Tuesday, September 04, 2007

www.makemytrip.com

This time I would like to review and write about my impressions about online travel portal www.makemytrip.com which seems to specialize in good deals for people traveling from US to India.

Pros:

1) Great web site. Very user friendly. Easy to find information. Fast searches.

2) Multiple ways to contact sales rep. Call them or chat with them online. Response times are pretty fast. I preferred chat to make the actual booking as it is easier to provide all the information correctly and also helps to record your chat transcript on your computer.

3) Prices are indeed competitive. Found the best deal among other Internet portals such as www.kayak.com or www.orbitz.com etc.

4) Prompt delivery of tickets where applicable. Most of the tickets are e-tickets so there is nothing to receive. In my case, they had to send paper tickets which they did by FedEx.

5) Tickets seemed fine. Checked out confirmed and did not have any problems.

Cons:

1) At least, I did not get any confirmation e-mail after the tickets were mailed. Since they had said it would take anywhere up to 10 days to send the tickets, I did not worry much. But, when tickets did not come after 7-8 days, I called them to find that tickets were already mailed and received by somebody in my apartment office. This was certainly worrying as it was risky to a leave a package unclaimed for 3-4 days after it was received. It would have been ideal if they were to e-mail me with tracking number. After being used to such practices by other e-tailers, this was a rude shock. The customer support rep was helpful and gave me the tracking number and the name of the person who had signed for receipt. I hope this was an isolated incident and also a rare one. It was rare because somehow the notice FedEx leaves when they deliver the package to the rental office was also missing or lost after it was stuck on the mailbox.

2) Meal preference was not correctly recorded. I had not remembered to mention "Asian Vegetarian" and had just asked for "vegetarian". I expect a travel portal specializing in travel to India to take some initiative to ask and educate customers on different vegetarian options and not all vegetarian meals are created equal and many vegetarian meals contain white meat and fish. They did not do anything and merely recorded my preference although I had meant pure vegetarian meal. Malaysia Airlines on which I was booked was able to provide me with vegetarian meal although it was a bit of a scramble and frustrating to them as well.

Other than these minor inconveniences, it was a very smooth transaction and price was a great deal. Cheapest fare I got in 10 years.

Unless something goes wrong on the return, I am glad to give this business a solid thumbs up.

Cheers!

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3 comments:

Navita said...

On regular basis i make booking from makemytrip.com and till now im a satisfied customer, not a single problem till now.

Unknown said...

Dear All,

I too would like to share my worst experiences with this makemytrip.com. I think no one should ever try and do any business with them. Let me narrate my three unpleasant experiences with them.

1. I booked a flight ticket from Mumbai to Hyderabad one month in advance. When I selected my fllight and was taken to the payment gateway ccavenues.com. I paid the required amount through my net banking website. After that nothing happened, and site page went blank. I sent them a mail explaining the problem. After three days, they came back saying that there was a techhical error and all my booking details have been lost. They advised me to give all details of booking so that they will book again. Again it took almost a week for them to come back and send me a ticket. Meanwhile, I was restless without any proper response from them having paid for the ticket.

2. They said, by using this ticket booking refernce, I can avail a discount of Rs. 1000/- if I make a hotel booking through their website. I was going to Shirdi so I made a booking for a hotel in Shirdi, Hotel Saish. Everything about the hotel on their website was great. To my horror, when I reached this hotel, I found it is very dirty and poorly maintained. The bath room was dirty, the room was dirty and the sheets were so dirty and had lots of stains on them. The air conditioner had seen better days. It is not certainly worhy of Rs. 2000/- daily charge for the room. We couldnt just sleep on those beds. I wrote a strong letter of protest and all they said was that they will convey this to the hotel concerned instead of straightaway removing that hotel from their website.

3. Again on the third time, I booked a hotel in Mumbai through their website. The same drama went again. AFter making payment through my net banking site, the page went blank. This time, I didnt have enough time also. I frantically sent them mails saying that payment is already debited to my bank account and their collecting website (ccavenues.com) have sent me a mail confirming receipt of payment. They replied after three days, that there was a technical error and they couldnt trace any details. I sent them mails sent to me from ccavenues.com and also the mail sent to me by my bank debiting my acccount. There was no reply and time was running out. I called them on their toll free line and was online for one hour and some customer service manager says, he will work on it and would come back to me. After several mails and messages, finally I got a mail from them (I was to travel next day, no hotel booking confirmed) saying that they cannot do anytihng about this and that they will refund my money in 7 days. It is already more than 7 days and I havent received any payment. All this after a lot of harassment and frantic phone calls. They had the temerity to suggest that I should make another booking through their website and pay again!!1

All the above three experiences have really rattled me and I recommend to everyone never to deal with this makemytrip.com and get into trouble.

I was dealing with one Mr. Gur Simran who promises everything but does nothing.

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