22 March, 2007

Air Deccan incompetence, and courtship at Mt Abu

Air Deccan’s getting much attention from CNN-IBN, and rightly so: their disregard for customers has been so blatant for so long that something had to give. Well, Gautam John points me, via email, to an excellent comments thread of people relating their experiences with Air Deccan. One of them, in two parts, by a gentleman named Saurabh Chauhan, is particularly hilarious, and I carry it below the fold.

I was in India earlier this year in January and had to take a couple of dosmestic flights from Bangalore to Delhi and back. About two hours before the check-in time I received an sms telling me that the flight had been delayed by an hour and fifty minutes.

Mindful of my connecting train from delhi later that eveing I called the airline call center which was less useful than inzamam haq in an oxbridge debate team. It suffices to say that the only human contact I had was eventually lost with the guy on the other side of the line disappearing into the abyss of brimstone and fire, where air deccan store all their flight information, sadly the byzantine guards of the gates of said abyss spotted him leaving with helpful information and made an example of him by imapaling him with woodden spoon replicas of the air deccan logo.

It got worse as I got to the airport. The staff behind the counter were inept, clueless and buried in their computers. Being the annoying prat that i am, I decided to be the screaming customer, this did got their attention. I insisted that they give me a reasons for this delay or book me on another flight which would get me to delhi this evening or directly to jodhpur, my eventual destination. vanisihing into their computers the “sir, please one minutes” were accompanied by copius amounts of flop sweat as I stood at the window screaming at regular intevals, now just out of sheer frustration. During my hour and a half long stay at the window there were many who came, some pleading their cases, who were promptly dismissed as spineless, the ones who were aggressive were listened to but not once satisfied by the minions behind the counter.

While all this was going on my friend was enquiring at other airline counters for flights leaving for delhi earlier that evening and she managed to find an Indian Airlines flight which would have cost about a 1000rs more than what I was paying for Deccan. Prudently I decided to ask the person behind the counter what part of my ticket would be refunded to me. He looked at my ticket and promptly responded “you will get a full refund sir!”. I rebooked on Indian Airlines and told deccan to proceed with the cancellation.

The chaos that is the Air Deccan counter had now changed the computer people (what are they called, booking executives?!)and this new chappie was more than eager to cancel my ticket, he did vanish into the vault previously spoken of on two occassions and I was worried as to his woodded spoon status. But he was a little scrapper and did make it back, slightly dishevelled but in one poorly dressed piece.

He wrote the refund amount on my ticket and handed it back to me. Informing me that since my flight had only been delayed by an hour and fifty minutes and not the required two which warranted a complete refund, I would only be returned 900 Rs per ticket.

Short-tempered, tired, hungry and running against time, this infuriated me. I informed the dungeon-dodger that his “mate” had just informed me that I would get a full refund on my ticket and on that assurance I had proceeded to book a fresh ticket on another airline. When faced with this accusation the dodger did what he was so unbelievably good at, he slipped into denial. Not only did he deny anyone saying such a thing, he denied such a colleague ever having existed, thus falsifying the 2weeks of beautiful courtship his parents had shared at mt.abu before his sudden an untimely birth.

I reasoned with him and 5 other people at the airport but none of them seem to understand the principle of vicarious liability, “you are your company”.

In my expereince Air Deccan is an awful excuse for an airline. Their customer service is appalling. Their delays are reminiscent of doordarshan’s “rukavat ke liye khed hai” signs and they still have a long way to catch up to even the likes of Indian Airlines, an airline whose seat came sans armrest and with the luminous stentch of baby urine.

Everybody knows just how bad Air Deccan is, and still their flights are overbooked. That is not just because of their low fares, because all the domestic airlines seem to be filling their seats pretty easily. When it comes to flying in India, it would seem that supply just can’t keep pace with demand. In such a market, then, it’ll be surprising if Air Deccan mends its ways. Companies work towards efficiency when their bottomline is threatened, and it doesn’t appear that Air Deccan will be worried about losing customers in a seller’s market. When the market evolves, though, the damage done to their brand now may come back to hurt them.