The Yellow Cycle - Punctured Experience

Update: The owner of The Yellow Cycle personally visited us, apologized for the experience and, refunded our money a day after our experience. Very nice of her to do so. I think it is only fair to mention that here.

There is this site called The Yellow Cycle which promises you "experiences". You can gift an experience to your loved one. The concept was amazing and I thought I'd gift my wife an experience on her birthday. Well. As the "experience" unfolded, I discovered that their "wow" stops with the concept. The execution leaves little room to doubt that it could be done any worse. In fact, I daresay they score a near perfect -10.

It all starts with you paying them all the money upfront and listening to some sweet-talk about how you would want your experience to be rolled-out. Rest assured that they note every detail of yours - in water. Once the payment is over, the surprise part starts. But hang on! There's a catch. The surprise starts mostly for the person who paid. NOT for the intended audience. You get calls from them asking you to do something within a matter of hours (In their idyllic world, a customer who pays also waits under his phone all day to take instructions from them and plan his moves). Then you realize that they are like a rookie who is on on-the-job training. They change timelines, change schedule of events and the events themselves. Well. I reckon I just drew up the list of things that make up an “experience”. So, basically, everything changes as per the whims, fantasies, hallucinations, demand-supply-scenarios, mood of the owner/office peon and (probably his second paternal uncle). You pay for something and when the experience is over, you’d be more surprised at what you’ve got (rest assured, for all the wrong reasons).

What tops everything is their “delivery”. For starters, they strictly work on the “Indian Stretchable Time” regimen. I reckon their policy also disallows acknowledgement of any faults at their end. They just don’t pick-up calls if you ring them trying to ask about a delivery not happening (Heard of turkeys burying heads in the sand?). In essence, you will observe an orifice between what the website says and what actually transpires sufficient enough for planet Jupiter to pass comfortably. (Now re-read the statement about them not picking up calls).

Just avoid them like the plague.

On second thoughts, plague doesn't make you so mad.