Vistara — refund request

Dear Vistara team,

I had made a flight reservation for my parents (2 adults) from Delhi to Mumbai for 09-Jan-2021 (UK 993, 13:50 departure, PNR # ROLHEN). For personal emergency reasons, we wanted to cancel this flight.
I called your customer care today to enquire about the same. This call was made around 12:46 pm, the call length was 10 min. 43 secs. During this call, I enquired about the applicable penalty for cancellation of the flight. It was confirmed to me in the call that if the flight was cancelled before 72 hours (i.e. 13:50 on 6th Jan) prior to departure time (i.e. 13:50 on 9th Jan), ZERO cancellation charge will be applicable (Point-1). I even clarified this further by asking if any other extra tax will be levied, citing a clear example, to which I was confirmed that ZERO cancellation charge will be applicable.
I then further enquired what the cancellation fee would be if the ticket was cancelled within the 72 hours. I was informed by the agent that Rs. 3000 will be applicable. To this, my next question was if this Rs. 3000 is applicable as "per passenger" or for the "PNR ticket". The customer care agent informed that cancellation fee of Rs. 3000 will be applicable for the full PNR, i.e. a total of Rs. 3000 for two passengers (Point-2).
Post this discussion, we internally discussed amongst the family and then later in evening, I called the customer care to make the cancellation. I spoke to Ms. Meenakshi and I was told that Rs. 3000 + GST (150/-) per head, i.e. a total of Rs. 6300 will be levied to cancel the flight. I highlighted the conversation I had during the day where I was misguided by the agent with false statements. I requested Ms. Meenakshi to abide by the information shared, but my request was cancelled. Instead I was challenged that the agent perhaps did not misguide as the call notes had a mention about "customer briefed about cancellation as per fare rules". To this, I requested Ms. Meenakshi to refer to the call records as I am extremely sure about the conversation from noon today. I even requested her to connect me to the supervisor. I then requested her to share the contact details of the morning agent, so I could include her name in this complaint email. I was then told by Ms. Meenakshi that as per policy she can't connect me to the supervisor, and neither can she share contact name. I then challenged her to show the policy on the website, to which she eventually decided to ignore my request.
We spent nearly 32 mins. on the call, but the discussion was futile as Ms. Meenakshi was only defensive about her agent. I want to highlight the following points here:
1) I understand the fare rules stated. But to confirm those only, I had made a call in the afternoon. I have been misguided by the agent (not for one, but two main points), due to which I made internal change of plans. I deserve to be refunded completely upon cancellation.
2) I have opened a query here to request Vistara to hear the call recording and confirm for themselves that I was misguided by the agent in the day. Query no. TCT[protected], for the call recording dated 5th Jan 12:46 pm. I have clearly highlighted on the call to Ms. Meenakshi, that I want my time to "freeze" here and I do not want to be subjected by Vistara to "apparent clarification delays" to thereby shift my cancellation to this 72 hour window, thereby making me not eligible for full refund.
3) I request Vistara to owe up to their customer agents and take complete accountability for their words. In my urge to take this request beyond the usual customer email ID, I have taken the liberty to add Ms. Preeti (Nodal Officer) and Ms. Pooja (Appellate Authority) in CC.

There is another reason why I have taken 45 minutes here to write this email. As a customer I am appalled by this complete Vistara experience. On 25th Dec 2020, when I booked this ticket, I made a genuine error by missing the final alphabet in my mother's name. I immediately sent an email to customer care to rectify the same. I got an auto-reply quoting a query response within 48 hours. Thereafter, I kept calling customer care every two days and kept sending multiple reminders. On every call, I was assured that within 2-3 hours I would get a response with the correct ticket, but it never happened. Eventually, when I lost all hopes from team Vistara, I stood my ground and decided not to hang-up the call, until I received the corrected ticket. This strong reaction at my end made me get the query resolved after numerous calls. I have attached my email thread here for your Management to take a look at how much follow-up a customer needs to do with Vistara customer care. In my last email, I even requested Vistara to file a complaint on my experience, to which I never got a revert, yet again.
To conclude, this is an extremely disappointed customer who expects this experience to be corrected by getting the deserved complete refund. In the process, I expect team Vistara to resolve this before 12 noon on 6ht Jan, so the cancellation is conducted within 72 hours.
Regards,
Varun Mahajan