Cleartrip — Cancellation of hotel booking without prior notice and no refund initiated yet

Address:	Bangalore, Karnataka
Website:	www.cleartrip.com

Hi Team, I am a customer in distress writing to you with reference to my booking ID - [protected]. I had made a booking for Pillowrocks Homestay, Wayanad from Cleartrip on 24 Dec 2015. What followed is beyond my comprehension. Below is an account of how things went from bad to worse only because of the incompetent staff at Cleartrip which did the least to solve my issues. I was to check into Pillowrocks on 1st January at 12 noon. Around 10:30 am while I was enroute Wayanad I received a phone call from Cleartrip stating that my booking at Pillowrocks stands cancelled and in lieu of the same I would be getting a different accommodation - Cavalryan homestay. I made it very clear to the Cleartrip representative on the phone that I wasn’t willing to compromise on the quality of this alternate accommodation and it was absolutely unjust for an OTA to make changes to an existing booking at the 11th hour. I had to travel an additional 40 kms to reach Cavalryryan homestay by paying 1100 rupees. But this wasn’t the end of my problems. Though the alternate homestay, i.e. Cavalryryan was decent for itself, it was nowhere close to what I had booked initially (Pillowrocks). There was no Wi-Fi, no TV, no complimentary breakfast and it was in the town as opposed to Pillowrocks which is on the countryside. Since we didn’t have any option but to take up what was being offered, we checked into Cavalryryan feeling cheated. After we checked in and settled down, we were told by the homestay owner that he doesn’t take bookings with online payments and we would have to pay him in cash. To confirm his claim we called up Cleartrip customer care and to our surprise the representatives were absolutely non-cooperative and just wanted to wash their hands off this issue by trying to persuade us into accepting the alternate booking as it is. I spoke to Amar, Sangeeta, Ganesh, Poornima etc on multiple phone calls but none were capable enough to get things sorted for me. For example when I asked one of the representatives to reimburse my telephone bill which I was incurring on roaming because I had to speak to cleartrip for the chaos they had forced me into, I was told that the same would be reimbursed by the homestay owner. It was beyond my understanding as to why the homestay owner would pay for your mistakes. I had paid Rs.3800/- for 2 nights at Pillowrocks (this included a discount too). Additionally I was forced to pay another Rs.6800 in cash to the homestay owner (for which I have a receipt) and after so many phone calls over 5-6 hours combined it was confirmed to me by one of Cleartrip representatives that the cash I had paid (Rs. 6800) and the phone bill resulting from conversation with the customer care would be reimbursed to my account soon; and for any other claims I would have to write to Cleartrip. What would have been a leisure trip on New Years' turned into one of the worst experiences with an OTA and its staff. From getting my booking cancelled, to getting an inferior alternative and paying cash upfront for a booking that I had already paid for and to top it all an incompetent customer care which could easily take the taj for being the most clueless Custmomer Support ever. Even after asking to speak to the manager on every call, I was never put on with a higher authority who would have some basic customer skills. To that effect I would like Cleartrip to compensate for the trouble that I had to go through. This compensation should include the Cash rent that I paid to Cavalryryan homestay (Rs. 6800), telephone bill incurred while talking to the customer care (Rs. 500) and a refund of my initial booking amount (Rs. 3800) as I didn’t get anything close to what I had paid for initially along with Rs. 1000 for the cab as stated above. Of course nothing can compensate for the mental trauma that I had to go through in dealing with this chaos. I have dealt with Cleartrip in the past and wouldn’t like ti escalate this matter further. Looking forward to a prompt responsive from your team this time around.