Consumer court orders OYO and guest house to pay ₹16 lakh for dashing customer's NLU dream.

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A District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi has ordered OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal and a guest house in Chennai to pay over ₹16 Lakh compensation to a man for failing to provide a room to him and his sister despite an advance online booking.

The man, a resident of Thoothukudi, in 2022 had booked a room for three days at a hotel in Chennai as his younger sister was to appear for the All India Law Entrance Test there.

However, the hotel booked by him did not accept the online booking and even the substitute hotel arranged by OYO did not provide them the room.

This forced him to book the guest house where also he faced various issues and was even made to pay more money in addition to the payment done online.

Due to all this, the complainant alleged that his sister did not perform well in the examination and had to prepare again as she aspired to secure a seat at National Law University (NLU).

In a unique order passed on July 25, Consumer Commission President A Thiruneela Prasad and members N Namachivayam and A Sankar said such unfair trade practices had resulted in loss of a young girl's academic career.

The consumer court accordingly directed Agarwal and the guest house booked via OYO, to jointly and severally pay:

- ₹6,797 towards booking amount and travel expenses,

- ₹1.23 lakh towards redoing course fee expenses of the complainant's sister.

- ₹10 Lakh towards compensation for unfair trade practice and for making the "complainant's sister dream, hard work and one year life as mirage"

- ₹5 lakh towards compensation for unfair trade practice and for mental agony to the complainant and her sister

- ₹10,000 towards cost of the complaint.

The decision was passed ex-parte as OYO and the guest house did not appear before the consumer court.

"The act of the Opposite Parties in committing deficiency in service and unfair trade practices caused mental agony to the complainant and his sister lost her dream, hard work and precious time to be an mirage," it said.

Good. Slowly people knowing their rights n system working positively to solve the core issues.

Good to hear that OYO was fined. I once booked OYO apartment in Ahmadabad. I reached there at around 10PM. Apartment was a flat in a housing society. Society committee denied entry stating no such apartment exists. I was stranded for 2hrs and since it was mid night, finally gave up and booked room in a nearby reputed hotel. 

OYO did not help. The apartment owner tried to help over phone and sent his caretaker who tried to negotiate with the society folks.

OYO was recommended to me by one of my friend as a cost effective solution as I used to frequently travel to Ahmadabad for personal work. Did not touch this OYO shit again!

These corporates will take customers for granted. Only way to get better service is for people to push back and litigate.

They say the US is a country of litigations...maybe that is why the customer service there is way better than what we get here and yet they gripe about it while we Indians are conditioned to living with it.

Galat Bandi se panga le liya. Btech wali hoti to chor bhi deti 😃