(This story appears in the 17 January, 2020 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Our experience with oyo was the worst. We booked a property in Carambolim, Goa, a month before our trip, for 6 people. A week before trip our booking was cancelled. We called their customer care within 2 mins to enquire about the same but the villa was booked by someone else by then. We called their customer care team a lot of times. During this period we were kept on hold for 1hour approximately, each time we called. Once my call was connected to another customer after waiting for 45mins. We called them at least 20 times. After that their executive agreed that our booking was cancelled due to their technical error. Before that they were adamant that it was our fault. We tried to negotiate with them for the same property but they did not help us at all with it. They gave us about 3 other options and we had to book one of those as there was no place available by that time. When we reached the place we had to wait for 45 mins outside the property for document verification. We had to send ID proofs to oyo team and then they gave us a code to enter the property. This could have been done before we reached there. This oyo property was in provorim, Goa, which was an isolated place where we could not get any vehicle to travel. The nearest beach was calangute which was 12km away from our place. We spent about 2500 bucks each time we got out of the villa, for cab service. We couldn’t even walk to any nearby place as there were at least 20-25 dogs which attacked us anytime we got out. This villa was had pest problems. There were cockroaches, frogs and insects in the washroom. There was no caretaker with whom we could solve the issues. On the 2nd day, we ran out of water and we had to call oyo team at 11:30 pm. Our whole trip was ruined because of this. Each time we called oyo team, they had nothing else to say besides sorry.
on Jan 8, 2020