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Best laid plans..

What the dickens?  As I troll the internet to plan my upcoming adventure in the Indian sub-continent I am flummoxed by the reality of trying to book travel arrangements in stark contrast to the advertised ease of doing business enabled by the so called IT revolution (that has apparently revolved the country in to a new orbit).

I suspect the revolution went full circle (or 360 deg to the trigo minded) and not much changed except now my local telecom company found a call center in Ghaziabad with weirdos that accent their original name of Santosh to Steven and cannot answer any question in a meaningful manner.

Take the case of booking airline tickets for domestic travel.  After entrusting personal data to the gods behind the screen I was about to make the payment when I found that my US issued Visa was not acceptable to the vendor.  No explanation online - just a strange message indicating that transaction is unable to be processed (after momentarily showing a screen saying my payment has been processed).

Time to reach the call center for help.  No one answers the phone in India.  So I call a US number (what appears to be one anyway) which the site claims is answered 24 hours.  Really?  Apparently the airline figures that only Americans need to travel at any odd time and should therefore be provided with better service.  But wait - only if they are trying to make an international reservation.

I read between the lines and called anyway - call routed to Chennai - and answered by another clown that told me - really sir India call center will help you - they are open now -  but I told them I really need help with a domestic res and no one is able to answer why my card is declined. 

The answer - if the cost of ticket is in Indian Rupees then we don't take American plastic sir.

Eh?

What happened to global currency exchange et al?  No sir!  Put some other card from India sir!

What the suck?

Eventually I fumed and vented and did the needful - hey I needed to move on.

Rail ticketing is another joke.  More on that later.

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Comments

  1. RajendraJune 6, 2015 at 9:45 AM

    the more things change, the more they remain the same. This is news to me too-that an international card won't work. Try the domestic airline's website and see if they take it. Just might!

    ReplyDelete

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