Apr 26, 2007 03:58 PM
2876 Views
Firstly, for the thoda sa pyaar bit.
I do not remember how and when I discovered online ticketing on IRCTC. But ever since I have discovered it, I have invariably booked my tickets from them. The fact that I get to pay by credit card, the fact that the tickets come home, the fact that I do not have to stand in queue - all these made for a great experience and, in many ways, they are the main reason for its attractiveness. The relatively recently added e-ticket feature makes it even more attractive, and I do not see myself rushing to the railway station in the near future to make my train ticket bookings. In fact the e-ticket was rather handy when I recently needed to book a ticket while on vacation and hence no mailing address where a ticket could reach before the journey date. My brother did the booking online and sent me an email, which I was able to print.
Yet another plus, should you opt for i-tickets is that the tickets are(mostly) delivered within two to three days, and I have rarely had reason to complain on that front.
Other pluses include a master list of passengers - so if you, your wife, your kids, your parents and in-laws etc etc travel regularly you can put all the names into the master list and pick the names of passengers from there.
And then comes the gussa.
I find that IRCTC is particularly unreliable when it comes to berth allocations. The choices you indicate - upper, middle or lower - seem to have absolutely no relevance. To make matters worse, they have done away with a rather useful option they once had which allowed users to specify that they did not want tickets if their berth choices were not met. Hence, until the berths get allotted you will not realise, as I often do to my immense chagrin and anger, that while the adults have been allotted adjacent berths, the kids are either given berths a few bays away(which is not so bad) or in a totally different coach(which is terrible!). This is particularly disappointing because a person going to a railway counter in a station can actually have the ticket booking officer check the available berth options and allot contiguous berths. And then, I find that senior citizens are often allotted upper berths, despite asking for lower berths - irrespective of class of travel. I have exchanged a series of mails with them on this issue, and their standard plea is that this is an issue with the Centralised Reservation System and hence not something they can let users control, a claim which I refuse to accept considering that the "select your berth" option does exist at their own reservation counters.
This issue can be particularly irksome, as it is for us, when it is a family traveling and it means that you have to go to the station if you really, really want the berths of your choice. And when you consider that you pay Rs.35/- as service charge, it sort of begins to cause that little teenie-weenie bit of additional heartburn!
The website speeds are mostly unpredictable and there are some weird password options. Hence a user booking a ticket can complete the entire booking without a single password re-entry post login but if you want to see your old tickets or failed payments, there is a requirement to re-enter the password.
There used to be yet another strange restriction - which might be as much system specific as it might be bureaucratic. And this restriction meant that you could not book tickets from IRCTC between 10 PM and 6 AM(or some such thing). In case you are wondering, that is also the time when computerised booking counters all over the country are closed! I have never understood the logic of this, but it can be a bit irritating. As I write this, I am not sure if it still exists. If it does not, my thanks to IRCTC for doing away with it and apologies for spreading disinformation.
Overall, I would recommend IRCTC but IF(and only if) you are happy with weird berth allocations with no relevance to your needs or if you happen to be booking a ticket for one or two passengers. If you are particular about berth allocations, however, I am afraid queues at railway stations are the only answer, at least until IRCTC does something about it.
