How Indigo went from my favorite airlines to never again

If you have ever read this blog, you would have seen me giving 5 stars to Indigo airlines for exceptional on-time performance and great staff, unfortunately since then its been downhill with bad experiences all the way. The staff in more than 1 instance have been rude, un-supportive and outright rigid. I will recite a few instances here on why I will probably never fly Indigo airlines again. Keep in mind, in each instance I am in touch with an actual person and have complained to Indigo. I always believe in helping companies improve, but then again some companies simply don’t care. To give credit where its due, I have always found their cabin staff to be top notch and polite.

Instance 1 (The case of time changes , again and again) – I had booked my tickets a long time in advance, then Indigo airlines changed the time without telling me. Ofcourse the new time didnt suit me, so I got the tickets changed. Now again the new time was changed however this time I was left hanging without any support, the time change put my plans at the destination in a soup.

This was the first sign of red tapism and fine print being shoved in my face. I was told since the time of the flight was not changed by more than 2 hours, I must pay for the change. This was the weekend before Diwali/Holi I think, so the fare difference was outrageous. So I had no option but to swallow Indigo’s change in time and make alternate arrangements at the destination. The call center staff was totally unsupportive and refused to transfer my call to a supervisor.

Instance 2 and 3 (Rude Airport Staff) –

#2 I am not sure if this problem is limited to Indigo only, but their airport staff is extremely rude. On 1 instance there was a huge line at the checkin counter for a Monday morning flight. I asked an Indigo lady to help me checkin as the window would close in around 10 mins for the flight, she told me to stand in line rudely. Sure enough, 5 minutes left and no change in line. I decided to plead to people who were nice enough to let me through and I checked in just in time. Wrote an email to Indigo and all they did was gave me an assurance matter would be taken up. Next time I flew, I saw the same lady, still rudely herding people.

#3 Around 35 minutes to scheduled takeoff I get a call on my cellphone informing me that I was the ‘last’ passenger on the flight. Which would have been fine if I had not seen 4 other people just in front of me at the gate.

Then the lady goes onto ask my location, I let her know I am in the terminal and heading to the gate, she goes onto be a wise guy and tells me the terminal is very big (like I didnt know) and she wants to know my specific location. Upon telling her she rudely tells me she is going to close the door in 1 minute and disconnects the call. Being on time is a wonderful thing indeed, but you know whats more wonderful, being courteous to passengers. Upon boarding the bus with more passengers I could see more people seemed agitated with the lady’s behaviour. When I told the lady I would be complaining against her, she totally ignored me. Obviously customer satisfaction and customer service are secondary to meeting that target of closing the gate.

Instance 4 and the last straw (Damaged Luggage)  – Here first and foremost I would like to add that I didnt complain at the airport for 2 reasons, firstly I didnt notice the damage to my bag there and secondly I was not aware of any rule which mandated me to do the same. From the email exchange with Indigo, apparently there is a terms of carriage which says I am not to be helped because I didnt complain. Anyway the long and short of the matter is , I was travelling very heavy and paid a huge amount of money for my luggage, that didnt dissuade the Indigo staff from breaking one of my suitcases. Upon emailing them, the same canned response that their airport team has been notified. When  I asked them to help repair the suitcase, they again hid behind fine print and told me that they cannot compensate me due to the terms of carriage. Heights of red tapism again. I told them that private companies do stuff for customer satisfaction and more so those in hospitality sector, but apparently not this one. I was told they cannot go against policy for me. Yeah right. My new policy is to never fly Indigo from now on.

Indigo Baggage Damaged
Baggage damaged by Indigo on HYD-DEL sector.

Ebay.in – a bunch of morons in the customer help desk

In the US, eBay evokes strong feeling on resentment in a certain portion of the seller community. However, in a bit to further diversify its incompetence into emerging markets like India, eBay launched eBay.in.

The story goes as follows. EBay India has an option for allowing sellers to specify different shipping charges for local and national delivery. Fair enough, local couriers are generally cheaper. But the issue is that their site incorrectly charges shipping for all items even though the shipping is “free” according to eBay. The customer service representatives (I got some Harshad R.) are complete morons – their answer to every question is “Ask the seller”. So I asked, if eBay is displaying free shipping for an item, and is charging shipping in the very last step, isn’t this a problem with their system? Their answer – ask the seller.

The poor seller already communicated to me that this is outside his hands and eBay should be the one fixing this issue and that he is helpless due to their incompetence.