Fools never differ Hrush
Joshua Porter has a great post entitled 5 Principles to Design By.
It’s a long post and well worth the read. Joshua’s 5 principles are:
- Technology serves humans, humans do not serve technology
- Design is not art
- The experience belongs to the user
- Great design is invisible
- Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
Expanding on “Great design is invisible,” Joshua says:
Bad design is obvious because it hurts to use. It is awkward, difficult, and complex. In a great irony of the world, bad design is much easier to see than good design. It raps us on the head like a bully. Because of its success, great design is often invisible.
Well put, this is what we were trying to get across in our post on The designer’s dilemma.
I guess great minds think alike. Or, fools never differ.
Hi Hrush,
I guess ClearTrip is doing something right indeed. I put on an informal vote on my blog as part of my post:
http://www.startupdunia.com/2007/03/17/comparison-of-online-travel-portals-in-india/
and readers of my blog seem to agree.ClearTrip has 50% of all the votes.
Can you explain one thing though –
The point (1) below:
http://www.startupdunia.com/2007/03/17/comparison-of-online-travel-portals-in-india-few-observations/
thanks,
Pranav.
Dear Customer Support of Cleartrip.
I had a frustrating experience when I wanted to re-book my tickets for the same sector and the same date viz., 8th April on the Bhopal Mumbai sector.
I had booked the return ticket for the sector Mumbai-Bhopal- Mumbai from your web site on 21st March. On 23rd March the fare had come down by Rs 1000 (down by almost 25% of the original fare). I called up the call centre to rebook the tickets. She explained me that I had to pay a cancellation charge of Rs 500 to which I agreed. She further asked me to pay Rs 250 as "Cleartrip Cancellation charge". I tried to reason with her saying that I’m rebooking the ticket from you again and hence she should waive off the Cleartrip Cancellation Charge. But she stonewalled me explaining that it is the "Company Policy" to charge for booking, then for cancelling and then again for rebooking. This looked like exploitative to me especially when I’m rebooking the sector through you. To further compound my misery she kept me on hold multiple times, one of them being when she had to attend her own cellphone call (I could overhear the private conversation that she was having).
Efficiency of call centre employees is your responsibility which I’m sure you would straighten out but what’s shocking is the policy of extracting profit on three different occasions for the same sector for tickets dealt by you.
Do you have an answer to this?
Warm Regards
Kaushik Datta
Kaushik–We don’t control fluctuations in airline pricing. Fares fluctuate for a variety of reasons and the fluctuations are dictated by airlines to better manage their yield and load factors. I am looking into this, however, someone will be in touch with you tomorrow to help.
Pranav–you’re right, some of the routes make no sense whatsoever. Fares and routes are filed by the airlines, not by Cleartrip. For the sake of comprehensiveness, our search brings back all fares and routes filed by an airline for any given city pair.
Reagrding Cancellations. I have a cancellation pending since 23rd of Feb 2007, I must have emailed at least 6 reminders. Today 31st I was told that it has been credited on the 29th of March. However it is yet to be credited to my account nor has my bank any intimation of any pending credit. Even when I log into my cleartrip account it says that this cancellation is still pending. It is almost impossible to get to talk to a "human voice" on the Customer Support – repeated attempts (about 8-10 tims / day) have given me access just once after trying for a week. On that occasion I was promised that the matter will be resolved in 2 more days (this was on 25th March).
I think ive learnt a lesson one should check rates on clear trip, yatra, make my trip and book directly with the airlines.
cleartrip for one charge Rs 250 cancellation charges then why do they hold on to the refund money for "THIRTY" days.I dont see any logic in it. i have been trying to locate the cancellation key in the web site, i had to enter the particular Airline web sites. the airlines cancelled the tickets and the money was sent to clear trip. they neither aknowledged reciept of the same and also showed the booking alive.
i think you need to put your think tank in order and straigten this anomally asap.
regards
Ashwani
Devajit – Completely right. Cleartrip, makemytrip, yatra etc. are just charging extra on top of the airline’s own website. Now, I use rediff faresearch or a new engine – http://www.ixigo.com for all my travel searches – it is cheaper, faster and no tension of being ripped off.
Hi,
went through some of the posts on this blog and decided to base an opinion on my own research..
here’s what I found
http://www.nitinsareen.blogspot.com/
Cheers,