Status on 18th Sept 2014: Issue Resolved by GOIBIBO.COM
Thanks to Social Media, the post received 400 views in less than 24 hours and my friends shared across Facebook and Twitter. I believe the crisis management and the customer care team of GoIbibo (Ms. Anjali, Head - Customer Delight and Ms. Aditi, Team Lead - Customer Delight) saw this spreading, responded at night itself, then called up politely in the morning. By afternoon, the issue was resolved and they have agreed to refund the money. I can only say - my beautiful friends, power of Social Media and a common people like us who dared fighting beyond made it possible.

Status as on 17th Sept 2014: Never Book Your Tickets Through GOIBIBO.COM
GOIBIBO is an extremely FRAUDULENT and CHEAT portal. Please beware before you book your tickets on this site. I am duped of Rs. 10,000. And you might be the next one so please read this incidence before you plan your itinerary with them.

We planned a trip to South Africa during first week of OCTOBER’14. While booking they were not accepting my Citibank card and the message was “transaction declined by the bank”. Upon calling the bank they said we have no records of the transaction being declined from this site and your card. 

So why this ERROR message on their site. We tried 3-4 times but no success. Their ERROR message was also fake??

After unsuccessful booking for the hotel in Cape Town South Africa  for the date selected as 4^th Oct 2014, we got a message ‘UNABLE TO PROCESS THE BOOKING, DO YOU WANT TO TRY AGAIN?’ We pressed YES to continue. GUESS what, the transaction went through. BUT the systems automatically took the DEFAULT DATE  as 19^th Sept. I SELECTED 4^th OCT 2014, HOW THE HELL IT BECAME 19^th Sept?? ISSUE in their WEBSITE that it takes default dates when you try to continue after unsuccessful TRANSACTION.

My question is simple to GOIBIBO - SHOULD I PAY for the FAULT in YOUR WEBSITE? IS there NO CUSTOMER CARE POLICY? Do you check their Facebook page; it is filled with such posts of FRAUD BOOKINGS. Did you CHECK that I CALLED within 2 MINUTES and email was sent within 10 MINUTES of the incidence.

By the way I was in touch with Mr. HARIT SAPRA as customer care person. I also got in touch with Mr. Ankur Srivastava, who apparently is Sr.Manager Operations, CRM, Fulfillment, Vendor management for Hotel, Holidays and FPH (As per his LinkedIn profile). But only one impression I got from these two men which is same as the organization–IRRESPONSIBLE, NON CARING and NO RESPONSE to multiple queries.

LAST MAIL I got said, we checked our system it works fine, so we will not be in a position to do anything for you. Does GOIBIBO even realize that I am booking entire International trip and would not lie for such issue?

BUT the ANSWER they want to hear is – THEY do NOT WANT customer doing transactions on their WEBSITE. They do not want business and that is why they offer such harassing and painful CUSTOMER SERVICE. #PATHETIC

The combination of white sand beach, mesmerizing sunset and sunrise, silent lagoons, vast corals and romantic over-water bungalows can be found at the heavenly place on earth known as ‘Maldives’.

I wish to travel maximum during my life and till now I am done with few places however Maldives is one country, I can vouch. As soon as I landed, I felt the place was pampering with it bouquet of services.

The country is divided into two parts: On road and Islands. While the on-road part is the capital Male (total of 4 km, I guess) and the rest is all islands. And over those islands, the beautiful resorts and hotels have come up. I found Maldives extremely expensive which I believe is the reason that it is maintained in hygiene and facilities. 

The resort ferry's you from airport to the island. Hospitality of the staff is great.These resorts usually have 2-3 islands and to add a feather in their cap, one resort would only be a stay area for guests, one would be dining & lounge and another would be for sports activity. The fact that for every meal I had an option to go to another island really fancied me. The ocean was as clear as it could get with visibility of jelly fish or star fish upto 100%. 

Even the stay had two options – Room on the white sand and room over water.  Imagining that I could use a staircase and get into the ocean from my room had hijacked my mind and therefore I decided to go for over-water bungalow. The bungalow was beautiful and well maintained with basic hygiene and even modern facilities. The best part was the balcony; you could sit there for hours and stare at the vast ocean right below you with the view of flora and fauna. And since those rooms were built on lagoons, the water was shallow and allowed even the non-swimmers to enter.

The food is just awesome. Since Maldives has no industry of its own except fishery and tourism, they import everything from water to fruits to food items. And that was the reason that exotic, non seasonal fruits were easily available on the breakfast menu. You name the dish and you had it on your table and getting vegetarian meal is not a problem at all. It is just that even the basic margarita pizza was 47 dollars, which means even gulping down the food would burn a hole in the pocket. And of-course, sea food is the specialty.

Next turn was water-sports. Maldives has been the best location for scuba dive because it rich, vast and untouched corals on the sea bed. And I was all game for it. One hour of training, small test and we were ready for going 11mtrs below the seal level. And to our luck, we found a big sea turtle just passing by us. We had taken an underwater camera from Kodak and it leaked, though we managed taking few pictures. We also saw loads of species of fishes, there houses in the corals – It was a completely different world underwater. And remembering it after two years still brings the same line which I said at that time “There exists a different life here altogether which one cannot feel unless seen”

Maldives has vast offerings under water sports – Water scooter, parasailing, snorkelling, dolphin sightseeing, surfing, Banana riding and Glass Bottom Boats.  Well each of the sports were pinching as it could get because one has to shell at-least 250 dollars for scuba dive alone and 70 dollars at-least for other activities each. Sad but it is the best one could get!

I stayed for four days in Anantara Resorts and it was an awesome experience. There are many other resorts which my friends have stayed in such as Taj, W retreat and Hyatt.

Fifth day was in the city for souvenir shopping. Male is very cheap compared to the resorts. Two roads and you will have all the shops on it and even the city is all on it. One can cover the city in 3 hours which includes dining also, haha. You can shop for red coral beads and showpieces of the fauna. In-fact coconut wind-chimes are also popular.

So that wraps up my experience in Maldives. I had guts to do the adventure sports and I wish that readers of this blog will try their hands with Scuba.