The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Hrush
It’s been a little over five months since we launched the Cleartrip site as a public beta on July 4, 2006. We’ve received a lot of customer feedback since and we love hearing from you.
We listen, keep our heads down and work hard to continually improve the site.
We’re launching this blog today to open an honest and transparent dialogue with our customers. In the spirit of honesty and transparency, we’re going to share some of the feedback we’ve received over the last five months.
We’ve segregated the feedback into three categories: Good, Bad and Ugly. Since customer complaints matter more to us than praise, we’re publishing two times as much negative feedback — 5 entries each in Ugly and Bad and 5 entries in Good.
All feedback has been published without any editing or censoring (profanity has been disguised). Any personally identifiable information has been removed for obvious reasons.
The Good
- Don’t really know about improvement, but just wanted to write in to say that i think your website kick-ass! It’s the google of buying tickets online. Simple, clean, to the point! No riff-raff! Love the small world section. I can find all the information i want without having to look for it. Not to mention, the small text link promoting offers on the front page is probably more effective than web banners on a competitors website! I have booked on cleartrip and makemytrip, and you guys are definitely better. Love the fact you include taxes in your flight prices etc. Great going guys, Two thumbs up, pat on the back, and all that jazz! Cheers!
- By havin a more consistent up time would be good. I understand that over a period of time all you hardware setup will be in place and this is bound to happen. The sooner the better for the whole travelling community. My friend and I were so pissed of with the existing similar services and at one point in time we wanted to write a similar one. Good we got one in time. Really wonderful job guys. What I particualarly liked: 1. When we choose the radio buttons, the cost is calculated without sending a request back to the server. This is good. I hated your competitors for this for this feature. 2. Javascript is very cleaverly used. Good job web dev folks. 3. I also like it simple and non-cluttery without all those offer distracting you. 4. I know the prices are a little high when compared to your competitors. Its always been just a couple of hundreds max, atleast for the places I was looking at. I know these issues will be present in the initial days. The sooner you compete, the better, obviously. Overall, this is job really well done. Keep up the good job. Kudos to the team. Things which can be improved: A lot of real estate in the opening page not well used I guess. I don’t know if you have it there to lure the advertizers of any banners. but you could make some innovative use of it. I shall send in feedbacks when I have one.
- not needed… just send me goood offfers.. n i m happy ) .. n u know what.. we done the site for yatra.. n frankly speakin they screwed up wid the simple n sweet design to a desi 90′s design.. well i love cleartrip.. it rocks!!.. n simply best keep it up
- Absolute perfect site for booking, I have been using other sites for on-line e-tickets, but nothing to match cleartrip site. A perfect 10 on 10 to you guys.
- I think this is a great site to book your tickets. I have used makemytrip.com & yatra.com for booking tickets. But i find cleartrip.com the best, most user friendly & very simple to use. In just 3 steps one can book the flight. The best feature i liked about this site is the consolidated display of prices, the ability to select different flights & see the fare change immediately. The processing time is the fastest. I can book flights within minutes! Based on this experience i have immediately registered myself as a user! For a young site, i think the quality of work done is SIMPLY SUPERB. I wish i had started using this site much earlier. Anyway now i am one of your customers…for sure. And i’ll share my experience with my friends & colleagues. Good Luck!
The Bad
- ‘Cleartrip’s system is behaving badly. Just like people, our system sometimes has a bad day and gets grumpy. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, please bear with us while we get it to behave.’ This is a regular occurance in cleartrip.com Since I first used this website, i have encountered this error(continuous in repeated searches) 60-70% of the time. Ofcourse, it might be because of the time i access the website, but there might be lot of people like me. And many of them never bother to write a feedback. BTW, your website interface is of very good design than the competitors. But till you reduce your downtime your competitors will always have an upper hand.
- the first page is very utilitarian. make it hit the customer in the face, though not so hard that the nose comes out the backside. I mean a little UI change at the 1st page, to attract teh customer, while not losing out on the speed element. I like the visual arrangement and the sparing use of Ajax. I am sure there is a lot more to be done on teh site, plus linking with other data sources, and providers. Good luck
- Man, ur site is too slow. i went off to sleep this way, i will miss the flight hahahhahah better speed up man. otherwise, u can see all snoring
- The site is not listing all the options/airlines like Indigo, Go Air, Kingfisher Airlines, Air Deccan etc., Not interested in flying JET Airways alone..It is not VFM
- Looks like a site designed by a child of 4years and your adverts in the paper are misleading….not very good..
The Ugly
- need more pictures, not a very good hotel selection. I work for Orbitz and they told me to test out your website so we can get into India, now we realized that there isn’t much competition for India. We will dominate…Cleartrip shouldn’t even bother working on this…there is no point. Sorry to deliver the bad news.
- This is a peice of crap with an internal server error
- Its a crap arrangement, far disgusting than MakeMyTrip.com or TravelGuru.com. You have negligible options. Do some more surveys and get hold of more hotels and airlines.
- Yours is the most useless travel site I found.Your system could not find a single flight for any of the destinations I gave, including Bombay Delhi. You should be charged with misleading peopole thru full page advts. I am sure even this remark of mine may not get registered.What a waste of time
- try to imprope ur website its totally jamed i used it for the first time tried 5 times but did got the flights. in short ur site is totally messed up…. sorry to say tht but its a very genuin and positive feedback…..
We care deeply about your experiences with us and in an upcoming post, we will talk about how customer feedback is integral to the ongoing development of our site.
I am strongly against promoting a airline like DECCAN. This is big joke with passengers as you never know when they cancle.
I will request and guide people NOT TO use airdeccan -it is better to spend some extra but go on any other airlines.
HAD VERY baD EXPERIENCE WITH THEM
Duggal J – Air Deccan is a large airline in India and it’s available as a part of our search. To be effective, our search has to be comprehensive.
As a passenger, we leave it to you to choose which airline you’d like to fly.
I had a worst experience with cleartrip itself.i tried for a whole day,for a call on the only one cust. service no. and wasted a lot of money for holding on call and finally cut after a long wait.
Cust. support are not keen to reply to cust’s mails.They looks towards mail as a joke or what? .Recently i sent one more mail reg. cancellation of ticket,yet after 4-5 days ,i didnt receive the refund nor the info. about the same…
So,its beeter to spend more money somewhere,but not to go for the travel agents like this……
Only advertising doesnt help to grow the business,they should give the quality service too.
Hi, why don’t you link ticket bookings to frequent flyer miles? One of the other travel sites has this option and I think it’s great for the customer. I booked a couple of Jet tickets for my parents through your site but couldn’t get the frequent flyer points because the tickets were not in my name. Any plans to do something about it?
I would like to share a bitter experince of dealing by the Customer Care Officer with the would be customers of cleartrip.com.Due to paucity of time, I would like to paste the letter which I had written to them for the problem I faced. I think it would be self explanatory.
Dear Customer Care Officer,
[Subject: Cancellation of Air Ticket booking from Delhi to Mumbai
Ref: PNR No. HGPDG
I booked two tickets thru your website on 19.12.05 for Delhi to Mumbai in Sahara Flights S2 101 & S2 203 for Delhi to Mumbai (Round Trip) on 25/12/06 & 31/12/06 in the name of MRS. SOMA NATH and MASTER AKASHDEEP NATH and made the payments of Rs.11.843/- thru city bank credit card. The amount has already been billed and debited to my credit card. Since, you did not confirm booking in spite of several requests, I had to buy the tickets directly from the Sahara Airlines. I had sent you number of mails for canceling the said booking and re-crediting the same to my credit card. It is a matter of great regret that in spite of number of mails requesting for cancellation of the booking, you had not cared to respond it. I contacted your customer officer over telephone on 20.12.06 thru my friend in Mumbai and requested for cancellation of the booking and issuance of necessary instruction to the credit card division concerned for re-crediting the same to my credit card. While the concerned customer care officer had informed that no booking was confirmed, I came to know from the Sahara Airlines that the bookings were confirmed and PNR No.HGPDG was also generated.
I would like to mention that in my cleartrip.com account (nbiplab@yahoo.com), no booking is being reflected under < trips>. Therefore, I cannot even cancel it thru online.
You are once again requested to cancel the above referred bookings immediately and refund the amount of Rs.11,843/- under intimation to me in return mail or SMS in my mobile number. ( 011- 9891291550) immediately.
Biplab Nath
Hi Biplabh,
You are also entangled in the web of Cleartrip just like us who are at their mercy and cannot do anything.
Biplab, Siddharth, Vishal — you have my deepest apologies for the delays in your cases. I am personally looking into them and hope to have some answers for each of you within a few hours.
Once again, I’m sorry for the delays, rest assured that we’re working hard to clear each of your cases.
You people are a set of the most imcompetent buffoons I have ever come across in my life. I have been trying to get through to your call centre number. Not getting through is one thing but hanging up on me is just not acceptable. I am going around telling everyone I can to not use your system from the year 1801.
Seriously. How do you expect you guys to come back to you after this?
Varun – I’m terribly sorry to hear about your experience.
We’re hiring customer care executives as fast as we can to ensure that these things do not happen.
If you need assistance, please let me know what you need and I will look into it immediately.
Once again, my sincerest apologies. We’ve been swamped by massive growth, but that’s no excuse and if you let me know what you need, we will do our best to help you.
Very good and clear interface. Ease of use 10/10 Marks.
~Puneet
No drama, No Ads Clean interface. Cleartrip is doing a better job as compared to other travel portals in india. If only they also had rediff fare cast kind of product integrated it would do wonders. Telling me when to fly between dates will surely increase chances for making a reservation for cleartrip portal.
in air deccan booking through your site the facility of booking for an infant is not available and i would request you to please include the same after tie up with the air deccan other wise how will i travel in airdeccan with my one year old son.
please include in the airdeccan booking for booking of an infant and for ochild below one year old. how could i travel with my one year old child.
Hey, novel effort. Appreciate your willingness to publish some of the above not-so nice comments about cleartrip. Wish you guys luck.
Cleartrip works perfectly for me, and I wanted to post this comment to acknowledge the effort that has been put by the guys behind cleartrip. There are always problems at the start of a new idea/project, and that for me is understandable.
Keep up the good work. Cheers!
Hi,
U website is clean and neat ans of now i had a very good experince with you guys , only feedback is have a toolfree number to get in touch with u from any part of india.
Nice website but the hotel section is bad it does not offer budget hotles, probably u guys need to look into this
Hi,
This is to inform you that i went your site with great expectation of getting the cheapest offer for Bombay-Bangalore-Bombay. When i compared your prices with different airlines directly on their website, i was totally surprised to see that their fares were lower than those mentioned on your site. Isnt this defeating the whole purpose of your existence.
Moreover, there is no mention of fares for senior citizens.
Also, it is not necessary that everybody moves around with creditcard. It would be better if you could accept debit cards of major banks.
Your motto of booking in three simple steps doesnt hold good at all. Dont promise things that you cant deliver.
Awaiting your immediate reply.
Hope you take ncecessary action to clean/CLEAR up your act.
Thanks
Nikhil
Nikhil — thanks for your feedback.
Cleartrip has never claimed to be the "cheapest" travel site.
We simply don’t believe that we can provide our customers with a reliable guarantee that we will always be the "cheapest."
We do, however, guarantee that Cleartrip is the *simplest* way to search and book your travel.
Your site is great. The UI is clean and intuitive and the site is fast. This is one of the best sites I’ve used for booking flights for India.
I am also having a terrible time with this new online travel company called Cleartrip. I would say that they are not clear on how to run a business. Their system is wrecked or broke and their phone respresentatives are liars. My confirmation # was 06364AD537 which required an e-ticket. By this company promptly sent me a paper ticket. I was then asked to return the ticket after they agreed that they would issue an e-ticket but I have not seen any response from the company.
I have made multiple long distance calls and sent innumerable emails to no effect. Every time the phone reps say that they will ‘get back’! I guess my phone bills, courier cost and mental hassle far exceeds the saving I was hoping to make by booking at this site rather than my regular trip site.
Saswata – I will look into this immediately. My apologies for the inconvenience. Someone will be in touch with you today to assist you with your tickets.
I got a prompt resolution after writing in this blog. Thanks for that! I hope I can write blogs in future with +ve feedback about Cleartrip. Ciao.
Saswata – glad to hear it all got sorted out, we promise we’ll do better next time.
Hi Hrush
Just to inform you that my issue did get resolved. Luckily the date of travel was a bit in the future, but only to bring to your notice, your executive refused to courier the tickets to Shimla saying that no courier carrier was willing to take it. Now, that of course is not true. Since I myself am employed with a logistics company, I know that.
Also since your executive actually hung up on me was extremely rude. Pleas ehire some systems guys and train your executives well.
Thanks for your offer to help though. Should not go unacknowledged.
Cheers!
Hi Folks,
I did a booking for a flight for a friend on or about 26th December, 2006. I cancelled the booking in a matter of minutes as I realised the date was wrong.
The cancellation was done on phone with the customer support. The booking never went in to ticketing.
I’m disgusted and sorry to say that even 4-5 emails and some phone calls later I AM STILL TO RECEIVE THE REFUND FOR THE CANCELLATION !! This is as of 29th January, 2007. Why is cleartrip not prompt enough to return the funds. Will u do me a favour by accepting my payments for a booking 1 month after the date of travel ? Why are you guys using my funds for 1 full month interest free ??? Refund my amount with interest even.
hi,
This is regarding the cancellation refund. Its close to 2 months and I have not got my refund. I have sent numerous mails to customer care but no response. This doesnt make sense.
My Case Ref: 1-50690.
Could you please let me know the status on it.
rajAT
Kolkata as destination is not appearing in the selection box for booking airticket in Indigo Air from Chennai. Please rectify.
Hi,
This is regarding the cancellation refund. Its close to 2 weeks and I have not got my refund. I have sent numerous mails to customer care but no response. This doesnt make sense.
My Case Ref: 1-51377
Could you please let me know the status on it.
Vinay Dasa
What is your correct contact number.???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I have already e mailed you that i have not recieved E Ticket. Can you please send me Quickly.Your phone number is hell.I have paid for flying on 8 Feb. Booking was done on 22 Dec. Payment has gone through.
Still I have not recieved my E TICKET.
Can you or DIRECTOR for this company look into this matter and send me ASAP
Confirmation No is 06356AD583.
Your ad for cheap fare is cheating anf cheap trick. I saw your ad says fare as low as Rs 24/- , but it does not say which dates whioch flights, nothing. The height of the crap is it says fare is Rs 42 and tax is Rs 7052. idiotic!
I bought 10 tickets through web for indigo airlines for chennai. they sent mail as e-tickets which are not decipherable
and trying to contact over phone but failed
bought 1o air tickets through web but the e-tickets are not legible. phone and e-mails are not working
I had posted a message on this blog on about 29th Jan.
I AM YET TO RECEIVE MY REFUND FOR THE CANCELLATION on 28th DECEMBER, 2006.CLEARTRIP.COM IS REALLY PATHETIC. I EVEN HAVE A REASON TO BELIEVE THEY ARE CHEATING. CUST SERVICE CALLED ONCE TO TELL THAT THE REFUND HAS BEEN DONE. This was nearly 10 days ago. I am yet to see the credit in my card statement. I CHECK THIS STATEMENT / TRANSACTIONS ONLINE.
THE CUSTOMER SERVICE HAS NOT REPLIED TO NUMEROUS EMAILS. THE PHONE NUMBER NEVER WORKS. PLANNING TO SUE THIS COMPANY. ANY ONE INTERESTED ?
Hrush
Second time in 2 months Im having to write a similar entry on your blog. Waiting time on the number you have on your website? 9 mins. DO U REALLY EXPECT SOMEONE TO STAY ON THE PHONE WITH A RECORDED VOICE FOR THAT LONG? And what am I calling for? An air ticket which has not been cpouriered to me. I understand that by local courier it should not take more than a day. Its been a week. Flight confirmation no. 07048AD055
Varun
9892309835
Hi Hursh,
I was booking a round trip bangalore – delhi, 3 tickets from cleartrip.com site.
After inputing all the details, in the fourth step i got the message saying due to some internal error, my request could not be processed further and the amount charged will be refunded and released.
Case Ref: 1-64733
Amount : Rs.17910
I am stuck with a panic when i see the review of many people experienced the same.
And also happened to read about the help you have provided them.
Please let me know how long will it take for my money to get refunded.
I dont understand why should the charge be held when my request could not be processed atall…
Please do help.
Waiting for your positive and earliest reply.
Thanks & Regards
Renuka Sharma.
Has any of you there got the refund from cleartrip.com.
Any within what time span ???
until now am satisfied with clear trip but i need to make a mention here regarding one technical problem that i observed. I had given my rediffmail id for booking but i notice that the link to the e-ticket doesnt show in the rediffmail…so i had to call up ur customer service and request them to email the e-tiket to gmail. maybe you would like to look into it as it could help in the long run.
Dear Hursh,
i have been trying to get my ticket canceled as my wife who was suppose to travel from Bangalore to Delhi on 9th of March and then back to Bangalore on 14th of March, will no longer be required to do that, after my first mail in the morning (which was well before 24 hours of the departure of the flight) all i have got is a reference no (Case Ref: 1-72579.). Unfortunetly, its only after that,i came across this blog and realised how bad things are,i am sure you will understand , after reading grievances similar to mine and inability of Cleartrip to deal and resolve most of them is getting me worried, you are the only person who seems to have a responsible head on his shoulder as i see you responding to issues instead of your customer care. i hope my tickets get cancelled while there is still some time.Hoping that you will look into the matter.
Regards,
Aroop Dwivedi
Aroop — I’m sorry to hear that, I will have someone get in touch with you tomorrow to help out.
As I have said earlier on this blog, growth comes with its challenges and Cleartrip is growing by leaps and bounds every day.
I wanted to specifically address this part of your comment:
"Unfortunetly, its only after that,i came across this blog and realised how bad things are"
Cleartrip processes thousands of tickets per day.
Allow me to try and put that in perspective—there are a total of 156 comments on this blog at this time. Not all of them are complaints, but even if they were, we have a total of 156 complaints spread over 3 months. This is an average of less than 3 complaints per day.
And, yes, sometimes things don’t go as smoothly as we would all like.
We don’t claim to be perfect, but we are getting better everyday and every single one of us appreciates our customers taking the time to complain or provide us feedback so that we can continue to improve.
Reference No. 06355AD875
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SOMEBODY IN THIS COMPANY REFUND MY MONEY FOR CANCELLED FLIGHT FOR ABOVE REFERENCE. NOW ITS LONG TIME. PLEASE ACT ON IT.
Hi… I received my refund…. Thanks to Hursh & the support team…
Hi,
I booked a ticket on 10th Jan’07 and immidiately cancelled it as I realised the date was wrong. However till date I have not recevied the refund on my credit card. The cancellation conformation number given was 07010AD481.
pl give me status of my ticket no
1871368,1872489,1871593,1871593
pl give me status of my ticket no
1871368,1872489,1871593,1871593
i have booked two tickets from delhi to chennai in indigo airways.as i want to reconfirm my booking i contacted the number 1800 180 3838 but i am not getting the line.can anybody give the contact number for indigo airways.i booked the tickets through cleartrip.com though i received a confirmation mail from cleartrip i am yet to receive the ticket which they have promised.
Shame on you – I found out that you are charging extra money on nearly all tickets – I would rather search on rediff faresearch or ixigo and book directly on airlines. What is the use of a nice interface and usability when the prices are so high ? Do you think you are the "Apple" of the travel industry ? If you think you are, then you should target only business travelers because middle-class people like me are going direct to airline through fare search engines.
Nandoo–we don’t think we’re the "Apple" of the industry, but we’ll take that as a compliment.
Cleartrip has never claimed to be the "cheapest" travel site.
We simply don’t believe that we can provide our customers with a reliable guarantee that we will always be the "cheapest."
Unfortunately, there’s no one in the travel industry who can guarantee they’re the cheapest. We think that’s just a marketing gimmick.
the last time i did business with cleartrip, it left a sour taste in my mouth..almost 8 months later i decided to give it a try again and i must admit things look much different and improved now..the customer care is extremely supportive..i guess i have gained back my confidence in Cleartrip and would like to take back my words that i said earlier..good job guys
PS: esp thanks to Ms.Himangi(customer support ex) for solving my issue and taking a personal interest in it..very impressive
Cleartrip is completely messed up… they booked me at a resort and confirmed my payment by duly releasing a receipt. After that I get a call saying the rooms are not available and should we shift you to another 4 star property. When I asked them on what property they have in mind… they had no clue!
I guess they were expecting to blindly shift me in a different hotel without giving me a choice. When I refused to accept the offer without checking on the property first, they promised to revert back to me in half an hour… its been 16 hours and I am still awaiting their call…. waiting…waiting….
I hope I haven’t made a mistake by booking through cleartrip!!!
Yatra & AirDeccan SUCKS.Yatra booking refrence number is 7B7MIA with AirDeccan PNR 8248332 was cancelled on 5/8/08 for Sec Kandla-Mumbai for travel date 6/9/08 for 3 paxs, MK Sangoi,HM Sangoi,HK Sangoi.After numerous follow-up with Air Deccan people,everytime I receive a standard reply that it will be done in a 3 days.The Booking amt was Rs.13047 & refund amt is Rs.10647. Numerous calls to Mr Eshwar Singh (supposed to be Refund Officer) on his mobile 09986712197 & Mr.Somaiya go unattended.
I have spoken to numerous people at the Call centre (Chandrakala etc…), wasted hundreds of rupees in STD Calls. Also Yatra who is supposed to be my booking agent, washes its hand away in AirDeccan refund cases, saying that the customer directly needs to follow up on that.
Since the booking is made thru Yatra , why wouldn’t Yatra take care of the Refund as well. So to sum it ‘is yatra the no.1 travel website ?’ Yes definately its no. 1 in phasaoing.
AND AIR DECCAN STILL SUCKS
MK Sangoi–this usually happens when a travel agency uses Air Deccan’s payment gateway instead of its own payment gateway. Since the payment wasn’t processed by the agent, the refund is hard for them to process.
Cleartrip uses its own payment gateways for all airline bookings, letting us process refunds quickly and efficiently.
If only more than 66 people could read this!
I wished I had never used Cleartrip and I wished I have heard of the bad experience others experience before I paid Cleartrip.
I purchased about 40kAED worth of Emirates tickets on Cleartrip on 18 Oct, the web experience was great, and the payment department and the risk control department were very 'efficient' on making sure that I provided all my documents for them to process the payments immediately. when it comes to taking money from the customers, i would rate Cleartrip an excellence.
However, my nightmare started when I called them the next day to arrange stopovers on my itinerary which my tickets fare do allow stopovers arrangement. I attempted many times of calls, easily 30 calls and only 4 calls went through and at one point waited for 1 hr to be connected. The call centre representative was clueless, didnt understand the fare condition and refused to do the arrangement for me, until I had to educate them and tried my very best to rationalize and help them to understand how stopover should work. Even then, they could not act on it and PROMISED they would call me back within 4 hrs. I did not receive any calls, and I went through the same pain to call them again, and the second representative told me the same thing, and PROMISED they will definitely call me back on the change after they have to check with airline on the fee. (In which it is already on the web and on black and white, not sure what is left to check). Today I tried to call them again, and was put on hold for more than 1 hr, and I literally have spent half of my day trying to get hold of someone through the 800 number. Finally a representation named Sumit picked the call up and told me the SAME STORY, all the keywords 'promise', 'waiting for Emirates airline to revert', 'supervisor has left for the day'. I refused to naively believe on the promise this time as the trust has been bleached, I hold on to the call and told Sumit that I needed him to act on it, he reverted after a few minutes and quoted me a penalty amount of more expensive than my whole ticket, which is definitely not legitimate! Based on that, I told Sumit I would need to cancel these tickets, and he went on telling me all the charges which could have been well kept in the fine print. At this moment, I just think that this is just a con business Cleartrip is running and i decided Cleartrip is going to bear the consequence of the bad service.
I have no access to whom I can speak to in Cleartrip other than the inexperienced call centre staff, and I am left stranded. I have started some conversation with Emirates Airline and I know what my rights are very clearly and I want to make sure Cleartrip honors that. I hope someone in Cleartrip will read this and act on this immediately otherwise this will definitely be escalated tomorrow.