Hi everyone, I have been using this website for the past 3-4 months without any trouble whatsoever. I saw many reviews that speak bad about the rail tour packages of this website. Since I havent booked any rail tour packages through this site, I wont speak a word about that. I am reviewing only the the website’s major use.yeah.to book tickets online without having to stay in those long queues we see at the reservation counters.
First off, it is a good job done by the rail dept. to build such a website(i never expected such kind of website from indian govt.!) . I am not sure if they maintain this website by updating the content everyday, but so far so good.
The website requires registration inorder to book tickets(which was the case with me, I didnt see any guest things).ok fine.the login page is well organised. I dont know if every faiclity provided there is useful, but still its worth a visit if you want to kill time. A hindi version of this website is also available.
Ok you enter your login id and password and enter the welcome page.Thankfully, the page hosts the book ticket feature so you dont have to search for it if you are using this website for the first time. Now have you people noticed one thing? Look at that address bar? What do you see? Is it http or https? http right.this website is not encrypted(https stands for http secured) that is any hacker can hack this website and have access to our credit card info which we use in this website.Also since it is not encrypted the webpage will be slow to load in some browsers. A majority of complaints I saw here was that website was painfully slow. The primary reason is this website is not encrypted unlike internet banking.This is a major drawback of this website and there have been cases of hacking bank accounts of people who used irtctc. So be careful. Although irctc doesnt store any credit card(they claim that).but a hacker can know about it when the transaction is being made.
Ok so coming back to the ticket booking facility. The online booking is very convenient since there is option of e-ticket/i-ticket, broad info of trains etc etc. Booking tickets is an easy procedure and safe because there will lot of stages where there is verification and you can revert at any stage.Making payment is also fine since payment can be made through a variety of options.
One useful feature for frequent travellers(especially as family) is the option for adding passengers. The cancellation procedure is also fine(through my experience).i got refund within 2 days.
Well these are the experiences which I had with this website.So far so good.Railways must make this facility a lot public since I feel this a highly under-utilized resource only because it is by government. I didnt have any bad issues with this till now.
The website has been quite fast on loading maybe because my office lan internet is very fast. I dont have much idea about "rail-tour-package-bad-experiences" since I havent used that facility(i never feel like taking such big risks:D). Please take this review in a positive note(and for all those people who had bad experience with this website, dont shower your wrath on me).
Updated on Oct 1st.
Exactly 12 hrs after writing this review I tried to login on this website. But it was showing "Service Unavailable" .OMG! LoL!.but after 3-4 refreshes in my browser it was all OK.
hehe.got scared.i felt as if irctc had thanked me for writing such a good review about them the previous day.