Monday, March 24, 2008

Sinister Refund Policies of Low Cost Airlines

Air Deccan has a new terms and conditions policy in place. In the age of fine-print and mouth-watering deals, it is important to highlight these changes. Deccan has a large following of elderly and first-time travelers that are not as comfortable with the nuances of flying (and Internet). They flocked to fly the benevolent vision charted by Capt Gopinath, with generous terms and friendly conditions. Dr.Mallya has decided to end that nonsense.

New Terms and Conditions of Air Deccan, effective 17 March 2008, click here.

The base fare from Pune to Bangalore is Rs.500. The cancellation fee is Rs.750.

No refunds if you cancel within 4 hours of departure time.

Refunds to Credit Card will be made within 14 days. Somehow it takes 14 seconds for the money to be credited into Kingfisher/Deccan's account. Why does it take 14 days for it to get out?

Refund will be in form of a Credit Voucher and not cash. This must be used within 180 days. If you are the type who can only afford an annual vacation, you will learn to take the bus next time.

Even if the cancellation is done by Deccan due to flight delay, fog, etc., you still don't get all your money back. All you get is the Credit Voucher. If you decided never to use Deccan services again, say bye bye to your money before leaving the Airport.

I am sure other airlines will soon follow the brilliant model developed by the brilliant Dr.Mallya. In the absence of any regulatory control on the misleading advertising and illogical pricing, Airlines will earn more from cancellations and goof-ups than from the ticket fare itself!

Banks have had a similar golden age for 15 years, while they fleeced each other's customers for using non-bank ATMs. The RBI has suddenly woken up and decided customer should get ATM facility free. One day, IRDA, DGCA, TRAI and all the other abbreviations (rather, aberrations) will also wake up.

Woh subah kabhi toh aayegi...

3 comments:

Sandeep said...

Nice informative post ! .. Well another side of the coin where we should be happy about Deccan, Spicejet, Go Air..any other Air!(in good old days!) that they bought competition to Jet Airways & Indian Airlines ..I remember taking Air India 1:30 AM flight to Mumbai which got delayed for 3 hours for Rs.3500/- ..just because Jet/IA were charging Rs.5500 for one way ticket to Mumbai/Pune from Bangalore ;)

I think going by Volvo to Mumbai/Pune from Bangalore is sensible sometimes if you are alone :) ...Also our great Lalu should consider high speed(at least 100 kmph) trains to major cities ...everybody would love to do a overnight journey to a 1000 km destination in Rs.1500 :)

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BangaloreMom said...

Hi

Hopped over from Abha's blog. And yes..I totally know what you are talking about. It looks like there is daylight robbery going on in airlines and precious little is being done about it. Sigh! One lives in hope!