Cleartrip – Shady Refunds On A Public Complaint System

Update: This post here is the extreme of LOLz we’re talking about here. Doesn’t cleartrip get it that they have to stop using a public forum as a ticketing system?

It is extremely painful to see that one of the top railway booking sites in India has so many problems refunding people’s ticket money.

It’s really funny to see their forum which has people complaining about tickets not refunded, trains canceled, debit cards charged twice etc. We’re almost there into the third decade of Internet revolution, and does Cleartrip need a lesson on how to deal with a ticketed complaint system? Like come on guys, it shouldn’t be an open forum where I come and tell you my name, trip#, debit card# etc. Absolutely ridiculous.

After months of my trip booking+cancellation, I logged in today to re-check my accounts and voila; the money has still not reached my account. It should be a really easy problem to fix. As soon as you get a ticket cancellation, record it in a database which gets replicated to a backup. At the end of every 24 hours, select all transactions that were cancellations from that database and check if an accounts database has any record of money going back to customers. Additionally, if the railways or airlines are involved, join the query to check on another table that records transactions incoming from them. This is an absolutely no-brainer situation for the likes of a web company like this.

Instead, cleartrip relies on their forum for people to come, post and get refunds. Indeed, this makes perfect business sense. If people care, they’ll come, else why the hell should Cleartrip care going refunding money. India is all about numbers, a thousand may go, but a thousand shall come.

3 Replies to “Cleartrip – Shady Refunds On A Public Complaint System”

  1. I hope this too is not a scandal under congress govt. Some company who does not know anything about web application probably got a contract so they can fill their pockets.

  2. @Bhavin: It’s not a state owned venture, but it is entirely possible that they had to stuff Govt officials to get the contract. That’s the norm after all.

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