed he asked on which portals. I finally managed to get it out from him that my ticket was cancelled because the fare was not hiked on their system. So they cancelled my ticket because of their own fault of not putting their discriminatory fare. But my question arises now is this a fair trade practice? Although they have the right to increase the fare at any point of time it’s completely wrong that they cancelled my booking on the pretext that the bus is cancelled. If they are fair to the customer they should have at least had the courtesy to inform that there was an error in the fare instead of lying to the customer.

Even after taking the matter up with red bus all they said was they would monitor the operator and take action. I told them that I have caught the operator red handed and this is unfair which they agreed. I have escalated the matter to the higher ups of Redbus but it seems to have fallen to deaf ears. The text below was quoted in the email, even after writing to them they seemed to have ignored my email.

P.S. If you are not satisfied with the response provided by our support executive, please feel free to escalate to management@redbus.in in a new email with subject ‘Escalation’. Management team at redBus is always eager to listen to our customers and help them.

My honest appeal to all consumers of such services is to not keep quiet when these ecommerce portals take you for a ride. It’s time for us to act upon them as they are promoting the malpractices of private bus operators. Just because their fares are not regulated by government bodies it does not mean that they take advantage of customers. And if a dynamic pricing policy exists it should be managed professionally or at least systematically like flight bookings. If the operator does not update the fare but sells the ticket the customer is entitled to get the ticket for the price listed.

The government of India has launched a grievance redressal portal (which I not aware of its efficiency at the time of writing this) but would urge consumers to give it a shot when you have a valid complaint. You need to create an account and lodge your complaint. I have lodged mine and waiting for a response till now.

http://consumerhelpline.gov.in

  That's all for now, will update this article when I get a response from someone.