Geeks shall inherit the earth

Can you imagine this happening? But I guess we are OK with that :-)

ClearTrip - 4k and an explanation

I'm Back from Leh!!

First I'm very pleased that my feedback and sidu's post was well received at cleartrip.com and as a result half of the cancellation charges of 4000/- was returned by cleartrip.

As mentioned in my previous post, this is a detailed account of how my flight tickets got canceled. The sudden shock of accidentally canceling the tickets , made me realize the procedure had severe usability issues.

ClearTrip's account
They were quite adamant in saying that it was NOT a single-step cancellation process. Technically, they were correct. It is a two step process and I will attach images to show more details.


What I Say...
Although my original post was misleading about a single step cancellation policy, I still think the current 2 step process is very misleading.

My reasons
1. Customer's are confused about "Make Cancellations". Clicking this from the screen in image2 cancels the booking. I'm a shining example of this mishap.
2. Cancellation charges are not displayed anywhere through the process. ClearTrip will argue that cancellation "rules" are available, but I could not care less. As a customer I need to know the exact cancellation amount.

Closure!
I'm quite happy to get the 4k from cleartrip, instead of shouting and giving up, I worked closely with cleartrip to identify the issues. The guys at cleartrip were very patient while listening to my problems. I would take half the blame for being hasty in browsing around my itinerary and cleartrip has agreed to bear half my costs for any misunderstanding on their website. This is a good closure.

Hopefully this post clears the ambiguity on this episode.

Good News from cleartrip.com

Looks like my feedback had been taken into consideration after posts from me and Sidu. A cleartrip.com representative has told me that cleartrip.com is willing to bear half the cancellation charges. This saves me 4000/-. I will post more details about this after my vacation.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for my vacation to Ladakh. Unfortunately I had to cut short my vacation because my plans went haywire after this "cancellation episode".

I'm biking between Leh - Kargil

My Itinerary

Bangalore - Delhi Flight
Delhi - Leh Flight
Leh - Kargil Thunderbird
Leh - Delhi Flight
Delhi - Hyd Flight

More details and pics when I survive :-)

ClearTrip.com: Good communication channel

My feedback has been accepted and I'm now in communication with one of the founders of the website. He seems serious about solving this bug or oversight in their website. I'm satisfied with their feedback mechanism.

There is a feedback link called "Tell us what you think", the top right corner in the image. Unlike other e-commerce websites this works very well.

Now I don't know if this email exchanges will help me save the 8000/- cancellation charges. At the least future customers won't have to face the same problem. Lets see what happens.

Before I planned my vacation, I needed a good website for Airline bookings. Most of my colleagues suggested cleartrip.com. It was initially easy to use and relatively faster. ClearTrip.com also appears to have the best deals.

However, this cancellation incident has changed my entire perception. Anything less of an actual compensation or re-booking will not bring me back to cleartrip.com. In fact, I'm using their website as a search engine to find the lowest fares and then going to the airline websites to book my ticket.

For example:- I require a booking for Delhi-Leh for next week and cleartrip.com shows that Air Deccan flight is the cheapest. So i'm going to book my ticket on AirDeccan website and the cost actually is 50/- more compared to cleartrip. But I would not want to take a risk.

On a side note, Jet airways has a shitty cancellation policy. The customer loses the entire basic fare in case of JetLite and 50% of basic fare for Jet Airways. AirDeccan cancellation policy is much better. Deccan also has an insurance option which could be very useful when you need your dates of travel to be flexible.

Lesson learnt : Read the cancellation details properly before you choose an airlines in India.

ClearTrip.com: Clearly You are Taken for a Trip

Here's what happened. I was looking at my itinerary and accidentally clicked cancel at the top of the page.

And guess what: the ticket actually got canceled without a confirmation, that was being really quick, not to mention helpful, I just lost 8K. I planned this booking with a friend from the US and he has almost fainted when the news was told to him.

I have done many bookings and in fact spent 60k in 2007 on flight travel alone. So I have booked on many websites. But this takes the cake.


Interestingly here's a quick email response (just like the quick cancellation), not to mention polite from one of the tech support guys. Lets see if the feedback was useful.

Hi,

I noticed you recently left us some feedback:

"Here is what my colleague thinks http://blog.sidu.in/2008/05/cleartripcom-so-usable-you-lose-all.html Please understand that "simplicity" does not mean "stupidity""

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I had already left a comment on your colleague's blog requesting his help for the details of what happened. There is no link on our site that is capable of immediately canceling a booking.

If you can help us in finding out the details, it will help us in fixing the issue. Would appreciate any help from you or your colleague on the details.

thanks
<>
http://www.cleartrip.com/hotels Choose from over 3000 Hotels in India

Flickr helps you blog

back_home2
Originally uploaded by imkeshav

Aroj was showing me this cool feature with Flickr. You click on photo in your Flickr account and post a blog with this cool feature. It's very easy and intuitive.

But I have no idea, How it could pick my two blogs from Blogger. So you have to select your blog sites during the setup at Flickr and interestingly Flickr searched and picked my Google blogger accounts. Nice!

Cool Tools: Launchy and ZapGrab

Get Launchy here



With a shortcut like Alt+F2, users can launch applications, open files, open websites, google for things and even do math. I love doing the simple math using the Launchy.

Thanks to Srushti aka superman for forcing me to use this tool. He is one of the firefox enforcers, these thoughtworkers go around our bangalore office, spying for anyone using Internet Explorer and then convince(read:threaten) people to convert to firefox! After joining ThoughtWorks, I've used IE only if an app does not support firefox and thats very rare.

For me it's the best cool tool. In fact, I like it so much that for the first time ever, I'm making a donation to a free tool (It's just $5). This was done while creating this post. Thats cool!

Check out Josh's website for Tips to use the launchy.


Get zapgrab here

Grab this tool ASAP! It's very handy and easy to use. A perfect tool for a tester to take screenshots of bugs. Especially if a part of the screen has to be captured.

From their ReadMe

How to capture the screen with ZapGrab

1- Press the button "Grab" (to capture)
2- Select the part of the screen you want to capture
3- Paste (ctrl+V) the screen captured in a presentation Powerpoint, a Word file,
or whatever document.

Some of the screens on this blog were captured with this.