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Air India downgraded a Premier Economy booking by email with no explanation, offering only a post-journey fare-difference claim

Air IndiaPC-2026-03268Airlines & TravelAnonymous ·
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Two organisations. Two experiences and their approaches to trust. Air India Limited and Lodha I had booked a sector with Air India in Premier Economy. A transactional email informed me that my cabin class had been downgraded and that I could claim the fare difference after completing my journey, no explanations. I wrote about it on social media. An Air India representative Devinder reached out. I shared a feedback, he patiently heard, took back to the relevant authorities and personally promised to look into the matter. He came back, apologized. I was offered a chosen seat in economy cabin on the onward and return flights and the fare difference refunded too. Cut to Lodha I walked in, liked what I saw and booked an apartment. Agreed to pay the entire consideration almost two years ahead of possession. I asked for the draft agreement and title documents, I was asked to pay 5% first. I paid. Over the next month, documents arrived in bits and pieces, sometimes incorrect ones. What finally came to light, including concerns around a title dispute, alarmed us. As committed customers, we didn’t walk away immediately. We sought clarifications, spent weeks trying to find a resolution. We even offered to consider other Lodha projects with clearer titles. When nothing worked, cancellation became our last resort. Lodha’s response? A 2% penalty because we hadn’t cancelled within its 15-day window. Never mind that we hadn’t received the necessary documents within those 15 days to make that decision, or that cancellation was never our original intention. They offered to reduce it to 1% as a goodwill gesture, promptly reverted to 2%, and sent a cheque calling it a full-and-final settlement without our agreement. No conversation thereafter. Attempts to reach leadership went unanswered. My number was blocked. And when I wrote about my experience on a website, they reached out to them asking them to pull the article down. Think about it. They had the opportunity to have a simple conversation with a customer who had placed his trust in them. They were more concerned about taking down the story than addressing the experience behind it. Air India had a customer who was inconvenienced. It listened, acknowledged the feedback and went beyond the immediate refund to make things right. Thank you 🙏 Lodha had a customer who raised legitimate concerns before committing further money. It chose to hide behind policies, enforce a deduction and then turn its attention to suppressing the story. There’s a fundamental difference between protecting commercial interests and using contractual power without exercising judgement, A difference between visionary leadership and short sighted, transactional thinking. Air India may have started with a machine generated email, but a human being eventually took ownership. The biggest lesson, You don’t build trust when everything goes right. You build it when something goes wrong and you choose to do the right thing.

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  1. Case filed

    Filer · 3 Nov 2026, 10:10 am

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