IRCTC Tatkaal booking. Review on Irctc

I am back again with another review. I wish to give a general view of the web site and then put my review comments on Tatkaal booking using IRCTC.co.in

Speed of the site is varies from time to time. Sometimes server is unreachable. Server should ideally have load management so that load on the server could be distributed. Also, load distribution should be scaled up as necessary based on the pick load on the server to ensure that the server remains operational even under extreme conditions.

Login screen is very light with minimal graphics and advertisements. However, I feel that general information, guidelines etc could have been moved to another related site or another server to ensure faster loading of login screen.

Once you login the you would usually go to the booking section. There are two different pages called "plan my travel" and "quick book". "Plan my travel" screen provides users option to enter all necessary information including source and destination station names, reservation type(AC 2 tiar, AC 3 tier, Sleeper class etc.) etc. You need to select if you wish to book an e-ticket or an i-ticket. e-ticket is the electronic ticket or a document that can be printed and used as a ticket provided you carry a valid photo ID. i-ticket is a physical railway ticket that would be sent by courier to your registered address. i-Tickets most be booked atleat 3 days in advance. i-ticket doesn't require any photo ID to be shown during ticket checking. i-Tickets can be booked online but these can be cancelled only at railway reservation counters/offices. On cancellation of i-ticket refund will directly be debited to the credit/debit account that was used for booking. No cash refund is allowed. It takes 3-5 working days to get the refund on canceling a ticket.

Let me come back to  other information that you need to provide for booking. You must select Tatkal booking option if you are trying to book a Tatkal ticket. Tatkal is a special quota for booking tickets two days before the date of journey. There is an additional fee for tatkaal reservation. No concession is there for senior citizens in this quota. Cancelling of Tatkaal ticket is possible upto 24 hours before departure of the train. Only 25% refund is given back on such cancellation(I fail to understand why such a heavy penalty should be there for Tatkaal cancallation.) Once you provide necessary information then you can find trains and choose one to continue booking. In the next screen you need to fill in the names of the passengers. You can choose auto upgrade option where your reservation can be upgraded to higher class before chart preperation. There is one feature missing here that is to choose an options as follows

1. None

1. Book ticket only if [     ] passengers get confirmed seats(Number of passengers to be filled in)

   
   




2. Book ticket only if [     ] passengers get confirmed seats or RAC

   
   

There is a good option to ensure that lower birth is alloted for elderly passengers. However, sidelower option is not available which has no justification. Also, it could have been better if there was an option to specify the number of lower births required. Think how would a group of 6 retired persons  book lower birth for all passengers where maximum 2 lower births can be requested at the time of booking?

After all details are filled in then proceed to book. Payment options are easy to use. Credit card or online banking account is required here. Once payment is successful then ticket will be generated and sent through email. You can optionally generate the ticket instantly and print the same from booking confirmation page(automatically appears on successful booking).

Quick book option is similar to above but seat selection(e.g book ticket only if at-least one lower birth is allocated.) option is missing and this is unacceptable.

Here are few improvement suggestions that can make irctc experience much better than what it is today.

1. Allow advance money transfer so that you will have advance amount in irctc A/C. This ensures that you need not go through payment sites during booking. This ensures that you can book tickets much faster.

   
   




2. There should be an option to place advance booking requests. For example you wish to book tickets for diwali holiday. You will login, fill in all the details and mention on which date ticket booking attempt should be made. This makes life easier for people who wants to plan things in advance.

   
   




3. Add options to allow users not to book waitlisted tickets.

   
   




4. There are so many page transitions during booking process. It would be great to allow one click booking option.

   
   




5. Server load must be distributed. Just after 8 AM server becomes non-responssive for 15 minutes due to excessive load on the server. Tatkaal booking is almost impossible as of now.

   
   

6. Online booking saves money for railways as no human resource is required for booking and cancellation. This should offset the cost of online fund transfet. Hence, railways shouldn't charge any additional transaction charges for online booking.

1. irctc.co.in site should allow pressing back button except when fund transfer or ticket allocation is in progress. Session expires too soon. Session time out value should be increased.

   
   




2. If the user has logged on at 8:59 and tries to book tatkaal ticket after 5 minutes then he gets an error saying tatkaal tickets can be booked aftre 8:00 AM only. The page should maintain a clock(to show approximate time/Can't be truely synchronized with server clock) so that such errors can be avoided.

   
   

Here are few comments on Tatkaal reservation using IRCTC. During tatkaal booking hours(8 AM - 8:15AM) it shows'Service Unavailable' You might face this problem on every screen transition. If you refresh the screen you have the risk that you would be asked to log in again due to poor design of the server software. My tips on such errors is that for tatkal booking, you can use refresh button only when you see "service unavailable". Don't try to refresh just because server is slow. This helps in avoiding forced log out conditions. Also, create more than one account and open 2-3 browsers(Internet explorer, Google chrome & Firefox) and remain logged in using different IDs and try booking in parallel. If your session is closed on one browser due to any reason you can still book ticket using other browser.

If you need tatkaal tickets urgently then you must try at the booking counters. irctc tatkaal booking failure rate for me is almost 90%.(1 out of 10 was successful)