Major snafu with Indian airlines - and our travel agent

ramalaka

After living in Bangalore for almost 1 1/2 years, we are continually amazed the ineptitude of service professionals. This post, in particular, is about travel agents and the airlines.

First, a little info about the travel agency we have used, Travel Tours on 100ft road, Indiranagar, Bangalore. We have purchased well over USD$6000 (six thousand US dollars) of tickets and tours from these folks who proclaim to be a 24 hour agency.

We recently spent one hour booking or trip (Bangalore-Delhi-Bagdogra-Delhi-Bangalore), and then, the next day, another 3 hours waiting for them to issue the tickets.

Literally 10 minutes after getting our tickets, Indian airlines called us to say that the flight time had changed on the return Bagdogra-Delhi leg. We were wondering why our travel agent and Indian airlines didn't discuss that fact in the 3 ours it took to write our tickets.

Since that time, we have received 3 more calls from Indian Airlines and today we were told that the Delhi-Bagdogra flight a slight change of 4 hours!

Confused, we called our 24x7 travel agency and they told us, they were out of power although they claim to have backup power- a fairly common contigency most businesses employ.

So we called Indian Airlines, and they told us the following:

-they don't show our booking from Delhi to Bagdogra (even though we have tickets and just called us)
-that we booked our flights from Bangalore to Delhi in Amsterdam! (not true)
-that we are flying from Delhi to Amsterdam on April 2 (not true)
-And that we are also flying from Frankfurt to Amsterdam some time in the future, although they could not nail it down. (go ahead and guess that this is also fiction)

The Indian Airlines Reservations Manager, Vina something, can be reached at 2297 8423 (Bangalore area code).

More on our call to Indian Airlines to clear up things:

Initially the agent refused to pull up the booking because we didn’t have the booking reference number.

Then the confusion with the Amsterdam flight – no attention to quality as they would have otherwise seen it was a different passenger.

Lack of creativity and listening skills – We told him that we made the booking in IndiraNagar via TT, he insisted it was made in A’dam. We told him we got a call from Indian Airlines about this travel segment and he insisted it wasn’t there. This is something we have noticed in our professional careers in the IT industry and what quality assurance people are discovering about software development and call centers here: There is a lack of training or even caring about the capability to engage with the customer.

In this particular call, the Indian Airline's agent he kept saying, "no ma’am, no sir, the booking is not there." We finally had to repeat the facts 3-4 times before he finally went one step further and pulled up the flight number.

Again, this next course of action by the Indian airline agent, Anshuman Maini., is fairly typical of service "professionals": They try to deflect the customer by asking for the wrong information. He told us he couldn’t do anything because we didn’t have the flight number in front of us. After he pulled up the passenger list for the flight number (which of course he had since we had the dates and the sectors) he found the issue but had no answer when we asked him why he was asking me for the flight number.

We asked for a confirmation that the booking was changed (first and last names in the correct order) via email or fax. He said they didn’t have the security. We asked what that meant. He said he couldn’t use email or fax. Weasked whether they had a fax machine. He said yes but they don’t send faxes.


This country's travel business could screw up a wet dream.!

lyndy

Hi ramalaka-We too cannot understand the arrogance and lack of customer service skills of several people we've dealt with in travel related jobs in India and I do sympathise with you and I also don't get the attitude of not listening, just ignoring customer concerns.

Our particular "challenge" involved a travel agent we used at the Fort House in Cochin to book an Indian Airlines flight from Cochin to Bangalore. Ramesh was his name and he quoted us several prices in US$ for flights from Cochin to Bangalore on Jet Airways or Indian Airlines. We finally pinned him down to US86 inc tax for an Indian Airlines one way flight. Then followed a series of discussions on the conversion rate of US$ to rupees. He first told us the US$ was 46 rupees which would have been OK in Nov 2004 but in Mar 2005 the rate was around 42.5 rupees per US$. We had several discussions on the matter and finally we and he agreed to 43 rupees per US$. He then tried to charge us more for the ticket telling us the price he quoted us one day ago, was 3 years old, etc. etc.

These kind of episodes do not regularly happen in coutries like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos etc. in our experience over the past two years of travel.

Indian travel agents & Indian airlines try to get away with whatever they can, depending on how stupid they think the client is. Just one of the joys of conducting business in India. My motto is NEVER GIVE UP! Continue to get upset and sometimes it works. Show weakness and they walk all over you! We've learnt to be quite assertive and push our point to the extent that we will not budge on some matters. i.e. agreed price is agreed price & never will I pay more unless I'm stranded with no alternative.

"This country's travel business could screw up a wet dream.!" A brilliant observation & very insightful sentence indeed!

Have fun & hope things work out for you!!!!!

rockyS

u do get a lot of these kinda problems from non IATA agents , many of the travel agents have sprung up with no experience and no direct contact with the airlines, but they do set up shop and lure in customers with possible cheap offers and then try to make money by overcharging in diff areas .
As far as Indian airlines , well not much to say there , they r a govt run organization and r not bothered abt anything ,(thats the attitude) its a sad situation but that the reality,pvt airlines are better equipped and do give better service,so maybe next time u consider travelling on pvt airlines, and this days most of them have websites u do not have to approach travel agents also.I dont anymore unless am travelling overseas.

Hyderabadi

Very very true. Anyone with a table , a chair, and his uncle's empty shop thinks he is a travel agent these days. Most of them do not even have their own ticket stock nor access to reservation systems. Some airline staff oblige their friends/relatives by helping them thru another agent (authorised and generally called consolidators) and take a cut. If you go to a 'bucket shop' chances are that the person you are dealing with has no clue as to what's going on. All kinds of stuff out there! If one is not worried about the few rupees one may save by patronizing a bucket shop,doing business with an IATA agent or better still a chain travel agency may be a good idea. With a chain agency, especially if you have multiple segments of travel involving locations where the agency has offices, may be a big advantage.

rangss

Hardly a day goes without reading an Indian-Airlines-bashing bit on IM.

Go IC Go...at this rate you will be the most battered airline in the world.

__________________
...and I took the road less travelled.

bongdongs

Indian Airlines holds one of the most unique aviation records, can anyone guess?

shere

Cant you book directly online without going through agents ?

I do not bother with agents anymore when booking flights. I find it better to book directly with the airline or though companies like OPODO.

Got a bit fed up with agents changing requested dates and getting the tickets issued without asking if the changes were OK.

skell

I know! I know!

Largest evacuation by a civil airline.

rangss

Wrong...that is held by Air India...for the evacuation of Indian Expats from Kuwait and neighbouring countries during the Gulf War.

Hey! That could be beaten by IC considering their recent evacuation of the Andamans post-Tsunami.

bongdongs

Actually skell is right. The aircraft used were all Indian Airlines aircraft(though they were not officially flying overseas those days). IA A320 aircraft which had been grounded after the Bangalore crash were pushed into service for the evacuation.

Another less pleasent one, is that Indian Airlines is the worlds most hijacked airline (11 times since 1971). By most accounts the 1999/00 IA hijack to Khandahar was a dress rehearsal for 09/11/01.

skell

For most hijacked airline, I would have guessed Eastern Airlines. It seemed like it was getting hijacked to Cuba every other month or so in the 60's. But I can't find any statistics to back it up. Just my not-so-good memory.

spinnersingh

I travelled from Ireland to India with a combination of Aer Lingus and Virgin Airlines, I arrived at the transfer desk with 45 minutes till takeoff only to be told that I couldn't board as the captain had planned the flight.

I went through a travel agent and found the attitude of the Virgin people to be most aggressive and rude at all times. (Actuallly that's the general attitude of English Customer service people).

I will never use an English Airline again.

rockyS

This days in India u can book online for all the airlines, why just air , even the trains u can book online .so thats the best thing to do and avoid touts and bad travel agents.

stormysky

Almost all airlines have online booking. Infact as soon as you reserve and pay by credit card you, you can see you ticket online (e-ticket). Print it and show it at the airpost and you get a boarding pass.

Its that simple.

Here are some links:

Indian Airlines:
http://indian-airlines.nic.in/scripts/index.asp

Jet Airways:
http://www.jetairways.com/

Air Sahara:
http://www.jetairways.com/

Air Deccan:
http://www.airdeccan.net

Regards
sK