vishalgupta22

Anyone tried SOTC?

I tried it for the first time today and I am shocked with their website quality. I don't think I will try booking tickets with them again (unless HDFC takes out smartbuy).

This is what happened:

• I registered and I get a welcome email addressed: Dear Null
• I should have understood right there and stopped, but I decided to actually book a ticket
• Everything looks great until the payment page and the payment went through perfectly fine
• Instead of getting a record locator, I get a message saying 'Payment received, Flight NOT Booked / Confirmed' please call us
• I get the same thing in a email
• I call them and was told, we will ask the flight team to call you tomorrow
• I ask if the booking is guaranteed and only a matter of ticket issuance, answer we have the payment, ticket we will let you know when we call you
• I ask to cancel and refund (so I can book somewhere else, and again a NO).

I hope it's not the normal, but still if you are booking for the first time on sot, please watch.

vishalgupta22

Update:
Called SOTC at 9:30 am and they said we will call you by 10 AM, obviously they didn't
Called again at 10:30 (no wait this time). The lady tried to kick me off by saying we will call you in 30 minutes but I insisted that I talk to someone now. Transferred me to someone who says, the booking has failed and if the ticket doesn't get confirmed, we will refund your money in 7-10 days.

The flight is on 6th Nov, so I made a new booking on smartbuy, hope I don't have to fight too much to get my money back.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Painful. I was going to book through them a couple of days back but thankfully my partner quota was already exhausted. so I did it through Smartbuy!

Although Smartbuy has a failed me on a couple of occasions with hotel bookings in the past. So as a rule I used to check if the rooms were available through Trivago before doing the booking - not applicable in your case but Smartbuy does show ghost availability.

vishalgupta22

Update: 14 days now, no sign of getting money back from SOTC. Called them and they told me I will arrange a call back in 1 hour. I got pissed off and told the lady you don't feel ashamed working for a company like SOTC.

I don't think SOTC will refund the money, my only option seems to be trying to dispute with HDFC

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Thanks to 9W's new food policies it's made buying tickets through Smartbuy that much more difficult.

I was buying tickets CCU-BOM of course I had to do it through Smartbuy. And Smartbuy is not known for displaying any information on their website much less having competent people to pick up a call or answer a query.

Doing a search I saw the same ticket at 3 different price points - 13.5k through Yatra, 14.1 through Via and 14.6k through Cleartrip. I have never seen such a lot of variance between the partners - usually they're in the Rs. 0-200 kind of difference. And 9W's site didn't help at all... they showed tickets starting at 14.3k (whatever class that includes food) and no cheaper tickets available for that particular flight.

Now I'm kinda completely lost. Yatra is selling a 9W ticket at Rs. 600 less... would it have food or not. Who can tell! Smartbuy website just about tells you that you may get a ticket for this flight and no more! But then 9W's site says there aren't any non-food tickets for that flight!

So I went ahead and bought the cheapest ticket. Put in the PNR in 9W's system... of course turns out there wasn't any meals included. Would it mean meals would have been included in a 14.6k ticket? I don't know!

Of course it's 33% more difficult for me to get mad at Smartbuy.... so I'm hating 9W a little more now!

bigapple07

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Some OTAs do show this. However only Smartbuy & SOTC gives me an 33% discount. So I prefer the discount and will continue to stay mad at 9W for introducing such a stupid rule (which is essentially 1 step before nobody gets a meal) and making it almost impossible to book this through OTAs - I can imagine how much fun booking 9W connections might be. Or even for the less frequently traveling general public (not travel savvy FTers) who book a ticket on 9Ws website to find they've been shortchanged on the meal.

Added to the no lounge in BOM policy. I don't know why more people aren't yelling at 9W to cut this cr@@@p.

bigapple07

kumarshah

I just got the card last month. Where do I check my points accumulated?

PiperAtGatesofDawn

ethanhunt123

So i have a query around Smartbuy Amazon. In order to get the 10X bonus - i need to follow the link from smartbuy page to Amazon (after entering mobile number & last 4 digits). Then i search for what i want on Amazon and order ? Or it needs to be in Amazon Smartbuy section ?

L_D_M

It's not exactly clear, but general consensus among card-holders seems to be that all purchases made after landing on Amazon via Smartbuy that way qualify. So far I've yet to see a single result for anything I search for actually available under the "HDFC SmartBUY offer" category, so I've been picking from the general results that display and purchasing them. It's a little too early to say whether I've been getting 10x on those purchases or not.

ethanhunt123

Does the extra 10X miles appear on your card statement ? or they get credited later ?

PiperAtGatesofDawn

piyush

Any way to book the Mumbai - Goa cruise (India?s First Cruise Liner) to get 10X? I couldn't find it on Smartbuy or SOTC.

Thanks!