With the festive season travel rush now on, several websites and agents are claiming to provide confirmed rail tickets, while the individual passenger finds himself way down the waiting list, or unable to log on to the online booking site of the railways
The festive season is round the corner. Long queues at every major railway station across the country to buy tickets, is a common scene. The time is perfect for the agents and touts to raise their commission. Catching on this trend, even travel booking websites have joined the bandwagon.
A recent promotional email by travel website MakeMyTrip states that Diwali bookings are open and customers can book early to avoid the rush. It claims, "Over 8 lakh rail bookings at MakeMyTrip have many a happy customer vouching for a delightful online rail-booking experience. Our features-driven rail booking process not only makes your life easy but makes the complete booking process extremely intuitive and time saving. What's more?"
This promotional mail raises two basic issues. While many passenger find it difficult to use the railways booking site, (the pages may not be available or load in a very slow speed by which time he or she may be thrown out by the site) how can the online travel agency claims to provide 'smooth' experiences for its customers? Secondly, all the features, benefits offered by MakeMyTrip are available on the railway booking site as well, then why the travel agency is vouching to provide 'delightful online rail-booking experience' different than the railways?
In an email reply sent through a PR agency, the online travel agency, said, "MakeMyTrip does not own rail tickets or stock inventory for rail tickets, and all bookings that take place on the MakeMyTrip site are bookings made by accessing live inventory of the Indian Railways. Hence, we as a portal or as a ticketing agent do not hoard rail tickets or block inventory. If a customer books on the MakeMyTrip site, he or she will receive the same status of booking as that if the ticket was booked from IRCTC or from the railway counter itself."
It is a known fact that many passengers face issues with the railways booking site, especially during the festive seasons. People have also been complaining for a long time now that online ticket booking, especially 'tatkal', is harassment. There is one or another issue that customers face while booking tickets on the website of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp (IRCTC). Under the tatkal scheme, bookings open at 8am, two days before the actual date of the journey.
Experts say it is a known fact that many agents are hand-in-glove with officials who give them tickets immediately as the windows open, leaving individuals very little or no tickets at all. Now, the rapid expansion of such ticket-booking websites will make it more difficult for individuals to book tickets. And the situation will become even worse for tatkal booking. Also, if a person wants to book online, the IRCTC portal can be used instead of using ticket-booking websites.
Recently, the Indian Railways announced that it was launching a new e-ticketing service that would be reserved for individual users only and would not be open to travel agents. Also, IRCTC has said that it has blocked over 4.5 lakh user IDs, most of them agents, who were found to be violating the rules.
Consumer discussion forums on the internet are flooded with complaints about the tatkal system. People say they are either unable to access their account on IRCTC despite using the correct username and password, or are simply unable to access the website during the scheduled time. (Read, 'Is IRCTC deliberately overlooking complaints about the tatkal scheme?')
Moneylife has consistently maintained that the current tatkal system is being gamed by touts and agents and that all the seats vanish, no sooner the tatkal reservation window opens. Therefore, travellers are unable to book the tickets on their own and they have to depend on these agents who charge higher rates and commissions.
Moneylife has reported that MakeMyTrip had advertised that it was the 'fastest' in booking tatkal tickets. (Read, 'Can makemytrip.com make its customer's day?')
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1. I as a customer also got the same email from MakeMyTrip.com . What's wrong in telling customer to book the rails ticket in advance so that customer don't have to get worried during the actual travel days
2. Where does the email talk about confirmed Rail tickets.
3. Makemytrip, cleartrip and couple of other websites are partners of IRCTC and they just charge service fee which is fixed by IRCTC
Surprised to see Moneylife editorial team coming out with such a lousy comparison of touts and travel websites .