HYDERABAD: Following a legal battle, a consumer forum in the city has asked the TSRTC to duly compensate a consumer for deficiency in services. The Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum-III asked the TSRTC to pay Rs 5,000 compensation to a woman who allegedly did not get a ticket confirmation message during her online booking. It also directed the RTC to refund her full ticket fare for the delay in issuing a refund.
According to the complaint, Hema Vaishnavi Ale booked an online ticket through the TSRTC website in February 2016 for travel from Hyderabad to Bengaluru and made an online payment for her ticket.
An amount of `723 was debited from her account but, she did not get any confirmation of her booking. Instead, she received an e-mail stating that the transaction is not complete. When she took up the matter with the RTC, she was told that she will get the refund within seven to ten days, however, the same did not happen.
She then lodged a complaint with the consumer forum alleging deficiency of services and seeking a refund of the ticket amount along with compensation for trauma.
Responding to the complaint, RTC stated, “The petitioner had made a total of three transactions, out of which two were successful and one was not. Meanwhile, the complainant again tried to book a ticket which got confirmed, but she did not see her SMS and e-mail and assumed the ticket was not confirmed. This means that there was no deficiency in service on our part.” In order to clear the dispute, in April 2016, RTC refunded an amount of `723. In its verdict, the Redressal Forum observed that because the TSRTC delayed the refund, the complainant deserved to be reasonably compensated for deficiency in service.