We booked IB Greens apartment in chennai Oct 2010, Initial booking was made with promises that are not being fullfilled by IB now. they dragged the agreement signing for 2 years quoting various reasons and until now they are not clear on number of floors, UDS. Now that, they have comeup with new agreement – completely one sided and no clear indication of number of floor, UDS, SBA Increase, change in carpet area/floor plan, shared club house for different phases as against seperate club house and many other issues ( .. if required i can update back later)

We have now applied for cancellation of the booking and asking IB to refund the complete amount paid for booking the apartment, IB is not responding on the details of refund but when we call customer care, they are quoting that we need to pay penalty of 5% of total sale price ! – this is mentioned in the Booking Agreement, the booking agreement also says, that agreement should be made within 1 year of the booking, if the booking is not made within 1 year of the booking IB will have to pay 9% interest … in addition to this, they have added few clauses that cancellation should not be intitiated by buyers. Now IB is asking us to sign a cancellation process which makes us to agree for penalty as per booking agreement.

With our little knowledege on real estate we understand

1. The booking agreement is not an agreement and and just provisional booking form.
2. its been more than 2 yeras old and when exceeds 6 months it will become null and void.
3. As per the CCI(competation commission of India) any terms and conditions which is one sided is not acceptable and considerded as Void.
4. Our refund request is not our own and because of IB failure to deliver the project intime. Till date they are not clear it will be 7 floor or 19 floor. During booking they informed 7 floors and if 19 floor your UDS is almost nil which is deviation from the booking terms.
Question :

1) what should be our step to get the refund, have you seen customers approaching with this kind of problems and how they have handled it?. we have lost 2 years since then the real estate prices have gone up, IB can cancel our booking and sell with latest price and making profit. we have already went through too much stress because of IB attitude towards us and IB billing departement asking to pay the first installement without even signing the agreement and also penalty of 18% for delay in payments . we had multiple meeting with IB staff without any change in IB stand on the agreement and so we are planning to cancel. I am attaching the booking agreement snip related to the cancellation/refund from booking agreement. We are a team of buyers, we got introduced ourselfs after forming a google group when we had to face the problems from IB. We are stuck now, we need correct plan of action and without any further delay and stress for us. Based on your expertise, i would request you to let us know the next steps for us.

2) Will we be able to get our monies back based on the booking agreement? .. is the booking agreement considered at all after 2 years ?

3) We also think, the IB Higher Management may not be aware of the staff and local management’s attitude to customers, if there a way to escalate our issues?

Appreciate your time on reading this long mail. thanks for your support.

Regards,
R.Yakgna Kumar