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All tickets can be cancelled. Question is, how much is it worth for :)

why is this thread called so ? i thought the irctc site is quite efficient ! its been a boon for booking tickets at your convenience and refunds are also processed very promptly. their customer service ids are also monitored well - i have always had prompt responses for quite a few TDR cases that i filed earlier. the refund takes 4-5 months but then thats the turn around time of Indian railways and not irctc's fault

i just wish IRCTC starts a GOOD frequent traveller program - their current one is very skewd for A/C travellers only and is not really paisa vasool.

recently, CLEAR TRIP has also started offering rail tickets
they are running a 10% cash back offer for master card holders.

You can cancel but it should be before 24 hours to the start of the journey.

However, you lose 75% of the travel rate as well as the 'Tatkal charges'.

Eg: if ticket cost is 400 + 150 (tatkal charges for SL class), all you get back is 25% of Rs 400 ie Rs 100!

Tickets booked under Tatkal cannot be cancelled 24 hours prior to the journey if they are confirmed. Prior to that they can be cancelled but the one only gets about 25% of the fair back.

Has anyone noticed the Official Website of our Indian Railway.
Welcome to Indian Railway Passenger reservation Enquiry

Its a PATHETIC website in my very honest opinion, with design which looks a class 8 student did while he was chatting with his girl friend. LOL

the page is FULL Of ADVERTISEMENTS, and pops up more ads while you submit queries for checking availability.

Looks they are not able to meet cost of running website and are generating huge amount of money from forced pop ups and ads to meet the cost.

Come on Indian Rail, Wake up, this website is one of most visited website by foreigners and i don't think its giving a professional looks.

Our railways already has many nightmares waiting for travelers everyday,
Stale Food, Cockroaches, delayed arrivals, contaminated water supply, poisoned loots, stolen baggage, etc,
lets not irritate passengers before they travel at-least.

Also the IRCTC website remains non-responsive when it comes to ticket booking at 8 A.M., I am sure many here must have pulled their hairs, if you waited so many days to get a TATKAL ticket 2 days before journey, but the site remains non-responsive till the time Tatkal quota is exhausted.
:deadhorse

Hire some professional companies, who can cluster servers to handle that much traffic, sites like BBC, CNN, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google doesn't crash easily so its not IMPOSSIBLE if you have the right config to handle traffic burst, but seems our government is not capable of giving us a error free travel booking experience.

My experience with the site has been great. I'm older than most people on the forum, and I still remember the nightmares of physical ticket booking, waiting in endless stinky queues, touts, etc. Thank God, those days are gone. You young fellows on this forum don't know how lucky you have it these days.

+1

I remember those days when I was at IIT Delhi and we would take a DTC bus to SN Market where Railways had a booking counter. Then it was waiting in an endless line (and not knowing whether any seats are available or not). U reach the counter and encounter some hopelessly bad official who is not at all interested in serving u. We used to fill in 4-5 reservation forms for different trains hoping to get a seat in at least 1. It was a days job to get a seat booking in those days (late 90s)

Thank God for irctc. Those days are yesteryears!

Which browser are you using..in my IE 7/8, popups are automatically blocked.

For a govt run site, IMO, this is as good as it gets. Given the backend complexity and heavy traffic, it gets the job done in the most user friendly way.

Please also remember, for such a heavy internet transaction site, which cannot afford a downtime, it is not easy to change. As per some reports, IRCTC is the biggest money spinner for credit/debit card companies. Just for some useless bells & whistles, do you seriously think something needs to be fixed which ain't broken.

Also, please remember, that this site, by definition of it target audience, needs to have an approach of maximum compatibility.

^^ Ha. I remember the days when my father used to send telegram to delhi to book the return tickets. First thing after reaching delhi we used to do was to stand in that stupid queue and confirm our bookings.

Note: My memory is good..I am not that old!

Regards,

I use IRCTC quite often for my Dad who likes to travel to Pune by train (does anyone here remember going to pune by train, lol)

60% of the time it works without a hitch. A few times a couple of refreshes do the trick. 25% of the time it does not work.

Once I made a booking using my debit card. The page did not load after entering my details. I called IRCTC helpline (surprisingly efficient helpline) who assured me that the booking had not gone through.

I made the booking again, successfully. When I checked my account, I was debited twice. A simple email to them and a week later the amount was credited back in my account.

I guess the site tlked about was indianrail.gov.in and not irctc. IRCTC is definitely the single most important automation that has happened to Indian Railways.

Yes the main frustration is indianrail.gov.in site
however irctc is Pain in Back when it comes to ticket booking in earlier morning hours when tatkal quota is released 8 A.M.
you can never book tatkal tickets around 8A.M. and i would not be surprised that if there's a commercial racket run behind the server issue. :eek:

Come-on guy's we forgot the point which was raised by GHPK. All the time we cannot compare our self with past it is the feature what we have to think and talk about. I agree with him IRCTC is a poor site. Slow in speed with lot of pop-ups on the site look's bad with bad color combination used. Forget about international standards it's not even a Mumbai standards.:uncontrol

There is a thread on this ??
Acchaa, I have booked tickets for many people
other than myself and found no issues at all.
Even my colleague Sankar books every now and then.
No problems till date. But, cancellations etc. I have not
tried till date. So that area is untouched yet.

I think I have mentioned this earlier in this thread, but to reiterate: I have booked and cancelled tickets on IRCTC so many times that I have lost count of it. This includes booking for family in India when I was abroad.

The service has been one of the best that I have seen. The tickets are delivered to the delivery address the next day, if booking done before 4PM, or the day after if the booking is done after 4PM. Not one single instance of ticket gone missing. Now with the e-ticket, life is even more easier.

Cancellation is a pain in the pocket, but not the process. Your cancellation will trigger an email with the details and also the process to follow if your account is not credited within 3 days. I have never had an issue of credit not happening.

So, bottom line, IRCTC is a great site. Very useful in saving yourself a trip to the reservation booth. The process are in place and working beautifully. As for the pop-ups, yes, they are a pain; but then, use a pop-up blocker. Unlike certain other transaction sites, IRCTC does not use pop-up to display and transaction data or status.