Had a terrible and extremely aggravating bookings-related experience with IndiGo Air (the new Indian LCC promoted by Rakesh Gangwal, former CEO of US Airways, and headed by Bruce Ashby, a former EVP of US Airways) yesterday.
Background: I live in Singapore. I had made booking online at the Indigo website (goindigo.in) several weeks ago for me and my family to fly Mumbai (Bombay) to Kolkata (Calcutta). These were paid for by my Singapore-issued Citibank VISA credit card. About three weeks ago, I made a date change and paid the fare difference online with the same card. Got confirmation emails etc for both transactions from Indigo; so far so good. Also checked and found before my departure from Singapore last week that I had already been billed for these charges on my credit card, so all seemed in order.
But here is what happened next:
1. I showed up at Bombay airport yesterday (Dec 25) afternoon at 12.30pm for the 2pm flight (Flight # 6E 403), with the confirmation printouts etc, and with my family (wife and two small kids) in tow.
2. The check-in agent looked for my reservation, and then told me that my booking had been cancelled, and that I had apparently cancelled the booking myself! I said that I had not, it was impossible, and insisted she investigate further.
3. The agent then dug around a bit more and then told me that IndiGo had cancelled my booking because there had been a spate of credit-card frauds that had hit the Indian carriers in recent weeks, so (under the advice of the Ministry of Finance, supposedly) IndiGo had decided to cancel all bookings made using non-Indian credit cards!
4. When asked why no one had bothered to tell me about it, she muttered something about my having a Singapore phone number, and that they were unable to call international numbers! When asked why I had not been informed by email or SMS (I had received my original confirmations on email from them, after all), she had no answer. She did tell me that the flight was booked full, and I may not be able to travel unless there were no shows!
5. As this point, I was getting really upset. I insisted on speaking with a supervisor, who came and tried to tell me the reservation had been cancelled "for your protection"! I asked how was it protecting me, when my credit card had already been charged, no one had informed me of the cancellation, and I was now here being told they had sold my seats to someone else and I no longer had a booking? He had no answer, and just asked me to wait until 30 minutes before departure to see if they had any seats left.
6. While waiting, another passenger (an elderly woman) showed up whose booking had also been made using a foreign credit card, and she too was told her booking had been cancelled "for her protection", but in this case she was told there was nothing they could do to help her today, she had to come back tomorrow to travel! At this point I interjected, and insisted they drop this BS line that they were doing this to protect us; the only ones they were protecting were themselves, and us passengers were just left in the lurch by their unilateral cancellations. The issue was not just that they had cancelled our bookings, but that they had not really tried to inform us -- we were just abandoned (though our credit cards had already been billed to the bookings). I also insisted that all affected passengers be accomodated either on this flight today, or on another airlines' flight today; it was not acceptable to tell a passenger to just go home and come back tomorrow.
7. 25 minutes before departure, we were handed boarding passes for the flight (thanks to some no-shows). No apologies or anything, just a "hurry up and rush to the gate".
The flight itself was fine (though the food for sale was woefully limited, both in quantity and in selection). But for an airline that is supposedly being set up by industry veterans, our experience with the reservation cancellations and lack of effort to inform us or accomodate us on other airlines has really soured us on IndiGo. With all of the choices for air travel now in India, there is really no way IndiGo can expect to stay in business if these are the kinds of things they get up to.
So, please be warned! (especially if you are a non-Indian resident making bookings using a non-Indian credit card)
Sankaps.