Indian Railways has finally done it... And helped us do away with many a headache!!https://irctc.co.in/ - Definitely a blessing in a good guise!! Effective, fast and just about perfect. And in fact loaded with quite a few attractive perks (in the form of some lucky draw that gives "Great Complimentary Gifts Every Week!". Gifts offered are
Free Ticket (To 1 person),
Special Gifts from IRCTC (For 4 people),
Free ITZ Cash Cards (For 4),
Free Gas Geyser / Inverter (For 1),
Free Done Cards (For 5) as of now!!) to ensure that extra Customer Satisfaction.
A very attractive feature is the option of providing with choices for e-ticket (i.e. get a print out of the ticket and carry it) or i-ticket (order for the ticket which will physically be delivered to you at your preferred address). Also the Tatkal facility is available.
As for the payment details, a surcharge of 25-40 INR is charged based on the class you wish to travel in. Also your Bank will charge you for the Transaction as per their rules.
Now for the User Interface:
Nice and User-friendly.
Good usage of colors and pop-up windows.
Proper usage of information providers in the form of buttons etc. Caters to almost all the needs that might arise while checking for availability or while booking the tickets.
Has good add-on features that go that extra way to help you (e.g. While adding names to the list of travelers you can opt to add details of a person who travels frequently on to the "Select Passengers from your Master List" option for further perusal).
Good and well defined Error Messages. Other messages displayed are informative and precise too.
The section where you need to enter details of the travelers is well designed with all necessary information clustered together under proper sub headings.
Functionalities:
1. Offers a handful of useful options like "Quickbook", "Terms and Conditions for General Booking", "Cancellation Procedure", "Track Your Ticket", "Plan my Travel", "Cancel/Re-Print E-Ticket" etc. Loads of other features are also available in the form of "Shubh Yatra" (A scheme for Frequent Travelers which says "Get back up to 10% of your AC ticket fare as Railway Points. You can use these Railway Points to get free tickets at https://irctc.co.in, once you have accumulated 500 Railway Points in your account."), "SBI Railway Card" etc. The "Booking History" as well as the general "User Profile" options is also available. The special "Mumbai season ticket " is an attractive offer too.
"Book Ticket", "Get Fare", "Show Route", and “Show Availability" buttons do the needful required while booking tickets.
"Make Payment" takes you to the Payment Options section which offers a variety of Credit and Debit Card Payment options. The Page is redirected to the specific Bank Login page in accordance with your choice.
Safety:
1. The website ensures safe transaction by disabling the "Back" and "Refresh" buttons of the browser. Also "Connection Timeout" logs you out.
- The transition to the specific Bank Website also seems pretty safe as there’s no exchange of potentially sensitive information...
Additional Support:
1. E-Mails about all your transactions are sent to the E-Mail ID you had used while signing up.
An anomaly:
- Once I was trying to print my Ticket immediately after completing my booking and the page was displaying a garbage value for my Driving License No. (A formal ID like your Passport or PAN Card or DL is required to be mentioned while doing the booking and carried for identification while traveling) I had to separately go to "Cancel/Re-Print E-Ticket" option, type in my password again and then provide with the correct DL number to print my ticket.
This site on the whole seems very promising. But it should continue adding on more attractive features. Also, once the User count increases hopefully it will be able to do the load balancing effectively. The Home Page is a bit overstuffed with ads. But as a growing website I guess, these things cannot be avoided.
I had to wait for my Travel Agent to do me a favor and get me my ticket as soon as possible. But now it’s all in my hands. This website might actually give the Travel Agents a run for their money!! Give this website a must try if you travel often...
Thanks for the reading... :)