Complaint Details

Status	:	Closed
Complaint No	:	0053469/2015
Category	:	Travel
Date	:	12-09-2015
Subject Line	:	SpiceJet - Unethical practices on Online Portal
Complainant	:	Manish Bajaj
Address	:	110 Varuna My Home Navadweepa Apts Madhapur
Complainee	:	SpiceJet
Address	:

Complaint Details
Name of Airlines - SpiceJet
Flight No - SG 422
PNR # N433WI
Travel from Hyderabad to Mumbai
Date of Travel - 7 Nov 2015
Tikcet booked on SpiceJet online portal
Customer call center - Called on 12 Sept 2015. Unwilling to register complaint - saying this is customer's fault, "we can design the website as we like. You need to ensure that you are not paying extra."

SpiceJet on its online booking portal does a bunch of almost unethical things to get extra money from naive customers -
* Spice Assurance and TATA AIG insurance automatically added to each passenger booking. Thus you have to unselect for each passenger and thus creates ways to get money for customers you are not as careful
* You have to select an option to not get emails from Spice jet (ie you are automatically added to their mailing list). I think customers should have the option to be add themselves to the list rather than have them be added by default. This is again sneaking up customer consent without really asking them
* Prices for seat allotment - it is not mentioned clearly that this is an optional step. "skip to continue" is in very small font
* At the end before payment, you dont have an easy way to unselect the add-ons that might have gotten added by default because of the design of the booking form. Thus, consumer has to go through the entire booking process once again to unselect the extra charges for extra services added by default.
I would strong urge SpiceJet and other airlines to stop these "by default consent" options on their websites. As website configurations keep changing, it is very difficult for consumers to detect these micro frauds and "forced assumption of consent" for extra charges or extra spam. This is highly unethical. Spice Jet management - I understand there are revenue pressures, please stop being cheats.

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