Silchar youth ‘cheated’ over hotel booking with OYO Rooms

A youth of 2nd Link Road in Silchar has sought the intervention of the authorities of OYO Rooms in connection with an alleged “horrible experience” he had after booking a property of the hospitality company in Kolkata.

Oravel Stays Private Limited, trading as OYO, is the largest hospitality company in India, consisting mainly of budget hotels. Founded in 2013, the company has since grown to over five hundred cities in India, China, Malaysia, Nepal and the United Kingdom among others.

Speaking to Barak Bulletin on Friday, the youth Tamal Choudhury (26) said he had around 6:20 pm on Wednesday evening booked a room (single, air-conditioned room) at an OYO Rooms’ property (OYO 1622 – Hotel Balaji International, Guest House No. 2, Airport Gate, Gurudwara Lane, Jessore Road, Kolkata) from the site of Goibibo, which offered the best deal for the property. An amount of Rs. 655 was deducted from his bank account regarding the booking, he said.

Thereafter, he went to the property around 7 pm. However, to his utter surprise, he was not permitted to check in to the room despite valid booking, he alleged.

He said the property staff told him that it was not possible to provide him the room at that price to which he questioned how could they do that as he had booked the room and paid the money as shown in the website and showed them the booking confirmation details. They (property staff) asked him to call up the customer care of OYO Rooms regarding the issue following which he contacted the customer care, explained everything and registered a complaint, Tamal said.

The customer care official apologised to him for the inconvenience and said he would be contacted in this regard, and also assured that the amount deducted from his account would be refunded, Tamal said.

Eventually, Tamal went out from the property and went to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose airport as he had a flight to Silchar on Thursday morning. He phoned the customer care again after an hour. This time, another official received the call after which Tamal inquired about his matter. The official told him that there was no complaint registered and started giving excuses and deliberately kept the phone on hold when he was telling him about the matter, Tamal alleged.

The official told him to contact the customer care of Goibibo as the booking was done through that site. Thereafter, Tamal phoned the customer care of Goibibo a number of times, but the calls went unanswered, he said.

He mentioned that he had received messages and e-mails from OYO Rooms and Goibibo though he was not even allowed to stay at the property. The messages said — “Are you enjoying at OYO…”, “Hope you enjoyed your stay…” and all.

He said the amount, which was deducted from his account, has not been refunded till now. “I am thinking to lodge a complaint with the police. The matter should come to light,” he said.

Interestingly, reviews on OYO Rooms on Google reveals many such incidents have taken place in the past few years. A large number of people have posted their reviews on the hospitality company’s page and shared their bad experiences.

An employee of OYO Rooms from Guwahati — Sunny Roy told Barak Bulletin that the complete fault was of Goibibo. “Goibibo, MakeMyTrip are aggregators which rent OYO rooms and list the same at lower prices for their popularity,” he claimed.

He said it is always better to go for “pay at hotel” option while booking hotels online. Besides, he said it is too much to expect to get an air-conditioned room at Rs. 600 or so near an airport.