Vijay Anand | The Startup Guy - Latest Comments in Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Swaminathan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:39:11 -0000

one reason why I never trust travel agents (I term rebus as an online travel agent). Either go to the travel office (or atleast call them up), book tickets, and travel. This is what I do every weekend :)

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

ashok — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:54:46 -0000

Reminds me of my suffering. I had booked ticket through redbus in the initial days of launch, went to the bus terminal to find that someone else was sitting in the same seat. they said it was double booking and i reached bangalore travelling in the cleaner's seat. After a complaint, redbus gave me a coupon worth the ticket money that i could use at their site, but i didn't use it myself nor had any good enemies that i wanted to share it with :). As Srikrishna pointed out, S#$T happens and its how they handle when it happens is important.

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Nithya Dayal — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:32:27 -0000

Well, I had a different kind of bad experience. I had booked by tickets to Coimbatore for my friends wedding, well in advance, got my tickets printed and was all set to go and bang just the day I was supposed to leave, I get the call saying the particular travels i had booked my trip with cancelled the bus. bad..but cant be helped.

The worst was that I had to follow-up for almost 3 months to get my money refunded. now that IS bad.

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

dood_flight — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:35:33 -0000

I've booked with them when I was in India last year. It was for a trip from Bangalore. I didn't have nearly as an unpleasant experience. They were pretty prompt in getting the tickets out to me.

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Shivaas Gulati — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:30:04 -0000

Hmmmm... Do you think something like this could work in the retail segment ? I mean, amazon is damn successful because they own their inventory and source it asap to the the purchaser from their warehouses. What if in India we could leverage the network of retail shops,kirana stores etc and deliver products on demand at doorstep in fraction of a time ?
With rising costs of fuel, this makes a great value proposition for the end consumer right ? And for the shopkeeper added sales without eating up shelf space !

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Vinod — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:18:16 -0000

Everything sud fall in place for a product to click ....., if it misses one,even the initial success wil fade - tis is demonstrated with this redbus exp of yours....

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Lekhni — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:20:07 -0000

Looks like all Parveen Travels has to do is tie up with a courier company. I am surprised that they haven't done it so far. What's the point of being able to buy tickets online if you still have to go collect it?

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Paras Chopra — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:13:19 -0000

Oh Vijay, you didn't have to be so hard on RedBus.in. After all, man, this in India and here sab kuch chalta hai!

Nah, just joking. I fully agree with you that more important than having a slick site and fancy technology is getting things right. At the core, a startups only value proposition is to truly satisfy the customer. If you can't do that, you are going to have a serious negative word of mouth publicity on the internet.

If RedBus.in guys are smart enough, then perhaps they would have been monitoring their brand through Google Alerts, which would bring this post to their attention and probably compel them to reply. Lets wait and watch.

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Nandakumar — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:08:47 -0000

im wondering, they are not allowing to print ticket(online) after booking ?

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

K. Srikrishna — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:17:42 -0000

Sorry to hear about your less-than-ideal customer service experience. While thus far I had heard only good things about redbus, but for some concerns on return tickets (Pondicherry-BLR), what you went through is only partly a failure of logistics. The larger failure is one of training (& possibly attitude) - a screw up such as you encountered is a great opportunity to recover and convert to positive word of mouth, through [a] appropriate attitude - "Looks like we screwed up and [b] here's our solution - even if it involves buying from this other vendor and having it sent across town to you by courier (Rs. 12)" such a recovery if rarely lack of imagination on the poor gal on the phone's part, but one of training and empowerment. I hope your post helps them and other folks who are providing a value service and bringing value over legacy systems prosper.

Re: Redbus.in: Make it Your Experience. NOT! | Vijay Anand

Abubucker — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:10:11 -0000

I had used this site on a couple of occasions. I never had a problem because they sent me an e-ticket.May be they are overcommitting by promising a home delivery.