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Infinia Poor chargeback experience with HDFC Infinia for Cleartrip Smartbuy transaction

niks

TF Premier
VIP Lounge
I had a not so good experience with raising a chargeback request for a Smartbuy transaction I did on my Infinia card.

In Dec'24, I had booked a 2-day stay with Azaya Beach Resort Goa using my HDFC Infinia card through Smartbuy. The partner was Cleartrip who in turn (as I found out from the hotel) had booked through Expedia.

On arriving at the hotel, I discovered that the hotel was a disaster. Far from being a 5-star hotel as advertised, there was hardly any staff, rooms were terrible, no water in the bathrooms, and so on. I immediately spoke to the manager on phone (there was none on duty) and we finally negotiated that I will check out immediately & they will process the refund back to the original source within 7 days. I requested them to send me an email confirming the same and he promised he will send it the next day when he is back at work. I had no choice & left the hotel.

After I returned from my trip, when I tried to call the manager, he started blocking my calls & did not send me any email.

Hence, I called up Cleartrip support & raised a ticket. Cleartrip asked me to send them a written communication from the hotel confirming they are willing to refund. I explained to them that they are not responding to my calls & emails. Cleartrip themselves wrote to & called the hotel property but the hotel did not respond to them as well. Surprisingly, the hotel is a Cleartrip partner, but Cleartrip just closed the ticket claiming no response from the hotel.

After a few days, I finally raised a dispute with HDFC Bank and asked for a chargeback. I informed them that both the hotel & Cleartrip have been of no help. HDFC also unfortunately took the same stance that they need an email confirmation from the hotel to process the refund. I explained to them that I am not raising a “refund” matter but a “disputed chargeback” because the hotel is acting fraudulently & not responding either to me or to Cleartrip. However, HDFC refused to entertain any request for a “chargeback”.

Finally, I happened to visit Goa again last week & again visited the Hotel. After being confronted face to face, the hotel staff finally sent me a mail confirming they agree to the refund & based on that Cleartrip finally processed the refund.

I am disappointed at HDFC Infinia’s so called great service since they avoided calling it a “chargeback” or “dispute” and every time treated this as a “refund” case. Probably, HDFC cannot go against its own Smartbuy partners and cannot raise a chargeback against their own partners? For me all is well that ends well, but the Infinia support was surprisingly disheartening.
 
From experience, I think Citi India, when they were operational were the most customer friendly in this process. You call customer care - they understand your complaint - give a temporary credit immediately & ask you to send all the documents / evidence that you have for them to investigate. If found correct, the temporary becomes permanent and if not they will debit the amount again to the cc statement post completing the investigation.

Correct. Citi again, follows international standards. It's not an Indian bank as we all know. Most bank has this process, just that nationalised banks likes sbi, hdfc, icici etc think all their customers are as dumb as their mainstream customers, so they treat every customer equally like that lol.
they understand your complaint - give a temporary credit immediately

Alright, so let me clear this part - Temp credit isn't given to you by the bank, it's given to you by the merchant's business bank account. The trxn merchant does, is reversable for 6 months thru visa/mc network except in cases of OTP fraud cases because in those cases trxn is initiated by the customer so requires FIR/Complaint copy.

In US , a customer can't do chargeback under "fraud" reason code if the trxn goes through otp/verification/authentication. Yes, this exists in US/Internationally too. But the diff is, in India, it is mandated for any gateway provider to do otp verification, but in US, it's upto the merchant if they need this service. It's called payer authentication for gateways, but visa calls it verified by visa, mc calls it mastercard securecode. Services like OF, Money transfer services specifically use this service (it costs $10 for a merchant and 0.10c/trxn - prices can vary depending on merchant's volume).

What does payer auth do? It shifts the liability the the customer bank or customer. Basically if a cx calls bank and says fraud happened with him/her for a trxn done thru payer authentication, bank will simply tell the customer to F**k off(not literallly), and won't initiate the chargeback. Actually bank won't even find an option to initiate the chargeback for that specific trxn as visa/mc disables that option for the bank. However a trxn done thru payer auth can be charged under a diff reason code like - duplicate trxn, or services not received, or defective product/services.

So just to clear - that temp credit is given by merchant. Btw merchant has no option but to let the temp credit go to customer bank, as merchant has no other option. Merchant does have one option, he can stop this debit by calling his bank, but then if he does that, the gateway/merchant account provider has to pay to the customer as temp credit. If this ever happens, gateway provider will simply put the merchant's merchant account on hold,m hold all his future trxns/deposits, and also start a rolling/OH reserve on him which means his whole business get's into jeopardy.
 
From experience, I think Citi India, when they were operational were the most customer friendly in this process. You call customer care - they understand your complaint - give a temporary credit immediately & ask you to send all the documents / evidence that you have for them to investigate. If found correct, the temporary becomes permanent and if not they will debit the amount again to the cc statement post completing the investigation.
Yes, Citi was also good. I also had good experience with them.
 
I had a not so good experience with raising a chargeback request for a Smartbuy transaction I did on my Infinia card.

In Dec'24, I had booked a 2-day stay with Azaya Beach Resort Goa using my HDFC Infinia card through Smartbuy. The partner was Cleartrip who in turn (as I found out from the hotel) had booked through Expedia.

On arriving at the hotel, I discovered that the hotel was a disaster. Far from being a 5-star hotel as advertised, there was hardly any staff, rooms were terrible, no water in the bathrooms, and so on. I immediately spoke to the manager on phone (there was none on duty) and we finally negotiated that I will check out immediately & they will process the refund back to the original source within 7 days. I requested them to send me an email confirming the same and he promised he will send it the next day when he is back at work. I had no choice & left the hotel.

After I returned from my trip, when I tried to call the manager, he started blocking my calls & did not send me any email.

Hence, I called up Cleartrip support & raised a ticket. Cleartrip asked me to send them a written communication from the hotel confirming they are willing to refund. I explained to them that they are not responding to my calls & emails. Cleartrip themselves wrote to & called the hotel property but the hotel did not respond to them as well. Surprisingly, the hotel is a Cleartrip partner, but Cleartrip just closed the ticket claiming no response from the hotel.

After a few days, I finally raised a dispute with HDFC Bank and asked for a chargeback. I informed them that both the hotel & Cleartrip have been of no help. HDFC also unfortunately took the same stance that they need an email confirmation from the hotel to process the refund. I explained to them that I am not raising a “refund” matter but a “disputed chargeback” because the hotel is acting fraudulently & not responding either to me or to Cleartrip. However, HDFC refused to entertain any request for a “chargeback”.

Finally, I happened to visit Goa again last week & again visited the Hotel. After being confronted face to face, the hotel staff finally sent me a mail confirming they agree to the refund & based on that Cleartrip finally processed the refund.

I am disappointed at HDFC Infinia’s so called great service since they avoided calling it a “chargeback” or “dispute” and every time treated this as a “refund” case. Probably, HDFC cannot go against its own Smartbuy partners and cannot raise a chargeback against their own partners? For me all is well that ends well, but the Infinia support was surprisingly disheartening.
Do rbi bamboo to HDFC's behind.
This bank is going worse day by day.
 
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