These days, travel has become easy and quick. We no longer have to plan in advance, rush to the ticket counters and camp there for unearthly hours or sit in trains till our tailbones sprout into tails. These days, we make a plan, we click a button and before we know it, we’re doing all things touristy.
But then, as we all know, booking tickets online might look like a convenient option, but when the people handling our tickets screw up, we live our worst nightmares. That’s exactly what Rachna Parmar, a writer from Bangalore experienced. To call it harrowing would be an understatement. In her blog called ‘Rachna says’, she posted her horrific experience with Etihad Airways.
Rachna had planned a fairytale vacation with her family to Europe. Like most of us, she went the tech way, booking her tickets with Etihad through BudgetAir, European cruise dreams already doing a peek-a-boo inside her head. However, the first ‘prick in the balloon’ like Rachna calls it was an itinerary change by Etihad that added an overnight stay at Abu Dhabi. The only ray of hope was the fact that they got an email that said they could cancel and get a full refund.
What followed was what would ring a bell in many of our heads. Repeated calls and emails to BudgetAir.in led to no response. Etihad Customer Care in Abu Dhabi couldn’t help either and they were asked to get in touch with the travel agent.
The next step that she took was writing about it and using social media as a platform, tweeting it to Etihad, to which she got a prompt reply to share the case at their socialmedia@etihad.ae
The Customer Care Center in Abu Dhabi called her, informing her that they would process her refund directly. Directed to visit Etihad’s Bangalore office, on 19th August, the tickets were cancelled on Etihad’s website.
One problem solved. The other was waiting for the actual problem to get solved — receiving the refund.
They received a reverse invoice from BudgetAir giving details of full refund of over $3000 on 20th August. When she reached out to the airlines, they maintained that they had processed the refund on 24th August.
While the wait just conveniently kept extending itself like an unwanted guest, they informed her that BudgetAir would process the refund. BudgetAir bailed.
Despite the experience, Rachna is taking all logical steps. She says, “I will be reaching out to Civil Aviation Ministry in India to complain about them. I also want to reach out to some right-thinking higher placed officials of Etihad who can see the travesty of justice here and help. I have already emailed Etihad’s CEO, James Hogan and India head, Neerja Bhatia.”
Read her post here