Mohamed Najiullah, a resident of the Indian city of Chennai, launched a complaint site, after allegedly having a bad experience with hospitality company Oyo, while using their services to celebrate his first wedding anniversary in Havelock Island, the Andamans.
The oyo-ruined-my-anniversary.com starts with bullet points to narrate his ordeal through a string of allegations in brief and also features a blog that offers a detailed version.
The senior consultant of a software consultancy firm has shared how Oyo first allowed him to book a hotel that already had payment issues with the company, and how that hotel made him wait for two hours on the phone, calling from a remote island with no connectivity before transferring him. He goes on to complain that OYO tried to shift him to another hotel 1,300 km away (in West Bengal state) among other irregularities.
Najiullah claims that he booked three rooms at Hotel Le Meridian resort from Oyo for his vacation from 24 – 26 August, and paid for it online to avoid carrying cash.
On arriving at the hotel, he alleged that the manager told him there were some payment issues between Oyo and the main hotel chain, and then refusing to accommodate him.
“Now this wasn’t the first time that this happened to me. I had faced something similar in December 2015, but that was resolved quickly by changing my booking to a nearby hotel,” he writes.
Najiullah says he called up the customer care centre but was kept on hold for two hours, in an area having poor telephone connectivity.
After much “harassment” from Oyo’s customer care staff, he says he was moved to another hotel nearby but ended up paying more money as Oyo had cancelled his booking, he claims.
Najiullah has been joined by many other disgruntled victims of Oyo’s poor services on Twitter.
Asked about Najiullah’s allegations, Oyo said that they considered the matter and initiated a refund of the extra money charged to the customer and compensated him with a complimentary stay. The hotel chain also said that they are conducting a thorough investigation, and will penalise the customer care executives who handled the issue poorly.
Regarding complaints and allegations from hoteliers, Oyo said most of the complainants are not associated with the hotel chain and are “powerful men of hotel associations at the local level of competition”.
Commenting on customer complaints, OYO said the percentage of such incidents is very minimal, and they are trying to improve.
Oyo charges hotels a franchise fee of roughly 20% on room revenues when hotels join its network, but some Indian hotel operators say the startup often ends up taking half or more of revenues through fees that were not initially disclosed.
Other hoteliers complain that they continue receiving guests even after ending their partnerships with Oyo. Oyo replied by saying: that it was a technical problem and they are working to resolve it.