IRCTC Alternatives

The IRCTC.co.in website has to be the most trafficked e-commerce site in India as you can book a train ticket online within minutes by paying a few rupees extra rather than buying them from a Railway ticket counter which has perennially long queues. In April 2010, there were over 7 million transactions carried out. The website has an Alexa Rank of 474.

These impressive figures are probably not due to the quality of the website but due to the monopoly that it enjoys. Like many, I've endured the slow-loading pages but since the last few months I'm happy to have discovered alternatives to IRCTC.

Since a couple of years, IRCTC has started providing an API at a hefty fee for third-party vendors. As a result, there are now a bunch of websites now that offer a superior interface & experience for buying train tickets online at a slightly higher cost, like -
I've tried the first two & am impressed with the clean interface & relative speed with which you can book tickets.


 The MakeMyTrip site interface (click to enlarge)

Booking a Tatkal ticket on Cleartrip appeared faster although it still probably hits IRCTC's servers. Some of these sites also occasionally have special offers. For instance, Cleartrip is giving away a cash back of upto Rs.100 on train bookings done through Net Banking till May 31st, 2010.

Also see:
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools

Comments

  1. Pranjal7/20/2010 10:17:00 PM

    I have an IRCTC account which is locked second time.
    When i tried to reset the password through forget password link, it asks User id, question and Answer. I provided all the details and it throws an error "Answer is Incorrect". This happend second time and both the times i tried to login through the actual password.
    I waited for a week and there was no response from IRCTC customer care. I called them up on 24 Hrs. Customer Support at 011-23340000 and it took about 12 calls to make them understand about the issue. When ever i called up the customer support the person attnding the call will redirect me to someone else after listening to my detail and again i need to explain whole story, inshort that was waste of time and money.
    I sent an email at care@irctc.co.in also submit at http://www.consumercourt.in/railways/14030-irctc-login.html and got an automated email as Ticket Confirmation for the request.
    IRCTC should hire service and satisfaction oriented support executives so that it a common man has no pain of wasting time and money.

    Can someone please help me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous12/26/2011 12:17:00 PM

    Till there is a competitor for irctc, they wont wake. Remeber, they are a agmark brand govt office. they come to office for doing work, they will do what they have to do. they dont have to hear u boss.

    ReplyDelete

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