*Update:**ngpay contacted me after I posted this review and promptly sent me a refund cheque for one of my tickets. Fair enough. Looks like they do listen to customers, at least, to mouthshut reviews. All’s well that end’s well!
**To be fair to them, I must say that the original technical issue was not a serious issue in the world of uncertain GPRS connections. Even the initial customer service experience was very positive in that they voluntarily called back, and were very polite. The only issue was that they consistently kept giving me hope, but nothing was forthcoming. Now that they have served my original request, I feel better about the whole thing.
*
*The earlier review below for the record.*
Scene 1:*
With only one train to Madurai from Bangalore and the huge competition to book Tatkal tickets on the opening day (five days prior to Deepavali), we didn’t want to take any chance. One of us sat in front of the laptop and I was holding the mobile phone with ngpay application on.
*Scene 2:*
I was glad that I could prefill the ticket booking form in ngpay and was only one step away from payment (tickets were available!). IRCTC web servers were lagging behind their mobile servers (probably due to less load here).
*Scene 3:*
I enter my credit card details into ngpay and submit. Lo, it says "Network Connection Failure. Please Retry" or some such message. I hit retry again. Same message.
*Scene 4:*
Meanwhile IRCTC came alive and we booked tickets for the three of us in Tatkal under 3-tier AC (Rs.3000+).
*Scene 5:*
Go to booked history in ngpay and, to my horror, find two tickets booked there! I quickly call their customer care and, in their records, no ticket had been booked. They wanted me to check with my credit card.
*Scene 6:*
Called up the bank and confirmed there have been these two transactions. A helpful ngpay customer care person call me on his own and checks the status with my credit card. So far, I loved them.
*Scene 7:*
The CC person said he’ll escalate it. No response. I called them up again. A different person this time, but very polite and assured it has been escalated and that I’ll receive a positive response.
*Scene 8:*
No response, I call them up again. A repeat of the scene 7. After my desperate plea, they agreed to call me before 11 pm. But, no call. I called them back. They said they’ll call back shortly. Waited till midnight, but no call.
*Scene 9:*
Next day morning onwards, after several calls they ask me to cancel the Tatkal ticket in the railway counter (to get a refund of Rs.1000 against the booking cost of Rs.6500). :-( They said they’ll try to get refund from IRCTC. I got really angry this time. Why would IRCTC refund me more money for ngpay’s mistake? Also, what were they doing all along telling me they’re doing something?
And the biggest irony is their parent company is called Ji Grahak meaning "yes, customer". (EDIT: I have since received a refund, so please ignore the following.) To date, I have not received any money or any call from them. So much for customer care. Sucks.