Make the most of IRCTC

Although it lacks the friendliness of world-class e-Commerce websites, IRCTC.co.in (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation), the train ticket booking website of Indian Railways is possibly the most trafficked e-Commerce website in India due to the monopoly it enjoys in online ticket reservation & the sheer volume of transactions that it processes. There is news of IRCTC offering APIs for external parties to carry out reservations from their websites.

(Update: 27-May-10) If you wish you did not have to use IRCTC at all but still book tickets online, you can consider using alternative websites  

Till the time there are more such user-friendly options, here are some tips to make the most of IRCTC -
  1. Checking for accommodation availability, status of wait-listed tickets etc is much faster on IRCTC than the official Indian Railways website that has umpteen ads & a clumsy interface.
  2. You can book tickets online up to 90 days ahead of your planned traveling date. Even if you change your plans, the cancellation charges are low when compared to the premium price you would otherwise have to pay closer to the date of travel.
  3. Note however that e-tickets can only be canceled online (if submitted before 24 hours) and the electronic refund to your bank can take more than 3 days.
  4. You can now book wait-listed e-tickets and during the reservation process opt to be considered for allotment against 50% of Tatkal quota if you feel your chances of getting a confirmed ticket are low.
  5. If you are well acquainted with the site's interface, the QuickBook option available from the left navigation menu lets you book your ticket in fewer than normal steps
  6. If you are a frequent traveller, you can maintain the names of passengers in a Master List and auto-populate these details during the reservation process.
  7. Understand the transaction charges of the bank through which you are transacting so that you can save some money. While some banks charge a flat rate of Rs.10 per transaction some banks deduct 1.65% to 1.8% of the transacted amount. If you have multiple bank accounts, choose the percentage deduction option for low value (less than Rs.500) transactions and the flat rate charge for high value transactions. Purchasing with a credit card attracts higher surcharge.
If you have any tips using the website, please leave a comment.

Also see:
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maven Crash Course - Learn Power Query, Power Pivot & DAX in 15 Minutes

Image
In the Maven Crash Course " Learn Power Query, Power Pivot & DAX in 15 Minutes ", Chris Dutton walks through a hypothetical business case while showcasing the power of modern Excel tools like Power Query, Power Pivot and DAX. Power Query is used to extract, transform, and load data from external sources like SQL databases, PDF and CSV files. A relational model is created to join the tables without writing a single formula. Exploratory analysis is done using Power Pivot and Data Analysis Expressions (DAX). Data Analysis Expressions is the language that we can use to define new calculated columns and measures to enhance our Data Model instead of the traditional cell formulas that we'd typically use if our data was stored in worksheets. Pivot Charts and slicers are used to design a simple interactive report that the sales managers can use to analyze revenue trends and product performance.
Read more

"Data Prep & Exploratory Data Analysis" course by Maven Analytics

Image
The Maven Analytics course on " Data Prep & Exploratory Data Analysis " by Alice Zhao is a beginner-friendly introduction to machine learning with Python. It covers the key steps of the data science workflow, including: Gathering Data Scoping a Project Modeling Data Sharing Insights Cleaning Data Exploring Data Modeling Data  Sharing Insights The presentation deck which is available as a download crisply summarizes the essential details and is a great reference to keep going back to. The course is well-suited for aspiring data scientists looking to get hands-on experience with the data prep and EDA stages of the machine learning workflow using Python and Jupyter Notebook. 
Read more

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2024 Generative AI Professional Course & Certification Exam (1Z0-1127-24)

Image
I was happy to learn about the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2024 Generative AI Professional Course with video tutorials and the Certification Exam (1Z0-1127-24) from their newsletter. I found it extremely useful, timely, and relevant. The course, with about 6 hours of videos, provided me with a comprehensive view of what it takes to build a Generative AI application. Although some parts reference OCI services, much of the course remains vendor neutral. Rohit Rahi and his team at Oracle have done a great job of structuring the beginner-friendly yet comprehensive course so well, covering all the essentials across four modules. The curriculum strikes an excellent balance between depth and accessibility.  While Gen AI output is typically non-deterministic, I was surprised to learn that they can be made completely deterministic under certain conditions. Specifically, in the OCI Gen AI service, setting the temperature parameter to 0 produces consistent, deterministic output for a g...
Read more