CHENNAI: A day after a group of private omni bus operators declared that they will not accept bookings made through a few online portals, including the popular RedBus, the online bus aggregator has said it was a false propaganda by a few operators who were removed from the portal for poor quality of service.
In a statement on Wednesday, Danan Christadoss, senior director, redBus, said that all tickets booked through the online portal would be honored by the bus operators during this Pongal festival season and beyond.
"As part of our constant endeavor to improve the quality and safety of bus travel, time-to-time we weed-out those bus operators from redBus who do not meet certain quality and service standards leading to passenger dissatisfaction and poor customer ratings for these operators. Some of the operators who were not able to meet these standards were discontinued from our system and they have been indulging in false propaganda about bus operators not honoring redBus tickets," he said in the statement.
In a press meet on Tuesday, A Anbalagan, secretary of All Omni Bus Owners and Operators Association, said members of the association would boycott two of the online portals - redBus and SeatSeller – for allegedly overcharging the passengers. The association claimed it has the membership of 120 bus operators.
However, another major association of bus operators, Tamil Nadu Omni Bus Operators Association, backed the online portals and said ticket booked through redBus would be honoured by the bus operators. Speaking to Express, A Afzal, president of the association, said they will continue to take redBus bookings. "Rumours have been spread by the brokers' association that ticket booked through RedBus for Pongal will be invalid. This is however false. Omni bus owners have no role to play in this," he said.