Oyo Rooms — Never book OYO 81979 MOHAN PALACE, VRINDAVAN - dirty hotel with extremely low standards

I was searching for hotels on various hotel booking websites in and around Vrindavan on 1st Oct 2021 for my intended stay on 2nd Oct to 3rd Oct. I found a hotel named OYO 81979 MOHAN PALACE which looked decent on the pics and tried to book it. I did not reach the success page or received any confirmation message or email on my booking. However I got to know my booking ID from an Acko Insurance email which did not have any other details but the booking ID. As my amount was already debited, I had to call the hotel manager through the OYO customer care number to confirm my booking. The manager on that call had said the booking was confirmed for three AC rooms. Note that I had made this booking at around 10 PM in the night on 1st Oct and all this happened after 10 PM.

Next day I reached the hotel location at around 12 noon and was quite dissapointed to see the surroundings. The hotel was in a secluded village with no facilities or good restaurants nearby. If you do not have your own vehicle you cannot manage to go anywhere from that location. Luckily at least we travelled by our own vehicles.

While checking in the hotel manager was unable to find my booking and we quickly realised that I had made a mistake in booking. Instead of booking from 2nd to 3rd Oct, I had made the booking from 1st to 2nd Oct. I was shocked to know this. We were in total 7 adults and an infant (< 2 yrs old) and among us was my grandmom who is more than 70 years old. We were tired of the long journey from Gurgaon to Vrindavan. I requested the hotel manager to shift the dates as I had already paid for my booking. He did not allow that. He argued saying they had to keep the 3 AC rooms empty as they were already booked. As I mentioned I had already paid for those rooms and I had made the booking at around 10 PM. He would anyway not have got any guests after 10 PM. On top of it I had not got any confirmation mail mentioing the hotel details, or any warning from the hotel manager himself when I had called him the last day that the booking was for the same day. If I had received one or got a warning from the manager I could have cancelled the booking by calling OYO. I was completely kept unaware of the blunder till I reached the hotel.

We had to pay 1700 extra for 1 more day as there was no hotel nearby. Plus it was extremely hot outside and we all were tired of the long journey. He provided us 1 AC room and 1 Non AC room saying all other hotel rooms were already booked. The stay at the hotel was pathetic and the experience totally spoiled our trip.

I called the OYO helpline number and was not able to reach an agent on their support line. It kept saying that lines were busy and to avoid long wait times, advised to use the help section in the app. I downloaded the app but could not find an option to raise my complaint as the issue was not listed. At that time I wanted to connect with an agent over call as it was urgent. But this process was taking a lot of time and hence I decided to do it after the trip ended.


This refund is nothing compared to the troubles me and my family had gone through. My issues are listed below:

1. Extremely Foul smelling rooms
2. Biggest problem was Bugs/Insects in one room with the balcony kept us awake throughout the night.
3. No food service, not even one complimentary water bottle in the rooms. We had to pay extra for those.
4. No light bulb in the attached bathroom. So in the night you could not use the washroom without the phone's flash.
5. Dirty linens replaced with other set of dirty linens after complaints.
6. No toiletries in the bathroom.
7. No intercom in the room to connect with reception.
8. 10-12 extra people in the hall causing disturbance. The hall was common to all rooms. Ideally nobody should have stayed there.
9. Power kept on going and AC was not running on inverter.
10.Delayed service. They were taking around 20-30 mins to respond to our requests. And for the first 3-4 times I had to literally go down to the reception for complaints.

Later after returning from the trip on 3rd Oct, I had no option but to create a ticket on the "I need assistance related to Referral/cashback" option in order to create a ticket and escalate the problem. Even after creating the ticket no one called me from their support. Next day I had to call the hotel helpline again myself but since I had a ticket I was able to escalate and connect with an agent on call and explained all my issues. The agent on call argued that as per their policies customer needs to complaint within 48 hours or else they won't be able to do anything. I requested him to create an escalation ticket and he did that. He assured that a senior manager would call me. But no one again called and I had to call them myself and got connected to another agent this time. This time it was a lady and she said that we can give you a cashback of 20% on my booking which is just INR 473. I tried to argue with her and she connected me with the hotel manager who was extremely rude on the call.

Hnestly, the INR 473 refund is nothing compared to what we went through. The trip was spoiled and we had a sleepless night in that hotel. This was my first experience with OYO and it surely is my last. I will not suggest anyone else to use OYO services ever. If this is what they call OYO standards, then they need to improve a lot because the market is not short of options.

I sent multiple emails to them but I got minimum support from their end. I am complaining on this forum after feeling completely frustrated with their service. On the email also, I advised them to send a surprise visit team to the hotel on a busy weekend and see what standards they are keeping.

My advice to all: Never book a hotel through OYO. Even if you do, dont make the payment in advance. If they ask advance payment something is off. Take multiple videos and photos of the hotel in case you face any issues. This is biggest mistake we did on our stay.