Cleartrip — Cleartrip Fraud

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

I made a booking for Zo Rooms in Goregaon West in Mumbai in May 2015, using Cleartip. When I reached the hotel on the starting date of my booking a few hours earlier than their checkout time, mentioned on the website, I didn't know I would be in for such a nasty surprise. I reached Goregaon West and got off the local, after a tiring overnight journey. The address on cleartrip said that the hotel was very close to the local railway station so I started to look for it on foot, dragging my luggage with me. When I could not find the hotel anywhere nearby, I looked it up on cleartrip which redirected me to a location on Google maps. I went around the spot it showed a number of times but I could not even find the board of the hotel. So I called cleartrip customer care and hence began the long journey of helplessly arguing with various correspondents who refused to help me out, whatsoever. I called customer care and told them my situation. They said that they'll help me out right away. But after 4-5 long calls, dealing with their frustrating IVR while roaming charges ate up my balance, the customer care could not help me out even a bit. They were unable to find the location or a number for the hotel which was reachable. They couldn't get in touch with the hotel at all for atleast 3 hours while I had to sit on the footpath and wait for them to come up with a solution. As it is very obvious from the above description of the scenario, all of this was incredibly frustrating and I had to deal with this when I was already tired from my journey. So I decided that I want to get my booking cancelled and I started looking for another place to stay in. I took a auto and was searching for another hotel when a cleartrip representative called me and told me that they'd been able to locate the hotel and it was in the very same building where I'd been standing for the last 3 hours. What was even more disappointing and infuriating was that the building looked nothing like the photos that the cleartrip website had for the hotel. It was blatantly misleading on the website's part to display such images when the actual premises of the hotel were so far from it. So I told them to cancel my booking and refund the money back to me. But at that point of time, they told me that since it was check-in time already, they couldn't cancel it anymore. It was in their policy and terms and all of a sudden it was my fault as a customer to not have thought of this before. I had to argue with atleast 5 different customer care representatives who redirected me to the zo rooms representative again and again. After explaining the entire situation to their manager which of course involved a lot of mismanagement on Zo rooms' part as well, he agreed to inform cleartrip about refunding my money. Within 15 minutes, I got a call from cleartrip, saying that they've talked to the hotel and that I will get my money back in the next two weeks. It seems like victory, doesn't it? Well its not even the beginning. It's been 3 full months since then and even now after numerous calls to their customer care department and having talked to almost all thee representatives that they have, I have still not received my refund. All their policies are sham and all that cleartrip has done up till now is lied to me. They've made me feel like paying beforehand for a booking was the biggest mistake I ever made. They harassed me as a customer for 6 hours straight and even now they're not ready to give me a definite answer as to when they will refund my money back. It is horrible that such big companies have such poor management and disrespect their customers to such an extent. So much for their promises about good and fair dealings when they can't even keep up to their own policies. The website clearly states that the refund will take place within 15 days and it's a shame that this is not the first time that such a case has happened. The forums are full of people reporting similar experiences with this travel giant and it would be great if cleartrip did something to save their failing reputation. All that I have gotten out of this experience is that no matter how much progress we make in terms of businesses making it big in the Internet space, until and unless these corporate learn to respect their customers, that progress is a waste. There will never be any trust or goodwill in this business if the companies don't understand their responsibilities towards their customers. And to make that happen, even little things like how your customer care department deals with the customer matter a lot. I don't have a lot of hope to get my money back but if this experience helps other people from falling into a trap when dealing with these websites or if cleartrip and it's sister websites act upon it, my job here is done.