The shoddy experiences with Goibibo and Redbus

I had earlier praised Redbus on this blog(http://andy161.blogspot.in/2012/03/10-reasons-why-i-book-bus-tickets.html), and that is why I write this post, to give the other perspective. Earlier last month, when I needed to book tickets to Hyderabad, I sought to use the ICICI 10% discount code for the tickets. For some weird reason, it was not working. When I called up customer care, they sought to put the blame on my browser/cache, advised me to refresh and try etc. When even that did not work, they claimed that I was no longer eligible for that offer. When I still went ahead and booked the tickets w/o the coupon code, they even refused a goodwill waiver, stating that I had already used another lesser value discount code. When I challenged them about another ticket, then they stated the real reason that they would not apply discount codes to tickets once booked. Fair enough, but why give a misleading response and try deflecting blame? From the fact that they took down the ICICI offer code the next day, it seems that they had realized the technical issue or else had let it expire without renewal(likelier reason). While I have no issue with their technology, this experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

But their competitor GoIbibo was no better. Even their coupon code worked with great difficulty and repeated efforts. Their customer care was little knowledgeable about the website, and did not call back about failed payments/unconfirmed bookings status. This was for both bus and flight tickets. And to top it all, their search platform is quite cumbersome. So without discounts to compensate for that, who in their right mind would use it over a Redbus or a cleartrip?