Failed Transaction with MakeMyTrip (MMT)

asingh

Staff member
Super Mod
Guys...

Am kind of screwed over.

I was booking tickets (air) with MKT and as soon as I hit SUBMIT on the payment gateway (CITI BANK) the lights went. My CC was hit INR 48321. Now I called up MKT, they cannot see this money, and are asking for a statement from the bank. The bank is saying, till MKT does not claim it will not show up as a "statement". What the hell am I supposed to do. CITI BANK gave me some approval code, but I doubt the morons at MKT will acknowledge it, or understand what it means. Now I am worried, what if I book a second round of tickets (this time ClearTrip; cause last time MKT made me suffer in the same way); and after some days, MKT "sees" my money and issues me tickets from their portal. I will have to cancel from one portal. The charge would be around 10K, for cancellation. And prices are going North. If I raise a dispute with CITI BANK, can they stop MKT from getting the money (ie--claiming it); and issuing me tickets..? I am so irritated with MKT.

And the MKT, IVR is so f****** annoying too.
 
Guys...

Am kind of screwed over.

I was booking tickets (air) with MKT and as soon as I hit SUBMIT on the payment gateway (CITI BANK) the lights went. My CC was hit INR 48321. Now I called up MKT, they cannot see this money, and are asking for a statement from the bank. The bank is saying, till MKT does not claim it will not show up as a "statement". What the hell am I supposed to do. CITI BANK gave me some approval code, but I doubt the morons at MKT will acknowledge it, or understand what it means. Now I am worried, what if I book a second round of tickets (this time ClearTrip; cause last time MKT made me suffer in the same way); and after some days, MKT "sees" my money and issues me tickets from their portal. I will have to cancel from one portal. The charge would be around 10K, for cancellation. And prices are going North. If I raise a dispute with CITI BANK, can they stop MKT from getting the money (ie--claiming it); and issuing me tickets..? I am so irritated with MKT.

And the MKT, IVR is so f****** annoying too.

Claiming a chargeback should work. However I have seen some portals getting the approval code to work.
Thing is even if you claim a chargeback your funds will be in limbo till the bank makes a decision about your claim.
 
You need to wait till Citibank gets the claim from MKT for the transaction. Should happen by Thurs/ Friday. If you speak to someone at MKT and give them the approval code, your transaction should 99% complete, as that may be a missing data in your txn. If not, Citi will reverse it, they are very helpful chaps, listen to what they say.
 
You need to wait till Citibank gets the claim from MKT for the transaction. Should happen by Thurs/ Friday. If you speak to someone at MKT and give them the approval code, your transaction should 99% complete, as that may be a missing data in your txn. If not, Citi will reverse it, they are very helpful chaps, listen to what they say.


Thanks bro. But MKT is saying, they cannot see "anything" from me. Will it reflect after 3-4 days. How will they claim it against me (MKT); if they cannot see it. I will give the approval code to MKT. They said to wait an hour.

Yea, CITI is helpful, very. I like the bank.[DOUBLEPOST=1374584898][/DOUBLEPOST]
Claiming a chargeback should work. However I have seen some portals getting the approval code to work.
Thing is even if you claim a chargeback your funds will be in limbo till the bank makes a decision about your claim.


Thanks for the reply. I do not mind the stuck money. I can handle that. I just need those tickets, since prices are going up. I am in a dilemma to re-book, or wait.[DOUBLEPOST=1374590912][/DOUBLEPOST]Well ..lol.

MKT is refusing to understand what an Approval Code is. Will have to do another booking. CITIBANK will raise a dispute after 30 days.
 
When transaction fails and money is deducted, it generally is refunded back within 3-15 working days.

Had a failed recharge on tata docomo site, money came back in 3 days, failed booking with bookmyshow, money yet to come back.. 7days already...

Just wait.
 
Why not use MMT as acronym for MakeMyTrip? :confused:

And I think failed transaction will be automatically be refunded by Citi.
That is all I can do. WAIT.

LOL, yea..wonder why I did not use MMT. My panties are in knot..for sure. Am so peeved off. This tickets are damn important for me. ;)



When transaction fails and money is deducted, it generally is refunded back within 3-15 working days.

Had a failed recharge on tata docomo site, money came back in 3 days, failed booking with bookmyshow, money yet to come back.. 7days already...

Just wait.

Yea. Waiting is fun. We are all used to it in India. :)
 
It'll come back in 2-3 days. Has happened to me multiple times. You can try calling up citibank after a day or two and get the transaction no and trace no. Then give the same to the portal and they'll be able to send the money back if it doesn't happen automatically by then.

Also moral of the story - buy decent power backup for your PC :p.
 
It'll come back in 2-3 days. Has happened to me multiple times. You can try calling up citibank after a day or two and get the transaction no and trace no. Then give the same to the portal and they'll be able to send the money back if it doesn't happen automatically by then.

Also moral of the story - buy decent power backup for your PC :p.


Swear. Thanks...!

My system is on a 1100 VA APC UPS...! Even my Sony LED is on a separate APC. But the router was not. And the lights went for like 5 minutes. Crumm...! Will re-book tomorrow from office, and wait and see what happens.
 
I'm not too sure about it being "definitely refunded". There have been times like this when the payment got credited, albeit a day or two later, in such scenarios. I have personally experienced this with BSNL. Ended up paying the same bill twice after the first transaction got stuck up due to net disconnection. The amount was adjusted in the next bill, so all was good.

But, if what you are saying about the ticket prices going north every day is true, I don't think MMT will be able to book the same tickets at today's rates even if the amount gets credited to them tomorrow or the day after. Better book the tickets again. That will be your safest bet.
 
I have experienced the same issue. In my case, the issue happened twice, one after another. After a week, my amount was refunded each with 750 INR less.
 
@asingh ClearTrip usually has good deals for people holding Citibank cards I think.

Just an FYI.


Ya, thanks. I usually use CT, bang on. Just this time I was seeing a slight differential (around 1k) for the overall pricing, on MKT; and my Uncle Scrooge kicked in. :( Even last time MKT; made me run from pillar-2-post to get a refund. For some insane reason I tried an IR booking from their portal, and it failed. I forgot my past experience. They just kept saying: "statement..bank statement..statement..bank"; which irritated me.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Oh...thanks.

Any reason, why 750 was deducted.
No idea, I complained but they refunded that much only. And I didn't want to make more complaints, afterall all that was only 750 less and I got most of it refunded. After that incident I have been using yatra.com
 
Just a small primer on how this online transaction works:
When you "pay" the merchant, they recieve a confirmation that the bank has deducted the amount (aka you have balance in the account to pay them). Now this amount goes to a hold within your bank. It remains there until the merchant claims (or clears) it with proof. If they don't do it before the hold expires, the money goes back to your account. In some cases, this hold is there for upto 30 days.
Now until the payment is cleared, it will appear on your account as difference between current bal vs ledger balance (for debit types) or reduced spending limit (on credit types).
In case of failed transaction, it really depends on the data captured by the issuing bank. They normally run a check on their hold data for erroneous/unclaimed transactions. IF they have been able to collect information on the beneficiary of the transaction, they will try and complete the transaction. If they dint. then it will sit there waiting for the hold period to be over.
Similarily, the merchant needs to have the approval code that the transaction was processed and the bank has saved the money meant for them. ;)

Now for all the process, banks keeps a record of all the incoming/outgoing messages from its system. The poor chaps from CC don't have access to it so they can't confirm if there was indeed an outgoing message to the merchant validating your transaction. The worst they can do is look up the transaction and say "Sir, it went through and here's the approval code".
There is another side to it, even the merchant maintains records of the information sent and recieved to the payment gateway. If the transaction had been cut off in between, while loading the page, they could match up your transaction code and see where it fits. But if the connection was cut off in between, they are reliant on bank to tell them - "Hey we have your money from asingh." And then they will issue your tickets.

Frankly, nothing to do with India (referring to your post above) just the way banking works :)

Info on holds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_hold
 
^^
I know that.

It is just, that since I raised this thread, they could not trace my log 'anywhere'. I mean no - where. My money/transaction was like a black-hole. And they kept saying, "pdf file". How would that show on my account..? One lady even had the logic to say: Show us a screen shot of your credit limit, and current credit limit. I am not really sure, how this would have helped them, and refused to do so. They were not willing to do, what all has been suggested by you. They were adamant: get a statement. It was not on my statement (since they did not claim it, obviously, since they could not trace it), in the end I said: OK, I am sending you my statement, but there is NO MKT log entry on it. So they shut up.

Finally after 2x escalation levels (which they had closed promptly, and I manually re-opened on the web); a Sr. Escalation officer spoke to me. She said "this is first time something like this is happening"; which flabbergasted me to no end. She finally "accepted" the auto-generated email I had from Citibank for the credit to MKT (which is ONLY WHAT I HAD; I had offered this before, but they had blatantly refused it), and said would get back in 72H. In one hour, the tickets appeared. How..? That mail (auto-generated); has no txn# on it...! Were they mistrusting me..? Or it was a coincidence. I did not ask, nor do I want to know. They had the resources to deep-dive into the DB's or somewhere, and retrieve records, but were not doing so. That is lame.

It does got to do with the attitude and mistrust we hold with each other. And customer service, which is moot here in India. Sorry to say. I did not want my money immediate, I told MKT, I will wait 30 days, for CITIBANK to raise a dispute, but their attitude and reasons to NOT go out of protocol annoyed me, and was the actual reason to piss me off.

After I got my tickets, I personally thanked the case officer (Senior); and put in a word of thanks on their portal, where my case ID was logged. Respect is given when earned, and I never shun from that. :)
 
Hehe, this reminds me of my ordeal with MakeMyTrip and the bunch of morons/monkeys who sit at their customer care centre.

I was booking a hotel room for 2 days (~ 7.2k INR) for my parents (in another city) using HDFC Netbanking. I'm not sure what I was thinking using Netbanking in the first place but anyways, I got a stupid HDFC error and the transaction timed out. The money got deducted. However, the hotel booking was very important and I did the same booking again using my CC. That was successful.

Now, as anyone would, I sent them an email detailing what had happened and requested a refund. The first guy who called my dad said that he could see 1 booking in his name and why was I asking for a refund. I spoke to him for around 20 minutes, explained what had happened. He seemed to understand and said that he would get this sorted out.

When I called them up later that day, the lady at the other end said that I must send an email to another email address which was not mentioned on the website. So I did, with complete details. Again, the same thing happened. A similar call to the effect that I had a confirmed booking and why was I asking for a refund. Spent another 20 minutes with this chap explaining him that the first booking via netbanking failed and the second booking via credit card made it through. He said he will look into it and call me back.

Later that day I got a call again - submit bank statement, credit card statement, all tickets booked in MakeMyTrip over the past 6 months (!). I told him that I can get him the bank statement but CC statement is not possible for another month. He insisted that he needs the CC statement. I told him that I don't give 2 cents about the CC transaction since that was successful. I am only concerned with the Netbanking booking that got screwed up.

He kept saying that the accounting guys need it and I lost it. I literally made him repeat all that I said and asked him again why he is pestering me with this stupid bullshit. Finally, he was like "Let me pass this information and see..". I told him that this is more than sufficient and will work. Got my money back after 2 days. :)
 
^^
I am not sure, why they could not de-link the two attempts you made, and understand one was unsuccessful and one was not successful. They should not even be asking for your CC details, since that went through clean. Honestly, I had spoken to MKT so much, past few days, in the end "I"; was telling them things, (literally barking); and they were mutely listening.

LOL.
 
Back
Top