I am not sure if any of you have come across these words.. - Service Unavailable.... Not the common words that we hear on a day to day basis right??? Hmmmm.... try using our Indian Railway and Tourism Corporation Ltd (irctc) Website - you will be more than familiar with these 2 words... it makes me frustrated, furious and irritated to even think of going to irctc, forget abt the booking and the notorious Service Unavailable.
I am a frequent traveler. Need to rely on trains considering the safety and comfort. But its not so comfortable to book a ticket for train journey. Why is it so? I have been using irctc for all my bookings for the past 3.5 years. The site maintenance is the worst I have ever seen. Most of the times, the servers are busy - you end up waiting minutes before you can even see the log-in page.
All the advance bookings and tatkal bookings start at 8Am in the morning, in-line with the reservation counters. I usually sign in to the irctc site at around 7.50Am to make sure I am at least logged in. Then, every minute I need to click on the Home link to make sure the session is not expiring. The moment its 8Am, the Service Unavailable page shows up. After so many attempts to re-login and refresh the irctc site, I need to give up booking the tickets for that day ( after 9Am or so, the site would be up and running again but whats the use? No tickets left to be booked!)
Every attempt of mine to book a tatkal ticket will have to go through this - Sign in to the website early, get Service Unavailable page at the needful moment, after several attempts manage to go to payment, payment processed by bank but failed to book ticket and finally see the number of available tickets dropped from 280 to W/L57 or higher. Frustration is an under-stated word!!
I was thinking about this sometime ago... Why is it the site would be unavailable for the first half an hour when the tatkal/advance booking starts? May be high network traffic and higher number of ppl logging in to book the tickets.... How is it that I cant even look at the train list while the number of available tickets are getting decreased in 50s every 45 secs? Ok.. May be ppl are waiting in long queues at the reservation counters from 4AM in the morning. Then why exactly was this system built if every individual should go to the counters only for a successful booking...?!?! Hmmmm.... Here is the answer.. Must be for the agents.. yes.. the brokers... who have a tie up with the greedy railway employees.. The trouble these ppl cause to the general public cant be explained in words. Agents do bulk bookings blocking almost all the tatkal quota tickets creating a virtual demand. A middle class person is thus thrown to buy a tatkal ticket at Rs.200 extra from the agent. The agents and the railway employees who are letting this happen are enjoying the hard earned money of an Indian citizen.
After all the mumbling and cribbing, irctc slightly listened to this problem. The solution given - No agent log in allowed for the first thirty minutes (I mean till 8.30Am every day). What is this solution aiming at? When the problem lies within the ppl working for railways, will delaying the log in time of agents going to be of any use?
CAG - The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has done a survey on irctc website and found that most of the transactions are not done by a genuine user. According to the report, the servers are being made unavailable by the railway authorities for the few minutes so that the agents can carry on with their bulk bookings. Its been found that - an individual has performed around 180 transactions in a minute!!! (180 tickets in a minute, while I struggle more than 180 mins to book a single ticket). The genuine user suffers Service Unavailable while the agents earn easy money. CAG is planning to change the site and booking guidelines sooner (Hoping it to be a real useful change).
My weird experiences with irctc -
(i) The session expires even before it logs me in. Not once but multiple times.......
(ii) In the "Plan my travel" page, the calendar never pops up. The worst part is,The date of travel cant be entered manually!
(iii) While the train list is populated successfully, the ticket availability list shows Service Unavailable.
(iv) The Security Check (entering alphanumerical image data in the text box for validation) puts me off! The image never shows up even after several refreshes and without the image, booking cant be proceeded.
(v) Once the bank is selected, payment page stops processing (the page should move to the payment page of the bank)
(vi) Payment processed successfully to find out that the session at irctc has expired.. :( (the worst of all)
(vii) Showing up of Service Unavailable page everywhere possible.
(viii) Suddenly displays a message that "The site is under maintenance. No booking/cancellation of e-tickets and i-tickets possible. Sorry for the inconvenience casued" with no prior notice. Sometimes its so weird, it doesn't show up the important details like downtime start time and end time. You need to wait indefinitely till the site is up and running again.
This is the message thrown up today. Note the word - " from time being...... " (seeing this for 4 hrs now) so, site would be down for light years.......
Railways is such a big network and organisation. Its the pride of our nation. Things like these make it as the worst ever experience! Money minded ppl should think of service once in a while and should make the Service Available for general public.....
I am a frequent traveler. Need to rely on trains considering the safety and comfort. But its not so comfortable to book a ticket for train journey. Why is it so? I have been using irctc for all my bookings for the past 3.5 years. The site maintenance is the worst I have ever seen. Most of the times, the servers are busy - you end up waiting minutes before you can even see the log-in page.
All the advance bookings and tatkal bookings start at 8Am in the morning, in-line with the reservation counters. I usually sign in to the irctc site at around 7.50Am to make sure I am at least logged in. Then, every minute I need to click on the Home link to make sure the session is not expiring. The moment its 8Am, the Service Unavailable page shows up. After so many attempts to re-login and refresh the irctc site, I need to give up booking the tickets for that day ( after 9Am or so, the site would be up and running again but whats the use? No tickets left to be booked!)
Every attempt of mine to book a tatkal ticket will have to go through this - Sign in to the website early, get Service Unavailable page at the needful moment, after several attempts manage to go to payment, payment processed by bank but failed to book ticket and finally see the number of available tickets dropped from 280 to W/L57 or higher. Frustration is an under-stated word!!
I was thinking about this sometime ago... Why is it the site would be unavailable for the first half an hour when the tatkal/advance booking starts? May be high network traffic and higher number of ppl logging in to book the tickets.... How is it that I cant even look at the train list while the number of available tickets are getting decreased in 50s every 45 secs? Ok.. May be ppl are waiting in long queues at the reservation counters from 4AM in the morning. Then why exactly was this system built if every individual should go to the counters only for a successful booking...?!?! Hmmmm.... Here is the answer.. Must be for the agents.. yes.. the brokers... who have a tie up with the greedy railway employees.. The trouble these ppl cause to the general public cant be explained in words. Agents do bulk bookings blocking almost all the tatkal quota tickets creating a virtual demand. A middle class person is thus thrown to buy a tatkal ticket at Rs.200 extra from the agent. The agents and the railway employees who are letting this happen are enjoying the hard earned money of an Indian citizen.
After all the mumbling and cribbing, irctc slightly listened to this problem. The solution given - No agent log in allowed for the first thirty minutes (I mean till 8.30Am every day). What is this solution aiming at? When the problem lies within the ppl working for railways, will delaying the log in time of agents going to be of any use?
CAG - The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has done a survey on irctc website and found that most of the transactions are not done by a genuine user. According to the report, the servers are being made unavailable by the railway authorities for the few minutes so that the agents can carry on with their bulk bookings. Its been found that - an individual has performed around 180 transactions in a minute!!! (180 tickets in a minute, while I struggle more than 180 mins to book a single ticket). The genuine user suffers Service Unavailable while the agents earn easy money. CAG is planning to change the site and booking guidelines sooner (Hoping it to be a real useful change).
My weird experiences with irctc -
(i) The session expires even before it logs me in. Not once but multiple times.......
(ii) In the "Plan my travel" page, the calendar never pops up. The worst part is,The date of travel cant be entered manually!
(iii) While the train list is populated successfully, the ticket availability list shows Service Unavailable.
(iv) The Security Check (entering alphanumerical image data in the text box for validation) puts me off! The image never shows up even after several refreshes and without the image, booking cant be proceeded.
(v) Once the bank is selected, payment page stops processing (the page should move to the payment page of the bank)
(vi) Payment processed successfully to find out that the session at irctc has expired.. :( (the worst of all)
(vii) Showing up of Service Unavailable page everywhere possible.
(viii) Suddenly displays a message that "The site is under maintenance. No booking/cancellation of e-tickets and i-tickets possible. Sorry for the inconvenience casued" with no prior notice. Sometimes its so weird, it doesn't show up the important details like downtime start time and end time. You need to wait indefinitely till the site is up and running again.
This is the message thrown up today. Note the word - " from time being...... " (seeing this for 4 hrs now) so, site would be down for light years.......
Railways is such a big network and organisation. Its the pride of our nation. Things like these make it as the worst ever experience! Money minded ppl should think of service once in a while and should make the Service Available for general public.....
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