Complaint Details

Status	:	Closed
Complaint No	:	0015113/2014
Category	:	Travel
Date	:	27-02-2014
Subject Line	:	credit card charged - tickets not confirmed
Complainant	:	Jo Cuypers
Address	:	Ganesh Street - Mirraville building
Complainee	:	yatra.com
Address	:

Complaint Details
At 2pm I purchased 3 return tickets Chennai Paris on the yatra.com website , paid through a Belgian MasterCard.
The dropdown menu in the Yatra.com payment page clearly gave Belgium as an option, as well as MasterCard as a card choice.
The payment of nearly 1500 euro went off the card in a second after pushing the confirmation button.

AND THEN we got a message on the screen the tickets cannot be confirmed but the money is taken and will be refunded. Strangely somebody called me to confirm the names of the travellers, after some looking in the files he said indeed the money is to be refunded straight away and the tickets are not confirmed...but no money came back to the account twhen we checked online the statement!?!?!

I have talked with 15 people in Yatra.com company - of which 3 ( put the hook on the phone - , all giving me a different story, some said it would be refunded the same day, other talked about 24 hours, others said 3 days.
I have been literarily 7.5 hours on the phone trying to either get the money back on the card so we can purchase from another supplier, or get the tickets confirmed.

We went through the trouble of copying and emailing to Yatra.com the Mastercard, id cards, filling in authorization forms, sending them the card-contract with the bank and sending them the bank statements to show that the money was taken: because one of their helpdeskpeople said they can not take payments from belgian cards, another said they cannot take payments form MasterCard, but yet, it is given as an option on the Yatra.com payment page AND the money was taken from the account which we have shown them by emailing them the statement.

So meanwhile the tickets are getting more expensive every day, but the money has not been refunded, and thus we cannot purchase it with another traveler's agent at the same rate since they have our money (or it is pending somewhere between their and our bank!!!

Since this is clearly an error of their website and payment policies - which should clearly state that foreign cards are not accepted instead of taking the money and then holding it hostage for several days - i requested to Yatra, as a customer service after all of this, to hold the tickets at this rate until the money is refunded to our card and if we then can pay per bank transfer - since we really want to have the tickets at this rate.

But no...after 7.5 hours on the phone with myriads of your helpdeskpeople to find out what was the problem, Yatra does not consider that as an option.

So for us there is no choice to wait and hope the money is indeed refunded, and then pay for the meanwhile more expensive tickets.

Our money is gone from the credit card (the credit card is my brother's who is funding our travel to Belgium) and we cannot purchase other tickets until it is refunded.
Yatra sees no error in their behaviour and is not willing to do any commercial boon towards us, like holding the tickets until the money is refunded and we can arrange another payment option.

Their website payment page is no where indicating mastercard of foreign cards are not accepted - on the contrary, the money is taken from our account!

We would like to purchase these tickets at the same rate (117644rs) or otherwise get our money back asap so we can go ahead and purchase with another supplier before the prices rocket to the sky!

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