IRCTC Indian Railways - Booking tatkal ticket by irctc not possible on opening day between 8am to 9am (ID # 1284)
Complaint by
sanjay singh on October 24, 2009, 5:47 pm in Indian Railways
Based on past two years of booking online tickets through Indian Railways online booking system by its website irctc, I have observed that between 8 am to 9am, availability of website is almost rare. Even if one logs in successfully then it will be Impossible for him to book the ticket. But as soon as time passes beyond 9 am, picture becomes different, one can easily book the ticket. Now, the real question is that because of above problem one ... read more
I support this complaint.
Mr. Reddy is a software engineer who took 17 minutes to complete the transaction.
His fingers were fast enough, got tips from a friend to paitently go with sluggish movement of the site etc.
Think of the users who don\'t have idea of firefox, IE, or chrome. Have not felt so many lacunas of dial up or broadband or cable connectivity!
Is this possible for general public to have a ticket of Tatkal, if the software engineer could book a ticket with firefox, broadband, fastfingers, tips of friends in 17 minutes it is certain that general user will at least take not less than 30 minutes and certainly the Tatkal tickets would have been evaporated completely.
Please see the Rly authorities your software engineers are doing what?
Please popularise your site and help the needy otherwise only software engineers would get the tickets no one else!!!!
I support this complaint.
Guys,
Finally booked my ticket.It took 17 minutes to complete an end-to-end transaction. Browser was idle as if halted in after each click.busy logo rotated for couple of seconds after each click, and then browser used to go to \'cold\' state - for both IE(Internet explorer) and firefox. But firefox after several \'minutes\' - read minutes not seconds, used to come live again with excruciating pain, like images would not load, come back as if on a overloaded dialup connection, though I am on broadbad, other sites respond to broad band speed.
here is the catch, IE was not coming back up from the cold state. So please prefer Firefox, IE is sure failure for sloooooooow responding irctc or any other site for that matter.
Availability of berths used to evaporate fast in my steps, like when I intially queried at sharp 8 am, all 302 sleer berths are available. the moment I got payment options - it was 292 at 8:01, when my preferred payment gateway is asking for creditcard details(HDFC) at 8:08 (see 7 minutes passed when I selected HDFC from payment popup - to get HDFC payment area in the screen) - availability is 231. When I entered credit card details and hit pay, it went back to cold state, this time as if my transaction is dead, but it revived after more than 5 minutes of coma state. And I got confirmation at 8:17 am, now the availability I checked out of curiosity is 163.
And for #A it is WL 9/ WL 9. all 32 seats gone+ wL 9.
For sleeper half of the available berths gone in 1st single transaction time - 17 minutes.
Remeber that I am a software professional book/purchase online all the time, my keying delay to enter details is negligible.
FINALLY got my tatkal ticket.I took one advice from some user on a site saying never hit refresh/reload of page, even though site becomes cold after your click, unless the loaded page itself shows server not reachable error. this advice helped me here, along with Firefox\'s relentless patience to keep up with sluggish irctc site during my tatkal feat. IE is sure NO NO. refresh NO NO. Firefox and patience YES YES YES.
yours,
Prasad Reddy.
Okay now, 7:45 am, tried to give my tatkal booking a try, irctc.co.in barked back at me that, tatkal booking will start from 8:00 am only. I got 2 login user ids for irctc, got two browsers Internet explorer and Firefox installed. I have one spare computer too. I do not have functioning UPS, so betting my hopes on electric dept to not to powercut from 8:00 am onwards. I will be back in 1 hour, It is still saying all 302 sleeper class, and 32 3A class - tatkal quota tickets are available to book on railenquiry.in site. general quota is at WL263/WL118 - sleeper, and for 3A WL114/WL72
dear readers, i am thankful to all of you for supporting my(sorry our cause).most of the comments have rubbished the reply given by irctc official on the matter, few have asked why irctc is not load balancing its traffic in the peak morning hours.those who work on servers can understand that its not that difficult for big organisations like railways to upgrade their servers, so as to minimise the plight of common man.And for mr. Prasad reddy, pls do let us know whether u got any succes in booking your ticket or not.once again thanks a lot to all the readers.
Tomorrow morning, I will be trying to book my tatkal ticket - journey from Kacheguda to Bangalore City (SBC) on Bangalore Exp train 2785 for 17th April 2010, I will write back my experience after booking this tkt. I am little bit worried, after seeing all these complaints here.Let me see what happens, I will be back here in 1 day, after my irctc.co.in tatkal booking.
Prasad.
I have also faced similar difficulties for tatkal booking using IRCTC. It is quite possible, like so many other things in this country, the people never planned for this, nor do they have the budget for this, nor can the people convince the purse-holders of the need for better compute infra-structure. How many of our roads can handle traffic smoothly? The situtation here appears to be no different.
However what the public needs to understand is whether Railways deliberately close the website at this time to allow uniinterrupted access to the counter clerks.
I support this complaint.
I support this complaint.
IRCTC sucks.
I support this complaint.
I support this complaint.
what ever the time for booking as IRCT\\\'s reply opening and starting day booking time 8:00 AM to 8:XX AM, there may be heavy rush and Programmed in that way :) what a rubbish answer. If there a heavy rush in those hours, why not IRCTC load balance its servers, It seems irctc and its staffs living in stone age....
its not that great job to maker servers load l balanced and make service available for the customers who needs the tatkal services urgently.
I support this complaint.
I have commented earlier on this topic. I feel the IRCTC authorities will look into the technical matter to avoid the shortcomings of online booking at 8 am:
It is obvious that the rush is far from maddening in these hours!!
But what the railways authorities are doing to ease the problem?
Nothing!!!
The programmers and makers of the website are only enjoying by viewing the troubles of the general passengers.
when I complain to the authorities the reply was simple and stereotype :
“Thanks for taking interest in online Reservation System. The working hours for booking through Internet System are from 5-00AM to 11-30PM. But the opening day booking and Tatkal booking starts at 8-00AM. You might have booked the tickets before 8-0AM but Tatkal booking is opening at 8-0 AM This is programmed activity and no manual intervention is possible for blocking Tatkal booking. There is heavy rush for opening day booking and Tatkal booking on thousands of face to face counters, & Internet Users so queues are built in Railway\'s Computer System and some users are facing trouble between 8-0 to 8-15AM due to heavy rush. Soliciting your patronageâ€
It is right but they should learn from GOOGLE Company whose website is never clogged and they are always taking care of the surfers who use their website.
If IRCTC is feeling that its responsibility is nothing or limited, it is their dishonesty, the ministers and staff related to booking are making crime in this democratic country by not rectifying the problems of Tatkal booking which only meant for extraordinarily immediate requirement.
It is impossible to get into irctc site from 8 to 8.30am. I feel they are according priority to railway booking counters, agents and then the hapless netusers like me. Should shutdown tatkal for irctc users if it cannot be used. One gets fooled and looses the oppurtunity to book tatkal if one plans to do it by irctc website. Pathetic.
I support this complaint but not really sure about the reason for the unavailibility of the time between aforesaid time. If it is due to network overload then why all these while no action has been taken to enhance the bandwidth for the ease of general people.