[Resolved]  MakeMyTrip — Double Charges & Refusal of Refund

On Wednesday Oct 14th, we booked a return flight to Srinagar from Mumbai on their website. We immediately received an email stating the following “Your payment has been processed. However, due to a communication error, the system was unable to confirm your reservation. Our customer care executive will call you within one hour on the phone number provided by you at the time of booking” (Flight Booking #FLT[protected])
We waited all day and never heard back from makemytrip either through email, phone or SMS, so we phoned them in the evening after work. We were told by the customer service representative that he was still unable to confirm that flight and asked for us to please try booking it again with him on the phone and he suggested that we use a different credit card as that might be the problem. We did as he requested and immediately received the same email as earlier but with a different booking number (Flight booking #FLT[protected]). The same customer service representative asked us to please hold the line. When he returned he said that all of the flights were fully booked and unfortunately there were no seats left for our booking. He however, suggested that we try again to book in the next half hour as seats might become available. Instead we looked at the individual sites of Kingfisher and GoAir and found that on their sites the flights were sold out, so we did not bother to try a 3rd time as suggested by the customer service agent (thankfully, or else we would now be dealing with 3 charges!). We asked the sales representative if our cards would still be charged since there were NO seats available, and he assured us that the card would not be charged unless a final confirmation was given.

The following morning I woke up to 2 emails from makemytrip.com within minutes apart, both with the same booking ID (2310) stating that our reservation was now confirmed.

Upon our return to Mumbai, we checked our credit cards to find make sure the charges were correct. It was here that we found out that we had been charged two times by makemytrip.com (Rs. 31,000+ times 2). I immediately called the customer service number and explained the entire situation to the representative. He did not know what to do, so passed me off to the Team Leader, Mr. Vishal Jain. Mr. Jain was again given the above information. Mr. Jain was exceptionally UNHELPFUL and continually accused me of lying and saying that it was due to our own fault that there were two bookings, he refused to believe that we never (even now after I have requested him to re-send the mails he believes were sent) received a confirmation of the first flights ‘booked’. He also stated that we were indeed the ones who requested the cancellation of the Kingfisher flights, when in fact we did not, because we were on the flight and obviously had no idea that it had been booked twice. I was and continue to be very upset by the manner in which he dealt with this situation. It is my personal belief that makemytrip and/or Kingfisher saw that the flight had been booked twice with the same passenger names and initiated the cancellation. I do not know how or why this was also not done for the second leg of the trip with GoAir. If a company sends an email stating that the flight is not confirmed and then NEVER make any other communication regarding that flight, it would be assumed by most reasonable passengers that the booking was never made if it is not confirmed. I also feel that it was wholly irresponsible of the customer service agent to tell us to rebook the flight if he knew that there was a chance that the first booking would eventually be confirmed.
I repeatedly requested for Mr. Jain to please pass me on to his supervisor Syed Jamal and or Ashish Kapoor, but he refused to let me go any higher than himself. He was exceptionally rude and refused to consider any options on rectifying this situation. I am extremely disappointed in not only the error that has occurred but more so in the treatment given by the staff.

As I complained to my friends about this situation, I found that I am not the first one to be double charged and also not the first to not be given a refund that is due to me. I have used makemytrip.com since it first arrived on the scene in India as it was the first to allow foreign credit cards. However, without rectifying the situation, I will not be using their services again, nor recommending them to other foreigners who are new to India.