Air India Express — Unexplained Cancellation Charges and Customer Inconvenience

I booked flight with AIX for Kolkata to Bangalore at 7:55 in the morning on 21st November. As one of their regular customers, I am a highflyer in Tata Neu membership and so my cancellation charges are zero for any PNR. But, in this case, I paid 7420 while booking (6920 through card and 500 through meal voucher). I have checked 7 days ago and the refund amount was showing to be 6460. now also it is showing the same amount.

I tried calling customer care but all in vain. First two customer "happiness" executives told that they are not sure why this is happening and they will arrange a call back within 3 hours, but I did not receive one from them. When I called back after 3.5 hours, the support person said that, she has no idea why this is happening, she can only raise a ticket to the backend team and they will get back to me within 7 hours. But, as all other support teams, I did not receive any communication. When I called again, support person told that as you have the complaint registered and it was assigned in the morning, I can only escalate the request, please give us 2 more hours. And they call themselves customer "happiness" executive and don't know how their systme works.

I am not sure what the final outcome will be, but most probably, they will try to drag it beyond 5:55 in the morning so that my whole ticket price is gone or I have to cancel it myself by loosing 500 extra rupees without any explanation about why or what is that charge about. Such a good way to loot money from People, Brilliant Air India Express!!