Agoda.com Review and Indian Card Payment problem issue

Whenever you are searching for hotels in Google for a particular place in India, often you will see booking website details along with the search results for individual hotels. There are many booking websites on offer and one of them is Agoda.com and their attractive lowest prices.



For one of our recent trips, I decided to give Agoda.com a try.

If you are planning for travel itinerary weeks or months ahead of the actual travel, Agoda.com offers a cool feature where it allows you to book your hotel without paying the charges up front and make the payment a week or so before the actual travel. This is a really cool feature to have. It helps to secure a good hotel to beat the rush and allows you the flexibility to cancel without any penalty at a later date.



However the biggest problem with Agoda is their payment processing mechanism. You may have secured a booking via their pay later policy but when you try to make the actual payment before your travel date, you end up facing the hassle of their International Payment getway hassle.

What is the issue with International Payment getway?

Indian banks require two factor authentication for any card (credit or debit) transaction. This happens in form of either via PIN Code (if you are paying physically) or via OTP (incase of a virtual online transaction). However in International market, there are no concept of this two factor authentication. Your Credit/Debit Card number, name, expiry date and CVV code is sufficient to make the payment.

This is the core issue with Agoda.com since they route all payment via their International website & payment getway. Here they have no concept of this two factor OTP based mechanism or alternate Indian Digital Payment systems like UPI / NetBanking or such, thus their website fails to deduct your account for the payable charge.



Further, at the last moment (like 10/12 days before the travel), you as the customer will receive an email asking you to call their customer care to solve this failed payment issue within 48 hours to avoid cancellation of the booking.

Problem with Agoda.com customer care call center

Traditionally, India is a BPO power house where all the international companies export their call centers for cheap educated labor. But Agoda.com does the opposite. An Indian customer get’s connected to their International customer care.

Immediately you would face the first issue of language barrier. There are no native Indian language agents available. It’s English and other foreign language only. Once you get pass that hurdle by selecting English, you will face dialect / accent issues. But full marks to the agents of Agoda.com customer care, they are really patient and do try their level best to have a meaningful conversation.

But the core issue stays the same. Their inability to charge an Indian Credit Card / Debit Card via Western Norms where these call center agents will ask for your Credit / Debit Card information via phone and try to charge the card by using Western Payment getway methods.

Need of an International Payment enabled Credit Card

You need to enable international OTP less payment for your Credit or Debit Card by calling your card issuing bank customer care. That it self is a hassle since some may do it instantly or some may ask for few hours before the feature is enabled. On top, for Debit Card, many banks may simply refuse to support this international OTP less payment processing itself (like, RuPay Cards).

Underlying issues of Hotels vs Booking websites in peak season

Even after you get passed all these hassles and end up actually securing a booking via Agoda.com lucrative deal, there is a another major issue of false commitment in India. This is not a particular issue with Agoda. This problem is relevant with all major online booking websites.

The problem is with the Hotels in India operating with absolute impunity and zero consequences for cancelling the booking without any notice. In India, we have absolute zero consumer protection. If you search the internet for negative reviews about all these booking websites, they are mainly with cancellation of booking by the individual hotels. These hotels may allow booking websites to take booking at a lower rate many weeks prior to the actual check-in but as the date approaches and they see the demand, often these hotels may cancel these booking website reservations by allocating the rooms to a different source at a higher rate.

When that happens, an unsuspected travel is stranded at the location while these booking websites at max can issue a refund to solve their part of the issue where as the traveler will be left out there to find something locally to stay by his or her personal capacity.

Avoid Agoda

Agoda is not a fraud website. Agoda is not cheating the customers. They are a legitimate business and they do provide legitimate service with great holiday deals. However their process of payment getway is really troublesome and in general these booking aggregator websites have no control over hotel cancellation.

If you have an international OTP less payment enabled Credit Card and you can speak / understand foreign accent English, then go ahead with confidence. Agoda will not disappoint you. But once you have a confirmed booking email from Agoda, do call the respective hotel and confirm from them whether they acknowledge this booking or not.

For rest of the Indians, avoid Agoda. As you can see, its too much of a pain to get this done via Agoda. It’s best to compare the rates and call the hotel directly to ask for a good deal on your preferred date.