Travel firms asked to pay pending refunds for cancelled Covid plans

The DoCA had held a meeting with online travel aggregators to discuss issues prejudicial to consumer interest in the travel sector

The Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) on Wednesday told several travel platforms to process pending consumer refunds from the Covid-19 lockdown period.

The platforms have been asked to process the refunds by the third week of November.

The DoCA had held a meeting with online travel aggregators to discuss issues prejudicial to consumer interests in the travel sector. The meeting was chaired by Rohit Kumar Singh, secretary to the government.

As many as 5,695 refunds are pending on Yatra.com and 63 on Make My Trip, and one booking that includes four passengers is pending on EaseMyTrip, stated a release by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.

Refunds of Rs 14.75 lakh are pending at Mango Holidays, it added.

Following orders dated October 1, 2020, by the Supreme Court, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) had issued notices to six platforms, directing them to immediately refund consumers. Of these, only two -- Thomas Cook and Ixigo -- have completed their refunds until now.

During the meeting, it was also deliberated that for an effective resolution of consumer complaints, the National Consumer Helpline may be integrated with the Air Sewa Portal, the release added.

To make consumer experience better, dark patterns commonly used by such platforms were also highlighted in the meeting by Nidhi Khare, special secretary, DoCA.

Dark patterns are defined as any practices or deceptive design patterns using UI/UX (user interface/user experience) interactions on any platform. They are designed to mislead or trick users to do something they originally did not intend or want to do.

On travel platforms these can be identified as a “No, I will risk it” option, during add-on of insurance, showing pre-ticked checkboxes for authorising contact by a platform, its affiliates and associate partners, triggering alarm (“last few rooms left”, “18 people are looking to book”) and forced action (giving the option of “yes” and “I’ll do this later” for push notifications, without any option to select “no”).