The headline seems like a clickbait, right? Really, it’s not. Surely, it is attention grabbing but that’s what I wanted it to be. MakeMyTrip really tried to scam me of ₹32,942 and if I had not been aware, I would have lost that amount. Here’s the full story in detail. Do read it until the end to see how far a company can go to scam its customers. I will try to keep this as crisp as possible.
MakeMyTrip (MMT) is considered to be one of the best online travel agencies (OTA) in India. I thought so too. However, after this episode, my whole perception of this company and all the OTAs in general has changed. Let’s get into the story with a little background.
Trip Details
One of my family members booked a roundtrip flight on Virgin Atlantic between Mumbai (BOM) and London Heathrow (LHR), with the outbound flight scheduled for 8th May 2025. The amount paid for the ticket was ₹67,137. At the time of purchase, the indicative cancellation fee mentioned was ₹15,015 + ₹700 (a total of ₹15,715) if cancelled atleast 24 hours before the scheduled departure time. We booked the ticket through MMT solely because Virgin Atlantic’s website wasn’t showing the price in INR and we preferred to see the exact price in INR, which MMT’s app showed.
Here’s a proof of Virgin Atlantic stating on its website that the cancellation fee per sector is ₹7,000:
Now, just a few days before the trip, on 2nd May 2025, the trip was called off and I proceeded to cancel the ticket. To my utter surprise, the MMT app was showing a cancellation fee of ₹50,641, more than 3x of what was shown at the time of booking. This meant that I would only get a refund of ₹16,496. Since I didn’t want to let the seat on the flight be blocked anymore, I cancelled the ticket anyways and thought about talking to MMT afterwards regarding the discrepancy in the cancellation fee. I didn’t know that getting the promised refund amount would take 78 (!) days.
The Back-and-Forth with MMT begins
As soon as I cancelled the ticket, I called MMT’s support. I am a MMT Black member and there is apparently an exclusive support line for Black members. When you call through the app, it automatically calls on that line. Now, MMT has this feature that when someone calls their support, you have to first select the booking on which you need help (it automatically fetches all your bookings based on your registered mobile number). When you select a booking, an automated message plays, something along the lines of “Your booking has already been cancelled and the refund amount has been processed”. As soon as this message is finished playing, the call disconnects by itself. There is no option to talk to an agent. (I tried calling three different support numbers: 0124-4628747; 0124-5045105 & 0124-4781997). It seems like MMT tries to scam a lot of its customers and hence its support is virtually non-existent. Otherwise, it would be stuck resolving queries forever.
With no help from the customer care numbers, I turned to Twitter and contacted MMT’s customer care account. Below are the screenshots of our conversation. Mind you, it took 4 days just to reply back (other than the copy-paste messages they are used to sending everyone). The first reply I got was (on 6th May 2025):
During this time, I called MMT’s Andheri (Mumbai) office where they gave me an email ID – i_advanced@makemytrip.com – where I could escalate my query to the concerned department. The most surprising thing about MMT is that they keep these email IDs hidden from public and that’s why I am specifically mentioning all those. I sent an email to this ID on 3rd May 2025 at 04:22 PM. Below is a screenshot of the same:
We didn’t get a response until 6th May 2025 and as a result, we again sent a mail to the same ID. On 8th May 2025, we received two separate replies from two different agents, one at 10:35 AM and another at 02:53 PM. Below are the screenshots of those:
On 25th May 2025, we got this reply:
On 13th May 2025, we raised a complaint on the government’s consumer forum, which was totally unhelpful by the way. It just re-directed the complaint to the concerned party (in this case, MMT) and nothing else. So, in case you are in a similar situation, don’t expect much from the consumer forum. It all depends on the situation but in our case, it didn’t help. Keeping that aside, we will focus on the conversations with MMT.
Further to that reply, MMT said that they display a message (obviously written in tiny font making it unreadable) that says “the cancellation fee is indicative. MMT does not guarantee the accuracy of this information. All fees mentioned are per passenger. All refunds are subject to airline approval.”
During this whole time, I tried to contact MMT on their helpline multiple times. During one such try, an agent surprising picked up the call and I told him the whole story. He said that he can’t do anything about this and suggested that I should contact the airline directly in this case. I just want to thank this agent for giving me this idea or else I wouldn’t have gotten my money back.
Virgin Atlantic’s customer care helped a lot!
On 2nd June 2025, I contacted the Virgin Atlantic support team through the live chat option on its website. Upon reviewing the case, the agent told me that only ₹14,000 were charged as the cancellation fee by the airline and “any additional fee would have been charged by the travel agent”:
Knowing that MMT was in the wrong here, we contacted Virgin Atlantic’s Indian support team. I won’t take any names (as you may have seen up until now) but the airline’s Indian support team is excellent! On 18th June 2025 at 01:03 PM, we emailed them giving all the proofs of MMT saying that the airline has charged a higher cancellation fee:
At 05:10 PM on the same day, we received this reply:
They told us that although asking MMT for a clarification regarding the discrepancy in the cancellation fee on 19th May 2025, they had not received a reply until that time (18th June 2025). Now, we don’t know what conversations the two parties had but one thing is for sure, MMT was not taking this case seriously.
After this conversation, one week passed by and we hadn’t heard back from the airline yet. After emailing them again on 25th June 2025 asking for an update, we received this reply on 26th June 2025:
Can you believe this? As per the airline, MMT had charged a wrong cancellation fee and Virgin Atlantic had processed it without taking a second look. Now, it seems like MMT is clearly in the wrong-doing here but the airline should have double-checked the cancellation fee before processing the refund. Nonetheless, Virgin Atlantic’s India team was quite helpful in resolving this issue so kudos to them!
Final conversation with MMT
Since the airline told us to contact MMT regarding the balance refund amount, we did so. Amidst all of this, on 28th May 2025, I had sent an escalation request to MMT. If you go to the MMT Investor Relations website and then head to “Our Leaders” page (www.makemytrip.com/aboutus), there’s a section called “Raise concern to our leaders”. I used this to escalate my concern to one of these leaders. Someone from his team contacted us on 29th May 2025, again saying the same thing that the cancellation fee is indicative and all that rubbish. Here’s a screenshot of that mail:
Funnily enough, he was from the “Customer Delight” team. I don’t know how do they delight customers with that brilliant of a service!
Anyway, after the airline told us to contact MMT, we contacted this “Customer Delight” agent once again and emailed them on 3rd July 2025 asking for the status of our refund:
On 4th July 2025, we got this reply:
It was clearly visible in his reply that he had not refreshed our case in his mind and had written a bog-standard reply. It also seemed that MMT was hell-bent on scamming us. Upon seeing this reply, we immediately called him (luckily, he had mentioned his personal mobile number in the email).
We talked on call four times. On the first call, we explained him the whole case. When he picked up the call, his voice was that of a fully disinterested person. His tone made us feel that he was a customer and we were on the other side. He did not let us complete a single sentence once. We were recording the call and he even asked us why were we doing so saying that the call was already being recorded from his side (like he would give us the recording as a proof).
We understood that there’s no point in talking to such a rude person. We asked him to hand over the call to his senior to which he replied “we aren’t allowed to do that”. So this whole team was adamant on not refunding us the right amount. He asked for proof of the airline saying that they had processed the balance refund amount to MMT. We told him that we are sending the proof right away and not to hang up the call. He hung up the call without concluding. That’s MMT’s customer delight team for you!
We again called him after sending all the proofs. Virgin Atlantic had mentioned in the email that it would take upto 10-15 working days for the balance refund amount to be reflected in MMT’s account. Upon calling that agent again, he said that it is clearly written in the email so why were we asking him for the amount at that point (it had been a week since the transaction was processed and we just wanted to enquire about the status). He even went as far as to indicate that we didn’t know how to read the mail. At this point, we had lost it. How can a customer care agent tell something like that to a customer?
After some back-and-forth, the agent told us to wait for “10-15 working days”. And hence, we waited. 16th July 2025 was the 15th working day after the refund had been processed. And so, we called on 16th July 2025.
When we called, he once again tried to act like he didn’t know anything which shouldn’t be surprising at this point and that’s why, I again explained to him the gist of the case. Then he was like “yes, yes, I remember the case”. Then, he said that a refund of ₹16,496 was already processed, which we agreed.
And then, he said that they had NOT received any refund from Virgin Atlantic (!!!). I told him to check once again. After putting the call on hold for 8-10 mins, he came back and said that they had received the balance refund amount of ₹32,942 and had processed it to our credit card. Once again, without checking, he had told us that no refund was possible and once again, he had tried to close the case without doing anything. If he hadn’t contacted the accounts team when we told him to do so, we wouldn’t have received the money back.
What to make of this and how you can avoid this
How can you avoid being stuck in a similar situation like us? Well, there’s only one simple answer. Avoid using MakeMyTrip and delete its app. I have already deleted if from my phone. MakeMyTrip’s black practices are on another level and they operate in such a manner that the customer won’t know where his money has gone. That’s how smoothly they operate. I wonder how are they listed on the US Stock Exchange.
They tried to charge us a wrong cancellation fee. They tried to close the case multiple times. They tried to scam us. They tried to scam Virgin Atlantic. They tried very hard not to refund our money. Their customer care agents are some of the worst I have come across. They don’t know how to talk to customers. Either they don’t know or they don’t want to as they may also be a part of a larger group trying to scam customers.
If you don’t want to ruin your vacation or business trip or anything and love your money, delete MakeMyTrip. These scamsters are operating very smoothly and you may be the next person getting scammed by them. If you have ever cancelled your flight booked through MMT, I suggest double checking the cancellation fee on the airline’s website as MMT might have charged a higher cancellation fee you are unaware of.
Dear Deep Kalra, you may have created India’s largest OTA, but if this is the way you operate, you are losing your loyal customers. If anyone from MakeMyTrip is reading this, I hope you get a good night’s sleep after this.
Thank you for reading until the very end. I hope you got some insights.