Shoddy service, lost mileage points and booking glitches galore. Why should you ever visit aggregator sites for airline tickets?

Greed does not pay. Sadly, I found this to be true while attempting to book an airline ticket through an online portal called 'Cleartrip.com'.

I had used this service in the past, but once had an experience of the money having been debited and then the ticket not coming through and since then I had discontinued their services.

Alas, I was lured by an offer of one free ticket for each ticket booked and had a go.

Late evening on 29th July, at around 7:15pm or so, I filled out all the details for a Chennai to Pune flight by Kingfisher Airlines. It showed a fare of around Rs3,857. No sooner had I pressed 'submit' (or the equivalent of wanting to conclude the transaction) that I got an SMS saying that my bank account had been debited (I had used the net-banking facility of my banker) with the said amount. I started to smile on having successfully navigated yet another net-based transaction (you see, the BSNL Internet connectivity is such that it keeps going off, so to complete an online transaction, it is an achievement for me).

Alas, my smile froze. A message flashed online that the transaction had 'failed'. I had no clue of what happened. I checked my bank account. Yes, the amount had been debited.

So, I presumed that there was some glitch and called a customer support number of Cleartrip. I was a bit disturbed since I did not have any reference number. The lady who attended my call resolved that by checking with my email ID. Luckily, I was a 'registered' user and hence I had logged in with that ID. So, it was easy to trace and she gave me a Cleartrip ID number. She said that the ticket was not issued due to some 'link' not working! I tried to probe further, but got no farther.

She told me that my money would be 'reversed' immediately and that I could call in half an hour to check about the fate of my ticket, etc.

Alas, after an hour I could not get through in spite of several tries and so I kept it for the next morning.

Next morning, I checked my Cleartrip account to see if any ticket had been issued. No luck. I checked my bank account to see if the amount was credited. No. Cleartrip was still holding on to the money for a 'failed' transaction!

I called them up and once again was given a spin as to why the bloody thing did not work out.

Now, I got on to the website of Kingfisher directly and booked the ticket. Surprise! The fare was lower though they did not give any 'buy one get one free' offer.

Is Cleartrip justified in doing what it did to me? It is very clear that they did not give me the service that they had promised. And the fact that in spite of taking my money, they could not deliver is proof that they did not have any valid arrangement with the airline.

Cleartrip is clearly not my cup of tea. Henceforth, it is the airline website or a physical travel agent. Online travel brokers/agents are high risk and we have no control over the transaction. Take care, folks. Cleartrip is out. I have no clue about other such brokers and I have no intention of finding out either.

After Mr Balakrishnan's ordeal, Moneylife contacted Cleartrip for its response. Here's what the portal had to say:

Vishal Gupta, VP (operations) of Cleartrip attempted to explain the situation.

First, he claimed that Mr Balakrishnan's negative experience occurs in just 1% or 2% of the millions of transactions that are put through by Cleartrip. While this point is well taken, what did not elicit a satisfactory response from Mr Gupta is the chain of events after the booking failed.

1.    Mr Gupta said that the refunds are made only after reconciliation to check that the money is credited to Cleartrip by the bank. He could not explain why Cleartrip wasn't able to get information about the debit at the same time as the customer.
2.    He promised to check and say why the customer was told that the money would be 'reversed' immediately instead of saying that it would take at least 24 hours.
3.    There is no explanation for why Cleartrip, which clearly had the customer's money, could not help complete the transaction, even though the first booking had failed.
4.    Cleartrip claims to offer the best rate, but our columnist found otherwise. Mr Gupta said, "We still stand by the claim"; he went on to explain Mr Balakrishnan's case by saying that airlines have "dynamic fare systems" and prices change rapidly. This, however, means that aggregator sites cannot claim to offer the best rate.
5.    Finally, as Mr Balakrishnan points out, booking through aggregator sites may actually cause customers to lose out on mileage points. It is also clear that you must risk booking, only if you have the funds to buy another ticket if you are unlucky enough to be part of the 2% failed bookings. — R Balakrishnan