[Resolved]  Oyo Rooms — cheated with false promises while making the booking

Thanks oyo for spoiling my family vacation. To all those out there dont book oyo rooms. Below is my experience with them.

We were a group of 13 going to golden temple, amritsar. There were 6 senior citizens and 2 kids below 3 years in the group. Our air india flight which was initially scheduled to arrive at 11 am got rescheduled to 7 am. Since the original hotel we booked (Not through oyo) could not guarantee early check-in, i started to search for any other hotel that can. As part of the search, i called up oyo rooms as well. And to my delight, they guaranteed early check-in in one of their hotels near golden temple. I was relieved, because now i can avoid hardship for my group, especially because there were senior citizens and kids with us. The last thing i wanted was to land in amritsar and end up in a stranded situation without having a room to check-in. So, i again checked with the agent to make sure that early check-in is confirmed and that i will not have any trouble on the day of check-in. He reiterated that it is confirmed and that if this hotel does not provide early check-in, oyo will help me find another. The biggest mistake i made was that i trusted oyo at that time. All this was happening about a month prior to my day of travel.

Fast forwarding to a day before travel, i called up oyo to check if there were any last minute surprises. Oyo did not disappoint me on surprising me. They gave me the shocker of my life. That they cannot provide early check-in. When asked them the reason why they confirmed earlier, they started the usual script of company policies and all that crap, without giving me any proper answer or resolution. I would have booked (Or at least tried) in some other hotel if they told this at the time of booking. The only reason why i booked with them was because early check-in was confirmed. After being on the phone for about 20mins, finally they said they will check and get back in 10mins. Waited for about an hour and no response. So i called again taking another 20mins for a new agent to understand the situation but only for him also to repeat the same thing that he will check and get back in 10mins. This continued for another 4-5 time where they promise a call back, and after seeing no response from them i call them only to explain the whole thing to a new agent. After 4-5 times they started putting my call on hold, they started blindly disconnecting my calls while i was waiting on hold. By then, it was already around 11 in the night and i had an early morning flight to catch. So i finally gave up with the customer service but still kept a little bit of hope in humanity as i had explained them about my situation with the large group and the senior citizens and kids in the group.

On landing at amritsar, i and my cousin decided to go and check the situation in the hotel once before others joined, leaving the remaining folks in the airport. Sure enough, hotel did not provide early check-in putting an end to the last of my hopes. We then started walking through the streets near golden temple, checking in all the nearby hotels to find a room for my family, who by the way were still waiting at the airport. This was exactly the situation i was trying to avoid when i booked this room with oyo and thanks to them i landed in it anyway. I finally found out a decent hotel where rooms were available (We needed 5-6 rooms) after roaming the streets for around an hour. This hotel was charging us more because i think they realized our situation. At that point i was ready to pay anything to get a room so my family could take some rest.

I then called up oyo for cancelation and refund. Guess what their initial response was? "sorry sir. Per company policy, we cannot issue a refund”. I had to again spend another 20-30mins with this person to explain the chain of events after which he finally agreed to check with some other team in oyo and get back. About an hour later, i finally got a call-back where oyo agreed to refund. I can't explain the amount of stress and hardship that i had been through in these 12 hours.
So, this is my advice to all those out there planning to book an oyo room.
Don’t ever book a room with oyo. Just dont!! And never trust a word they promise.

By the way, the quality of their rooms are a topic for separate discussion which i am planning to post separately.