[Resolved] Indigo Airlines — charging of 'convenience fee' while online booking - indigo airlines

naushil

from Bengaluru, Karnataka

Feb 19, 2018

Address: 560034

Website: www.goindigo.in

My friend and I are traveling to Chennai on Business on the 21st of Feb. We decided to fly Indigo airlines as we've generally had a good experience flying them in the past and their rates were competitive (I checked several websites). I found the lowest fares on the indigo homepage and decided to book my tickets there.
I selected my tickets, skipped the parts with the ad ons (food, special seats, insurance, etc..) My ticket total came up to Rs. 11, 302. It was then then they revealed that they were going to charge me a Rs. 800 'convenience fee'.
This price gouging is unconscionable. There is no reason to be charging a customer any 'convenience fee' for an online purchase, and frankly i don't know why this is even legal. I would like this amount to be refunded to me immediately.

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Mar 30, 2018

Complaint marked as Resolved

IndiGo customer support has been notified about the posted complaint.

Verified Support

Feb 22, 2018

IndiGo Customer Care's response Hi Naushil,

We truly understand your concern. We would like to inform you that Convenience fee is collected for establishing, maintaining and operating the online booking system, to enable the passengers to book the air tickets online while using a credit/debit card/net banking. Convenience is non-refundable charged INR 200 (inclusive of GST, if applicable) per passenger per sector will be applicable for all Bookings made from the IndiGo website.
Please let us know in case any further assistance is required.

Regards,
IndiGo Team

Feb 22, 2018

Updated by naushil According to public data, you have a combined fleet of 158 planes capable of carrying 180 people each.

Assuming you run 1 flight a day (Which is VERY conservative), thats 28, 440 humans moved on your airplanes every day.

Assuming 10% of these humans use your online booking system, you are charging 2844 people a 'convenience fee' every day.

Assuming you run these planes 5 days a week, you are earning 2844x5xRs200 = Rs. 28 lakh (rounded DOWN) per week.

53 weeks in a year means you earn 53*28 = 1484 lakh rupees (almost 15 crore) through your 'convenience' fee. The actual number is probably MUCH larger because of my conservative estimations.

There are much larger and better built websites and online services on which you can use your debit and credit card to buy things that do NOT charge this ludicrous fee.

A visa or master card payment gateway is not a novel idea in 2018. These are everywhere. There is simply no way to justify your 'convenience' fee.

Apr 09, 2018

Updated by naushil Indigo's copy-paste response did not actually address the issue and there has been no response since then.

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Comments

kekow

Nov 9, 2020

As a matter of fact, going digital for transactions has allowed these people to loot the people shamelessly. Practically nobody these days, after COVID-19, goes to the booking office and pays cash for the ticket (even if you do, chances are you use your card there too). Recently, indigo has been even more shameless and increased this should-to-be-illegal charges to Rs300 per head per flight for domestic and Rs500 for international. Clearly, they know 99.99% people would go for online payment and have unscrupulously taken the unfair advantage of the dire situation.