Recently, I got a call from my spouse about contact from a travel package company. A company called XS Travel Club had contacted my spouse with grand promises of a great package - for Rs. 5000, you get a 3-4 days 4 nights package at locations varying from Mussorie to Shimla to Goa to Bangkok. Sounds good, right ? But there was more. There was 10 complimentary beauty treatments from the various Delhi outlets of BodyCare (typically things such as facials, massages, hair treatment, etc). And there were 10 dining coupons from 5 restaurants in different places in Delhi. Since I had more experience in handling such kind of things, my wife gave my contact to these people, and they contacted me. I talked on the phone to them, asked about the holiday resorts (the names they took sounded good), and even the restaurants looked fine. So I asked them to come over to my office for showing me the package and taking the Rs. 5000 from me.
They were at my office the next day, and everything was there - the stay vouchers, the dining coupons, and the BodyCare coupons. So I started reading and discovered a few interesting things:
- There was a separate processing charge of Rs. 199 mentioned in the terms and conditions
- For every night, there was an additional charge of Rs. 399 to be paid
- Places like Manali / Mussorie / Shimla did not allow the coupons to be used during the following months (yes, you must have guessed by now - the summer months; so no using of these coupons between April and July)
- so, overall they were going to be charging me Rs. 1400 more if I used the travel package (which is almost 30% additional over the Rs. 5000 they wanted to charge initially)
When I spoke to the person who had contacted me, he spoke to his manager (and I could hear the conversation to some degree). In effect, his manager said that they should tell me to take my vacation in August, and not in summer.
By this time, I was not exactly a cool cucumber, and I gave a piece of my mind to the guy who had spoken to me. In effect, what he had done was deceitful since he had not told me these conditions, and since I had opened the fine print, I came to know, else I would not have known.
He assured me that they would not charge these Rs. 1400, and would change the not allowed period of the package to some other time, but when I asked him to make that in the written terms and conditions, he did not respond.
What could have gone wrong ? Learnings:
- If I had taken the coupons without checking, I would have been stuck with those conditions, and would have been cursing myself for not looking at this more carefully.
- If I take the person’s oral committment about getting the money and period waiver without getting that in a written form, it is not something that would have held up later. After all, the person whom I would have spoken to later may deny any suck knowledge and I would have been stuck.

Thus, be very watchful when you see such offers, and always take the time to do a study.

They sound like the answer to all your nightmares while driving. Normally, your car works fine, but consider the case when suddenly your car stops in the middle of the journey, leaving you totally helpless. This could be because of a puncture, could be because some other vehicle hit your car, or could be some other problem that is not yet diagnosed (at least, you don’t have the capabilities of a motor mechanic that you can quickly diagnose the problem). Now, you are stuck in the middle of nowhere, and you may not be able to figure out what is wrong with a car; you may not be even in a position that you can change the wheel of the car yourself. In such cases, there are now a number of car distress helplines that promise to help you quickly. Some of these (atleast in the Delhi / NCR region) are FastTrack, Race, Cross-Roads; and before you think that this is an advertising blog for them, this post is to point out a few problems in their functioning.
I have tried out a few of them, and performance has dipped badly in the last few years. Their promise is that they will be there within 30 minutes of filing a complaint; now the most common scenario is that of female family members and friends; if they get a puncture, it is not feasible for some of them to do the actual changing of the tyre. Further, you don’t know where it can happen, and if you have a service where you can get a tire replaced within 30 minutes, that is great.
Now, that was the promise. Unfortunately, the promise is not getting fulfilled. With 2 of these vendors (Race and CrossRoads), I have had a bad experience. In both case, there was a puncture, and a lady was waiting after calling them. They promised 30 minutes, but even 1 hour later, no trace. You call them again, and they were getting rude (Ma’am, they are coming, you need to wait). Finally, after 1.5 hours, we managed to make some local arrangements (the good part was that this happened at a place where it was crowded, so there was no safety issue). However, this is bad customer service - promising something that involved safety and convenience, and then not delivering. I will be very hesitant the next time they ask me for money for this service.
I wonder what the experience of other people with such kind of services has been like ?

Till some time back, the various Government run PSU’s and other departments always felt that they were not providing a service that could be challenged in court; that options such as consumer laws were only possible to be implemented if people had taken a service from a private company. It was only when they started getting castigated and losing cases in consumer forums and courts did the Government undertakings realize that they were also subject to the same laws and conditions as anybody else. And of course, as the economy opened up, and there was increased competition, this competition also drove the Government run departments to either shape up or lose out. The Railways has opened up somewhat and improved, but still there needs to be more improvement, as can be seen from this case:

AHMEDABAD: A consumer court has asked the Western Railway to pay Rs 6000 to a commuter for issuing journey ticket for wrong date and not cancelling the same. The court held that verification of details in ticket is primarily the railway staffers’ responsibility.
After hearing both the sides, member of the Forum, Jyotiben Jani concluded that it was the deficiency of service on part of railway authority, because despite mention of one date in requisition form, the booking clerk issued ticket of altogether different date. Hence, the Western Railway has been asked to pay Rs 400 as refund to ticket, besides Rs 600 for conveyance charges and Rs 5000 towards compensation for causing mental harassment to Malviya.

Overall this a good sign. Imagine the problem that would have been caused had the ticket not be cancelled, and been attempted to be used on the actual date of the journey. This would have revealed that the ticket was for a different date, and the person would have been left in a lurch, unable to make the journey.

In India, low cost airlines came up with a way to make more money. If a passenger booked a ticket and proceeded to travel on the airline, then well and good. However, if the consumer decided to cancel the ticket, then this would be a good way to make some more money. So do 2 things, either make the proceed of money refund so difficult that in some cases the passenger would give up and not claim the money back, or claim that the passenger cannot get a refund and the only way is to get a coupon that would entitle you to travel again on the airline. This can be a problem when you really don’t have plans of using the coupon, since they would expire in some time and that money is gone. I have faced both those issues when I booked travel via SpiceJet and Go. The trip got canceled, and it took around 4 months to get my money back from SpiceJet after some calls including some frustrating conversations where they asked for all sorts of information and twice claimed that their systems were down. With regard to Go, they gave me some coupon redeemable on another flight, and I could not use those (and I regret not forcing the issue by going to a consumer forum for help).
Now, the Government has decided that this will not do, and airlines have to refund money within 7 days:

NEW DELHI: Domestic airlines will no longer be able to hold passengers who cancel their tickets to ransom by delaying refunds indefinitely or by asking them to fly again instead within a given time. Acting on complaints, the government is set to issue new refund rules: airlines will have to issue refunds within a week and cannot swap refund for another flight.
Better still, the new rules make it mandatory for airlines to refund the entire amount of passenger service fee (Rs 225), congestion surcharge (Rs 150) and fuel surcharge (at present Rs 1,950 for short flights and Rs 2,350 for others) on ticket cancellation. Because these three alone add up to Rs 2,325 for flights below an hour’s duration and Rs 2,725 for others, many low-cost carriers have been advertising basic fares of Re 1, Rs 3, Rs 99 or even zero to give the impression that their fares are low and it is taxes and surcharge that have made flying expensive.

These rules are likely to be notified by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and approved by the aviation ministry last week and DGCA is likely to notify these shortly. This is an excellent move by the Government that should help in regulating the whole issue of fraud in cancellation of tickets, and lead to benefit to consumers. Overall, a great move that airlines would not really like, but something that was long overdue.

When a person is traveling overseas, they are promised that an overseas insurance cover will be available that will take care of any medical needs for the time that they are abroad. This is a fairly simple policy whereby a local insurer will give them a policy in collaboration with an overseas insurer. Medical treatment abroad can be fairly expensive, and taking such a policy is meant to provide the traveler with peace of mind. But what happens when the insurance is not paid up when the treatment is taken ? It can be very painful for the afflicted, and the money involved can be fairly large. So here is a case whereby the insurance company was forced to pay up after its overseas arm refused to pay up:

AHMEDABAD: The Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Ahmedabad District (Rural), has ordered United India Insurance Company Limited to pay $5041.65 as compensation to Smruti Bhaskar Patel for gross negligence, deficiency in service and unfair trade practices.
Smruti had paid a premium of Rs 3, 281 and taken an overseas mediclaim policy from United India Insurance on April 22, 2002, covering her during the period from April 27 to July 10, 2002. During her stay in the USA, Smruti suffered from acidity-related laryngeal lesion and was treated at the John Hopkins Hospital on July 1 and 2, 2002. She underwent a surgery on the second day. Smruti paid US $ 3632.15 towards the charges for surgery and subsequent hospitalisation up to July 9, 2002. She submitted her claim form with original documents to Mercury International Assistance and Claims Ltd., the UK-based agent of United India Insurance. They returned some of the documents along with an undated letter and asked for a few other documents.

She never did get the money directly, and it is only when the Consumer Court took this case that she would have been sure of getting her money back. What the problem is that the insurance company acts in such a way that its directly harmful to the consumer, even though they have paid up and have done all the right things. It in such cases that the court should start applying penal charges.