Cox & Kings — Horrible travel experience and worst customer 'care' experience

Address:	Mumbai City, Maharashtra
Website:	www.coxandkings.com

This is with reference to our trip (my wife and I) to Bhutan under the Bhutan – Dragon Kingdom package in Mar'15 booked through Cox & Kings.While we as a couple have travelled to a lot of places within India and abroad, on our own and through travel agents, I am disappointed (to say the least) that our experience with Cox & Kings (C&K) has been one of the worst travel experiences so far. While Cox & Kings is believed to be one of the best travel managers by self-admission and through the general public perception, our experience has been completely to the contrary. The list of negatives is quite long; however here is the gist: 1. Painful booking experience with multiple reminders required for virtually every request of ours and incessant to and fro of mails. 2. Multiple point of contacts for the booking process itself, with no internal communication channel, resulting in us explaining the entire process to each new person that came to represent C&K. 3. No driver details till we reach the destination, despite frequent reminders. In fact, no driver details from their end even after we reached the destination. thankfully, we could locate the driver through a placard. 4. Miscommunication on permits within Bhutan and time lines being breached consistently during our trip. 5. THREE different drivers changed hands during our ONE Bhutan trip! And all of them rash, unsafe and always talking on phone while driving. 6. On our way back, the driver gave lift to his friends twice, without even asking us once and also went out of the way to drop him to his destination, again, without even asking us once. Seemed like C&K drivers are used to this sort of behaviour and C&K seems to approve of the same. Now we sent our first mail on this awful experience on March 28, 2015 to communication.[protected]@coxandkings.com. And got a standard mail response that they have rec'd our mail and will get back in DUE COURSE. We waited for a week and sent a reminder mail on April 6, getting the same standard response again and so on and so forth. Its been SIX months (Yes!!!) since i have been following up with them but to no avail. To their 'credit', they did offer me a gift voucher of 6000/- and then increased it to 10000/- - a 'smart' and cunning way to ensure that we go back to them for our next travel and they get more business from us. HOwever, we dont want any gift vouchers. We just want our money back, nothing more, nothing less! They keep committing that they will call and close the matter but that day just doesnt come. Frankly, I am left wondering how such an esteemed organization and global leader in travel sector like Cox & Kings can show such laxity and irresponsible attitude towards a customer complaint. I wonder what service levels do they refer to when they talk about it with so much pride. I don't know if i have any other option but to wait till this matter resolves.