Techie fights cheating by travel website through ‘RuinedMyTrip’ blog  

April 13, 2011

Mangalore-based Vishal Rao creates ‘RuinedMyTrip’, which appears in the top search results for ‘MakeMyTrip’ on Google, to avenge cheating by the travel portal

Moneylife Digital Team

Feeling cheated by a company, either because of unfair treatment or poor services, many of us would usually end up staying silent. Yes, in the head of the moment, we'd get angry and some of us may even vent the anger on the company's staff. Still fewer would choose to take legal recourse through the consumer court, where the battle could be long. But here's an example of a person who chose to use his skills with the Internet to fight against injustice.

Mangalore-based Vishal Rao was cheated by the online travel agency MakeMyTrip. He had decided to spend Christmas 2010 along with his family in Mysore. So he made the bookings through the online agency well in advance. Imagine his surprise when he was denied accommodation at any hotel in the tourist city.

MakeMyTrip had accepted the necessary payments and even sent him an e-mail confirming the booking, but he found that the agency had not made the hotel reservation. "In fact, in the confirmation voucher which was sent through e-mail, apart from the check-in date and time, it was also stated that 'your booking is confirmed and you are not required to contact the hotel or MakeMyTrip to reconfirm the same'," Mr Rao says.

Aggrieved by this treatment, Mr Rao created a blog, 'Ruined My Trip', to make people aware about his experience and the unfair business practice by the company.

There are hundreds of such blogs highlighting consumer complaints on the Net and most of them are hardly noticed, barely receiving a comment or two. Unfortunately for MakeMyTrip, 'Ruined My Trip' turned out to be different.

Being, an expert in the web business, Mr Rao used his skills in the search engine optimization (SEO) area to push his blog into the top ten Google search results for 'Make My Trip'!

"I could (have) filed a case in court against MakeMyTrip.com and this could have taken years, or write a review on the net. I checked mouthshut.com and was surprised to see that there were hundreds of others with similar experiences. But this made no difference to them (the company), simply because the reviews were not showing up in the results when searching directly for 'Make My Trip' or 'MakeMyTrip.com'," he says.

"I decided to create a dedicated web site documenting my experience and allowing others to share theirs too. I used my SEO experience to make this website (to) show up in the top ten Google results when people searched for 'Make My Trip' or 'MakeMyTrip.com'. So nobody will have to go through the horrifying ordeal I have gone through. This was far more satisfying for me than filing a court case against them."

Mr Rao warns the offending companies: "Don't take your customers for a ride. You never know when one of them will turn out to be smarter than you."

Talking about his Mysore experience, Mr Rao said that when he inquired why no hotel room was booked for him, he found out that MakeMyTrip staff called the manager of the hotel only at noon on the day he was to check in. "I (had) booked the rooms on 15th December and they called the hotel on the day I was to check in, to confirm the booking."

Mr Rao managed to get rooms at another hotel and enjoyed the holiday with his family. A few days later, the company wrote saying, "We are really sorry and you'll get a refund within seven days".

"After seeing the popularity of the blog they posted fake comments to try to dissuade me from carrying on the campaign. These people are very smart.
They have a full-time SEO team to make sure that none of the negative reviews crop up in the top ten results. As you can see, almost all the sites in the top ten results are their own sites, which easily distract people," Mr Rao explained. MakeMyTrip even offered him a gift voucher of Rs10,000, which Mr Rao refused.

Moneylife sent a detailed e-mail to MakeMyTrip seeking an explanation. The company assured that it would reply within 24 hours, but there was no explanation till the time of publishing this story.