rje444

This is a request for help or for suggestions:
Any idea which Indian government agency oversees Indian airlines? And who might be able to help me with what appears to be deliberate fraud?

I bought 2 tickets from AirAsia India over a year ago.
AirAsia then cancelled our flight 9 months ago and that very same day I requested a refund. They approved my request for a refund, and even put it on their website as approved.

But after 9 months, still no refund.

Even after scores of promises from AirAsia that they would make the refund "very soon" in emails, Private Messages, AskAirAisa messages, and even phone calls.

But after 9 months, still no refund.

I've also tried posting about this on their Twitter account (and their AirAsia India CEO's Twitter account), which brought immediate private messages telling me to give them "a few more days" over and over.

But after 9 months, still no refund.

I have copies of the multitude of correspondence in which they made these broken promises. And I did some research and found many stories in newspapers about similar fraud, in which AirAsia cancels a flight and promises customers refunds but never makes them. This seems to be an especially big problem for Australian citizens, who fly the airline a lot.

Any ideas what government agency AirAsia in India would have to answer to?

Thanks for any advice.

lokijuh

How did you pay for the booking? If credit card, thought about pursuing via credit card provider?

rje444

lokijuh,
Thank you for the advice, which would be normally be a good idea, except in this case AirAsia has strung us along for over a year since we paid, always saying the refund was almost ready to send us, but never sending it, and now it has been too long for the credit card company.

This is clearly AirAsia company policy. They keep making promises and stalling until most people give up, and then they keep the money.

What I need is to find out what regulatory agency in India can force them to live up to their legal obligations. Unless someone has another idea!

CO-PLAT

I was scheduled to fly them from HKT - BKK back during one of the BKK protests. Ended up having to take a 10-hour bus due to flight cancellation. It did take me about a year to get the refund.

ermen

wow! that's just terrible! just shows that you need to have a firm internal deadline, otherwise, just go the credit card route

does India have a small claim's tribunal? i would presumably go there (but not sure if they have jurisdiction given your airline counterparty could potentially be a Malaysian entity..)

percysmith

Ugghhh.

There is a 120 day limit to this - I charged back Scoot despite them promising me to give me vouchers precisely because the Visa Product & Service Rules manual says there's a 120-day limit to chargebacks for Reason Code 30 Services Not Provided chargebacks.

rje444

CO-PLAT,
That must have been terrible. But at least in that case AirAsia had a legitimate excuse for canceling your flight, although the wait you had to endure for a refund was unacceptable.

But even worse, in many cases AirAsia is offering routes they are not even legally allowed to fly, accepting payment, and then refusing to make a refund when these flights never happen! Or for a lack of profits!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-1...-route/6307922

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-2...onduct/6049054

rje444

ermen,
Yeah, I guess I was foolish for believing that AirAsia would actually honor their repeated promises to make a refund.

percysmith,
In retrospect I wish I'd been more cynical and done that too.

djjaguar64

If paid by credit card, the credit card company can do a chargeback for services not rendered.

rje444

djjaguar64,

Thanks but AirAsia India kept making promises for so long that my credit card company said I'd passed their time limit for chargebacks.

But I am appealing that decision and will report back here what happens.

JohnnyRockets

I see you post the exact same thing on 2 forums. You know this is Indian based carrier and should be asked there not here. Sir Richard Branson has investments in many airlines, none of his other investments should be under VS nor Other EU based airlines.

Anyway back to your issue. While the time limit is 120 days. Under some circumstances it can go beyond that and up to 540 days. I don't know exactly how but before you contact your card issuer make sure you research what falls into this and word your claims accordingly.

However as a lesson going forward, NEVER trust any merchant. You should always file a dispute within 120 days. (In your case it should be 120 days from the date you are aware of flight cancellation) I suggest you research more and see if you can pull the 540 day or try to start the 120 day count from original departure date (i.e. original date of expected service)

Please share your outcome with this as this should be useful for others too.

skywardhunter

To answer OP's original question, aviation in India is regulated and overseen by the DGCA. I can almost certainly assure you though that they will be of absolutely no help to you. I suspect you haven't dealt with an Indian government office before

rje444

JohnnyRockets,
I wrote on the post in the Indian Airlines forum that I also posted here because the parent company of AirAsia India is of course AirAsia, based in Malaysia, and they make the policies. So it seemed relevant here, too.

Especially relevant because it is being shown in a number of media articles that this is a companywide policy of all AirAsia airlines to deny even refunds which AirAsia puts in their contract as being authorized. But their CSRs deny this and pretend that the refund is being "worked on" So they stall and stall until the customer finally gives up. This has been documented on a large scale as having been done by AirAsia, AirAsia Indonesia and in my case, by AirAsia India.

This is an important thing for anyone to be aware of before deciding whether to choose AirAsia, don't you think?

But your point about never trusting a merchant and requesting a chargeback is a good one, and an action I now wish I'd taken. I was distracted by the steady stream of promises that it would soon be taken care of, but I won't fall for that again.

rje444

skywardhunter,
So I guess an Indian government agency is not the fastest route to a solution then!

After you identified the initials, I looked it up and discovered that:

"The Government of India is planning to replace the organization with a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), modeled on the lines of the American Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)"


Sounds like in its present state, DGCA stands for Doesn't Generally Control Aviation

lokijuh

FT crossposting rules aside, which are usually rigorously enforced, there is a big difference between the Virgin stable and Air Asia. Air Asia is the overarching brand with different entities under various ownership structures. If I want to book AK or FD or I5 or QZ (Malaysia, Thailand, India, Indonesia Air Asia's respectively), I go to airasia.com. Although granted, there are different T&C for each carrier.

Whereas the Virgin stable may share a brand and pay Richard Branson a licensing fee, you book each airline on their own independent website and their products are almost completely independent (other than through agreements that are typical of many different airlines - whether or not they share a master brand).