Summary: Travel agent “Tickets to India”, Ticketstoindia.co.uk a division of Acetrip Ltd, has breach the contract by misrepresenting the facts and tried to mislead the customer by changing the FARE RULES terms after selling the ticket and later claiming to the customer it were there before.
Details:
Ticket holder no: 098 5117349963 – H8T2F booked his return ticket with ticketstoindia.co.uk on the 31st Dec 2017 from London to Delhi and needed to prepone his 1st departure journey because of sudden ill health of his mother.
The customer after reaching India informed and confirmed to Air India customer support more than 50 hours before, well in advance that he can’t use his scheduled 7th Jan London to Delhi flight since he has already flown on the 3rd Jan and he will use his return ticket on 25th Jan as scheduled, however, Air India cancelled his return ticket stating it in not permitted as per their policy.
But point is TicketstoIndia fails to mention such important clause in FARE RULES and also in IMPORTANT NOTES section or in the E Ticket at the point of selling ticket that,
Nothing is mentioned in below image of original FARE RULES that if you miss your departure flight for any reason, you would not be allowed to board the return flight with Air India even though you have paid for return journey? which means customer lose whole ticket money!
NOTE: In the ORIGINAL image ticketstoindia FARE Rules above, this term is not mentioned however, later Ticketstoindia dishonestly changed the FARE RULES term in screenshot below.
When issue was raised with the TicketstoIndia customer support team to resolve the issue they dishonestly changed the FARE RULES by adding (If you no show for the flight due to any reason than all other sectors of your tickets will be cancelled. For example if the ticket is LON to DEL to LON and if you no show for LON to DEL flight your DEL to LON flight will be cancelled by the airline and there will be no refund and you cannot use that ticket.) and try to mislead customer by claiming that it was there before and also mentioned it on TrustPilot in response to customer complaint.
Similarly TicketstoIndia changed the FARE RULES online by adding above mentioned lines. Screenshot below.
Should Ticketstoindia a division of Acetrip Ltd misrepresent the facts by changing the FARE RULES which is breach of contract on behalf of TicketstoIndia.co.uk
Ticketstoindia also fails to mention another important term both in FARE RULES and IMPORTANT NOTES section about exorbitant charges related to change in 1st departure journey where the change can cost almost the price of whole return ticket around $450?
Under consumer rights: If nothing related to your issue is included in the terms and or, the trader has changed the terms included (change in FARE RULES in this case), customer shall be able to hold the trader(in this case Ticketstoindia) in breach of contract.
Customer shall be able to seek redress from the trader for a breach of contract.
Ideally the customer shall complaint to trader first to resolve the issue (In this case 10 emails over 11 days were sent to trader but still customer couldn’t get a simple piece of information about REFUND/ BASE FARE/Taxes completely instead customer was threatened with legal aspect should trader name was published in public domain).
Since the trader in this case TicketstoIndia has acted dishonestly by changing FARE RULES and tried to mislead customer and not provided simple information despite 11 emails, customer have all the rights and option to refer this case to trading standard, complaint to CAA or to the financial ombudsmen or to the court, etc.