Air India Review
Our flight was originally supposed to be direct from JFK to BOM on Tuesday, Feb 24. However, there is a major snow storm that caused our airline to cancel our incoming flight into JFK the 2 days in advance of our planned travel. Therefore, we had no way into JFK, and wanted to adjust our itinerary to avoid the massive storm that likely would have delayed or cancelled our JFK to BOM flight.
So we spent nearly an hour on the phone to rebook our flight yesterday, allowing us to fly out of Chicago direct to New Delhi instead. The representative placed us on hold for extended periods with no feedback, then eventually told us we would need to pay an additional $1920 USD, but he couldn’t make the payment link work. Then, the representative made a mistake and sent us a payment link for 1920 INR, which we paid, thinking it was a language barrier issue with his English.
Then, Air India called us several times overnight while we were asleep, so we called back when we woke up as we were on US central time. At 9:15am CT, I spoke to an Air India representative who confirmed the payment was received successfully the night prior and confirmed that the ticket was issued. We then proceeded to successfully check in for the flight, and had tickets issued this morning.
Then, while in transit to the airport to make our way to Chicago in advance of this flight, I was unavailable to answer the phone for less than 4 hours, during which the Air India team called and left several voicemails and sent us a new payment link for $1920 USD. Once I got through security at the airport, I was already on the phone again with the Air India team before the payment link even expired, (the payment link email states that we have 2 hours to make the payment), and by thy point, our itinerary had already been cancelled and our seats were sold, leaving no business class seats on that flight. There were no other equivalent flight options until 2 days later, for which they claimed the cost would increase the total cost of the flight to more than double what I paid for the original flight (and was also $3000 USD) more than they were charging for the same flight two days prior. At this point, I cancelled the entire reservation as Air India is clearly not an airline that deserves my business or money, nor anyone else’s.
In summary, this morning at 9:15am Central time, we had checked in for our flight and had issued tickets in our possession, and I confirmed this both via the phone with an Air India representative and confirmed it via web. By 1:15pm Central time, due to multiple errors made by the Air India team and my inability to answer the phone/ call back for a period of LESS THAN 4 HOURS, our business class reservation was cancelled and our seats were sold, leaving us stranded with no options. Beyond this, a refund was not automatically processed, and I had to specifically request this.
This is the most unprofessional and unacceptable treatment of business class customers I’ve ever experienced. The Air India team’s incompetency and unwillingness to treat high paying customers with the courtesy and respect to acknowledge their mistakes and offer reasonable solutions to fix those mistakes will ensure that I will never even consider flying Air India in the future. I’ll also ensure to take every opportunity to inform anyone and everyone who will listen about this experience to ensure they never consider Air India either. This was absolutely unacceptable, no company should be permitted to operate business this way. I’m absolutely disgusted and you should be ashamed of yourselves for allowing this poor conduct within your business. I sincerely hope you go out of business quickly.
