Booking mistake charged fees illegitimately
UPDATE: The airline never responded but my bank managed to get the fees reversed after a lengthy process. IF the airline responds and reverses the fee I will report back but it's too bad that there are such big hassles over this! In brief, due to an error on the part of the booking agent, I was required to pay cancellation fees to cancel the illegitimate booking, and furthermore, this confusion took an hour by phone to resolve by phone and in the end it wasn't resolved at all. here's the longer story: The website was not working properly, so after many efforts to put through the payment, I got a call center number on the Indigo website (from the bot). They made the booking over the phone, but they made a mistake regarding both my last name and my email address. I only knew there was a reservation number and booking later via WhatsApp confirmation but due to the incorrect name and email, otherwise I would have missed it. So, I paid for a ticket with the incorrect information. This would be a useless ticket not matching my passport name. I called and they offered no remedy. They suggested I send my passport copy to verify my name via text app. This is not a professional solution. Far easier just to cancel the ticket and rebook with the correct information. They couldn't do that. They told me I could cancel but only with a fee, approximately 4,000 rupees, even though this was their mistake. It was an international flight, and I had a flexible fare, and I called within 12 hours of booking the ticket (usually there's a 24 hour grace period). But no, after 40 minutes of trying to understand the issue, they just couldn't reverse the fees. I'm annoyed I'm charged US $44 in fees, or more, because of their mistake and what's worse, they couldn't understand the problem, and kept me on the phone 40 minutes (first to make the booking, which was botched) and then an additional 40 minutes to try to figure out the problem, but each time, there was no solution, and my complaint was met with suspicion and confusion. This airline handles many Indian areas for flying, so it's hard to avoid. But in the future if there's a good alternative, I'll choose the alternative. If an airline can't handle a simple booking error in fairness to the customer, what else is problematic with the airline company? It's a red flag that the company has misplaced priorities. To have to battle for an hour and finally lose fees over their mistake? By contrast, when I had an issue recently with Turkish airlines, I was on the phone for 10 minutes and it got resolved immediately.