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-   -   Indian Railways Thread | Info, Queries & Reviews (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/commercial-vehicles/36752-indian-railways-thread-info-queries-reviews-31.html)

Some good news, I'd say. At times, it gets too frustrating that I rather go to the railway station to book tickets. Its only a Kilometer away from my home.

Also try the new SMS booking facility, I am told if you know the train & the date, it's a breeze to book & far more reliable during heavy website traffic.

Something wrong with irctc last two days. Website itself is not loading properly - many others are also facing the same issues.

Anyone here has had to band their heads on their laptops?

Not really, it works fine for me and I booked one tatkal ticket and one normal ticket about 2.5 hours back. I do not know if there was some issue yesterday or day before though as I never tried to login. I've always noticed that IRCTC works better when I use Internet Explorer. Not sure if this is the case with everyone or if only I am seeing things. It takes a very long time but at least I do not get the "Page cannot be displayed" error when I book through IE. It definitely boots you out if there is more than one session open under th same IP address.

One feels ashamed at times. Using IRCTC website is one of those experiences. With claims being made everyday of the level of modernisation, growth etc etc, its demeaning to be subjected to this torture. They really need to upgrade there servers and make this process less painful. And all this ranting after I was able to book a tatkal ticket succesfully :(. But the whole process is so stone age like. With all the details in hand and being familiar with there websites design, when I started the quest it showed 40 tickets available. By the time I finished there were just 6 left and I was sure I would not get one. Each step takes ages to complete.

And before you jump the gun, all this was done on a 4 mbps broadband connection. I pity the people who may have slower connections.

Railways is mulling the provision of tatkal booking for 1st AC tickets. Uptil now First class and 1st AC bookings were kept away from tatkal bookings. A hefty charge of Rs 1500/- is proposed to be applied on the tatkal bookings. I dont understand the point of doing this. Rarely have I seen any cancellation sin the 1st AC bookings. Now if they introduce tatkal quota it means the regular no of tickets are reduced which will then allow Railways to charge additional 1.5K for these tickets. :Frustrati:Frustrati

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/c...w/23122900.cms

Guys

Is it possible to cancel a ticket partially? I mean out of a group of 6, can 4 drop out and the rest travel? I've never explored this possibility on irctc.

Any views?

Ya, you can easily do a partial cancellation of e ticket booked on IRCTC. All you have to do is to login to your account and go to 'My Bookings' and click on cancel. You'll get options infront of all the names and you can easily cancel the tickets you want to cancel.

Many thanks. Was very helpful.

Another innovative way to generate revenue.:) Booking Tatkal tickets online is always an issue, considering users are unable to login or process the ticket during the initial 2-3hrs of business. Hopefully, the additional investments being made on the servers to enhance capacity brings some positive results!!

IRCTC has introduced the e-wallet system which allows the user to deposit some money into a virtual wallet within IRCTC and deduct ticket charges from this wallet and thus be free from the hassles caused by payment networks that are slow to respond.
https://www.irctc.co.in/betaDoc/IRCT...er%20Guide.pdf

The problem is that instead of attracting users, the railways have already imposed charges.
1. Registration charge - Rs 250 to setup the wallet.
2. Transaction charge of Rs 5 per transaction.

Oh and one more thing. The deposit in the wallet cannot be refunded. You have to use it up. And the deposit amount should be in multiples of Rs. 100. Which means that there will always be some residual amount left in most wallets.

I can understand the registration charge. But why the transaction charge? Frankly, not worth it unless you are a regular long distance traveller and need confirmed tickets on full capacity trains. If you do not want your travel plans to be held hostage by external payment networks, then the e-wallet is what you need. For everyone else, fuggedaboutit !

Slightly offtopic, but related to IRCTC, I came by train from Mysore to Bangalore via Tuticorin express. Booked an open ticket in a privately operated counter in Kuvempunagar and I noticed that he had access to the old AS400 type of terminal and it was lightening fast.Not sure if there are such counters in Bangalore. He charged one rupee as the booking charge and it bet the hassle of standing in the line at the Mysore city counter.

Agree that IRCTC can fray ones nerves while booking and a visit to dentist would be more pleasurable.

True. Why should they charge transaction charge when our money is parked with them. Frankly I feel the registration-charge itself is overkill.

But this wallet thing would be ideal for folks like me who book a minimum of 8 tickets every month and where booking failures mostly occur when returning from payment gateway. Plus some saving in money (currently pay Rs10 per ticket for SBI transactions, which will get halved).

Yesterday I got a rude shock.

Was looking to book tickets from Bangalore to Palakkad (Kerala). The Kochuveli Garib Rath showed 390 seats available. Booked three tickets, seat preference I gave was 2 lower berths (for my wife, my 1.5 year old son, and my mother in law) and 1 middle berth (for me).

What I got was, one upper, one side upper and one SIDE MIDDLE. :Frustrati

I had thought that the railways had done away with side middles. And how come I am not getting my preferred berths when there are nearly 400 seats available?

Does anyone know how this seat allocation algorithm works?

The side middle is still available on Garib-Rath which is why I avoid that train like the plague. Did you get your seats together, i.e. in the same partition ? In that case count yourself lucky. From my observation - The seat algorithm tries to find all seats as per your requirement - in the same partition for the compartment assigned to your boarding station. If it does not find any, then you are toast! It simply throws anything at random. I once had 6 people on a single booking, seated in three different places across 2 compartments - 4 bogies apart !!

Does your mom come under the senior citizen category and did you mark her as one? In that case, you should have got at least one lower berth. If even that did not work, then obviously, the testing team in IRCTC have not come back from their Diwali vacations - maybe they did not get their tickets. :Frustrati

One thing you can do, is try one more booking with the option to not confirm the booking if 1-2 lower berths are not available. It is a set of options at the bottom of the page. Once you get a convenient booking, you can cancel the existing reservations. God only knows how much money I have donated to the Indian railways as cancellation charges - when I did multiple bookings for the same passengers just to get proper seats. Sometimes I think, they do it on purpose just for idiots like me.stupid: