I have recently opened up about my bad experience with the zolo hostels where I stayed for a good 2 and a half years, here's some more of what followed right after that when I was leaving the capital city for good.
I have written before how much I dislike traveling. Its uncomfortable, expensive and the north Indian extreme weather makes it worse, especially in summers. Capital city Delhi has a horrible weather all year round but summer season is the icing on this hellish cake. Not long ago, during the advent of summer 2022 I missed my train to home from New Delhi Railway Station. A crane had caught on fire right in the middle of Gurugram-delhi highway due to summer heat, (I'm not even kidding!) causing a 5 hour long traffic jam. I had no option but to take up a hotel room some where near till my next ticket gets confirmed. Thanks to my father, it happened in 24 hours. But this is what happened in between.
So I opened up the oyo app, after a real long time and looked up hotels nearby. I wanted to avoid Paharganj area due to a bad hotel stay last time, but it seems it was the only option. Hotels and me don't have a good history and relationship, proven time and again. I looked up for a decent hotel with an AC room and a washroom(the bare minimum) within my budget and it threw up thousands of options right from Paharganj. I chose one and booked a room, got some discount promised in lieu of online payment as a promotion by oyo. So I wasted no time and the deal was done.
I reached there, the manager was happy about the booking but frowned when he found that I had already made an online payment. Apparently the actual charge was twice of what I had paid, and its later on I found that most oxo hotels outrightly reject online payments through the oyo app for the same reason. Well! its not my fault. If they are unhappy with the oyo way, they should delist and go solo.
Still I was shown two different rooms, neither one looked like the pics of the hotel rooms on the app. But after dealing with a whole day of extreme heat and crowd of New Delhi, I was happy about my own washroom and an AC. I came down back to the lobby, subconsciously debating and finally accepting the room(it was mostly for a day, I explained myself, however tiny and scary the room may seem). That's when the manager informed me the AC doesn't work and I will have to make do without an AC!
Now I have lived in Paharganj before and I know this to be a cost saving technique. No AC = barely any electricity bill, no matter what you promised the customer when taking there hard earned cash. The same thing happened last time when I was forced to leave the hotel in the middle of the night because the AC worked only 3 hours of the promised 24 hours, while everything from the mattress to the water from the faucet was boiling hot. I succumbed last time, paid my entire days bill and left for another tiring journey to north delhi, where I knew the only middle class hotel of delhi, which served what it advertised. But that was then and this is now. I was not going to let go this time.
I had a heated argument with the manager, who told me my only options were to take the room without AC or shift to any other sister oyo hotel. There were many cheaper oyo hotels in the neighbourhood which would take me in at those charges but I knew there won't be no air conditioning there either, but that would be by design. This one is a fraud and it needs to be taken down. I dialled 100. I decided to let Delhi police shine the light of law on this issue.
I took a seat and within half an hour two police men arrived at the spot. I introduced myself and explained to them my issues with my booking. One of them was really happy to meet me, as apparently he was Haryanvi and I worked as a medical professional at the top most hospital situated in Haryana. This connection seems oddly vague, but I will hold on to the theory that it helped me.
The police men were convinced that the hotel manager was in the wrong and ordered him to give me a full service as promised by the app through which I booked the hotel. I couldn't be happier and more relieved. The manager looked grumpy and frustrated. Like I said, couldn't be happier! 😜
I went to my room finally, switched on the AC, fell on the bed exhausted. What clicked me was that as per cost saving malpractices of the hotels here, they would switch off the AC after a few hours, and make an excuse of load shedding, when I very well knew the area was far too important economically to not receive uninterrupted 24 hours electricity in the national capital. So I called up oyo customer service and have the hotel staff conveyed that the air conditioner must not be switched off voluntarily, or the number 100 will be dialled again!
The rest of the stay was just fine, I didn't switch off the AC even when I felt cold, just to spite them and increase there electricity bill. Sorry Mother Nature, but I guess- collateral damage. So my one word of advise to people looking for hotels in Paharganj- Run!! Far far away! I checked on the internet and I was not the only one going through this with Oyo. The question this incident truly begs to ask is how long this broken business model is going to work for Oyo, I don't think long unless drastic changes are made which makes both the customers and hotel owners happy.
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