Travelling is a sure way of gaining new experience. Some of that experience moves one enough to write about. But in the era of facebook, where vacation pictures substitute very often for the proverbial "thousand words", much is left unsaid. One cannot embellish the presentation any more than what OPPO would have already done!
Then again, travelling give us some experience that cannot be put to picture. Most of this is the experience in dealing with our 'service providers'. For a person less literarily inclined, the thoughts are expressed in choicest swear words. Not that the literarily inclined do not swear. However, they also let their vexation take form of prose, as yours truly is proceeding to do forthwith.
So, I'll start with the mildly amusing irritants, and graduate slowly. This one happened when I was taking a flight out of Lucknow. For some curious reasons, the better eating options at the Departure terminal of CCSIA Lucknow are located on the outside of the "secure zone", and thus, are more often missed by hurried passengers who try to get their security check done as quick as possible. It so transpired that, on that day, some of the files of an office located near the airport needed action urgently, and so, in view of my expected absence for the coming few days, I had consented to see them at the Airport. Thus I was stuck in the non secure area, waiting for their arrival, and, having missed my lunch, ventured to this cute looking KFC, and ordered an obvious sounding "Cheesy Crunch" burger. I admired the business like attitude of the menu namer - all the names were obvious. I hate those highbrow restaurants who use names like "potato stuffed Indian flat bread toasted golden in clarified butter served with mint seasoning" to disguise the plain old aloo paratha. I got the order and settled to enjoy my burger in solitude. However, I was troubled by a very pertinent question - where the f*** was the cheese? I shared my trouble with the guy manning the counter. He said - Sir, you did not order the extra cheese slice! To which, I quoth, Kind Sir, why is it called a "Cheesy" Crunch burger? Ahh, his eyes lit up, Sir, the sauce is flavoured with cheese! How profound! I was thankful it did not turn into the whole "Sir, have you ever seen Kashmir in a Kashmiri Pulao" debate. Thus enlightened, I savoured each bite for long, trying to find the cheese with the self doubt laced determination of a fresh religious convert.
Then, there are cases where one finds oneself behind the market learning curve. Since the days one has been travelling, stay in any decent hotel (that includes all places of stay, except for those seedy ones in Paharganj in Delhi) meant that it included the "breakfast buffet" in the morning. It is something almost all middle class travellers know, (and most of us capitalize upon with full vengeance.) However, despite everything Alia and Ranvir tell you, Make My Trip, without giving any obvious warning to the effect, put one on a fairly expensive deal, with no breakfast! This NO MEAL thing popped quite prominently on the final booking papers. Along with "NON REFUNDABLE"! Somehow, both these things were not so obvious before I pressed that Pay button to seal this Unbreakable Covenant.
Something similar happened with one of the flight bookings on this same very trip! (That one trip was really fraught.) So it was the first time I deigned to book Spicejet, the chief reason being it was the only carrier flying to our destination directly. So, I completed the booking, and was putting away the browser tabs, when all of a sudden, my phone pinged. 'Dear Customer, your fare is Hand Baggage only. You are not allowed to bring on any check in luggage'. Or something similar. Again, this was not something they had shown prominently before I paid. Being behind the learning curve, I did not even know about the existence of such packages! If discounted "hands only" packages were available, then I, who normally travelled with just a light back pack, had been apparently losing money paying for "check-in" packages all these days! Ironically, on a personal family trip with a 2 month old baby and the associated luggage, I was stuck with hands baggage only fare. I tried browsing through all the 'upgrade' options there on the website. They had a whole spectrum of offerings, for the appropriate (and wholly inappropriate) fees - sandwiches, leg room, priority boarding, a lap dance with a "happy ending" (we wish!), but no upgrade to check-in option. I called the helpline. I was told that we can check-in luggage by paying a princely sum of ₹400! So that was it. For the expected gain of an amount equivalent to one apiece of their sandwich and coffee, they had performed this bait and switch on us. And they did intend to gain on it, as I was bombarded with daily SMS, all telling me they I won't be able to check-in luggage. It was the way the Income Tax people bombard you with SMS in the week preceding 31st July. I panicked and, over the week, contacted their landline twice just to confirm that I'd be allowed to check-in luggage at the counter! I was allowed, in the end, after shelling out the aforesaid promised 400. Was it really worth a week of a customer's panic for Spicejet?
Airlines are in a really cutthroat business, and they have to earn every penny they can. Of course, not all of them can be like my favourite carrier - Air India. You don't have to pay for your legroom - AI rows end around 25, while other airline rows go on till 32 to 36. You don't have to pay 300 bucks for a cold sandwich - all meals are included. Plus, in the back of the aircraft, almost all seats can be "chosen", free of cost. Their fare is also reasonably within the range of our "low cost carriers". However, some may object to the use, as a benchmark, of a public subsidized carrier, which has often fallen in red, and which no investor is willing to touch with a barge pole. Then again, you have a functioning, profiting and expanding example of Vistara, who seem to be able to do their business without short changing their customers. Recently Vistara was also seen offering a super cheap "meals free" option, which worked out some 300 rupees cheaper than the regular economy class. However, they were forthright about it - the payment option clearly showed all three options in parallel - super saver, economy and flexi - and the difference between them was clearly demarcated. It did leave the Incremental Financial Analyst in me perplexed. Since Vistara gives the meal option as a default option, with the supersaver being basically an opt out, wouldn't a passenger opting for this option lead to net revenue loss? For, to be truthful, the economy class complimentary meal does not cost the airlines as much as the ticket fare discount of 300 rupees.
Anyway, whatever 'honorable' airlines like Vistara do, they do it with full disclosure. On the other hand, I recently had an airline service experience which needs an opening joke of its own. This was one of the first juvenile "non-veg" joke we heard back in our early teens. Two Mechanical Engineering students, both friends, as well as rivals, decided on their graduation, to meet up again after 5 years, to see how successful they have been in life. On the appointed day, after 5 years, in front of a jury of common friends, the first guy arrived in a really long long limousine. When the applause died, the friends asked the mantra behind his success. He said that being the horny mechanical engineer that he was, he had devised a machine, which had to be fed one rupee coin, along with one's d*ck, and for that it would provide, uhhm, "relief" to the person. (Think of a vending machine, which vends not goods, but autoerotic service.) What an idea, sirjee! Obviously, the other guy was not coming because there was no way he could top it. Until he actually arrived - in his personal VTOL jet plane! Everyone, including the first guy, bowed to the master, and sought his story. Well, he said, being a horny mechanical engineer, he had devised a machine, which had to be fed one rupee coin, and for that it would provide "relief" to the person. The listeners exclaimed - this is exactly what the first guy did. Ahhh, true, he said, but there is a catch - my machine started when you put in a rupee, but it let you "withdraw" only when you put in a hundred rupees!
I had a similar experience performing a "web check-in" on Indigo. Whenever I travel without any check-in luggage, which seems to be almost always, except for the time I actually book a no check in fare, I use the facility of web check-in. It allow one to avoid the queue at the check-in counter, and that is mighty useful when one is running late. This occasion had the potential of being a running-late situation, and hence doing the web check-in was essential. However, when I tried, I was sent to a "choose seat" page. Just that I found that all the seats were paid, even the middle seats in the tail section. Now I was in no mood to pay extra for those. Infact for a 40 minute flight I was not willing to pay anything extra. So I chose to skip the option of seat and to proceed further. However, like the Super Mario world 8-4, it redirected me to the same pages and menus again. Worse part was, I received a "booking modified" email, and my booking page was not opening in a separate tab too. So I called up the call centre. He told me that I must choose a seat. I told that there is no free of cost seat. I do not want to choose any seat, so the airline should let me have any seat, howsoever badly placed. He replied that there is no free seat! I asked if someone, who had a valid booking and was checking in at their counter was unwilling to pay more, would he be made to fly standing, a-la Delhi Metro? Obviously the call centre guy did not have answers to such managerial decision questions. So, being the guy with his d*ck caught in the machine, I dutifully coughed up the money for a cheap seat. However, it still remained stuck! So I made one more payment for the same seat! And it still remained stuck! So I had to call the call centre guy once more. Luckily, for me, despite all the bad things I said to him for the delinquent behaviour of his employer, he stayed calm, and completed my web check-in remotely, bless him! Thus, only after taking an ample sacrifice did the system let me be. Well, it was not all bad news here. Since I had paid twice for the cheaper seat, I was moved to a better window seat - and when, next day, a copassenger with an ingratiating smile tried to coax me into exchanging my window seat (which is the "lower berth" of airlines industry) with his middle seat (which equates to the train middle berth!), I politely refused - citing my "extra payments" done for the seat. I actually dared him to match my contribution, if not better it. I needn't. On hearing about the extra payment, he quietly settled into his middle seat like a tranquilized gorilla. If only Indian Railways could differentially charge its berths, with a premium on lower berths, it could cure all the aches and sores middle aged uncle and aunties develop when they spot someone younger than them in occupation of a lower berth.
Why am I writing all this? Some might opine that being a literate member of the society, I should read the fine print finely. The fact remains that I am not inclined to peruse those online terms and conditions page as thoroughly as I would read my official files. Legally, Court rulings do tend to favour a consumer, especially when he is practically forced to sign up to a very long pre-drafted contract. The least that is expected is that the other party notifies the consumer of any deviation from the standard practice. Contract, being a case of a private legislation, is not an absolute Commandment, and answers to judicial review on such grounds. However, that would take too much effort, for essentially not much pecuniary redress. Ranting about it, however, does give one closure. Somewhat similar to the way many persons, as a part of a much celebrated movement recently, chose to air their grievances on the social media, instead of seeking the legal remedy. (I won't name the movement, lest I be labelled gender insensitive.) However, it remains a serious irritant, and the companies are competing amongst themselves to find even more and more outrageous methods to pinch pennies. I hope enough people notice, and get riled by, these antics, so that this madness stops, without actual lawsuits. Or, I fear, someday, when one orders a Cheesy Crunch, one may be expected to savour the cheese wafting in the kitchen aroma, and to imagine the bun in the lush wheat fields outside.
