Indian Railways Obstructiveness

I had recently booked a train ticket from www.irctc.co.in for Delhi - Jammu - Delhi in 3-tier AC. Due to heavy rush my return ticket was on waitlist and did not get confirmed even on the traveling date. I could not check the status of the ticket and checked it at the Jammu station only as I had just returned straight from my visit to Maa Vaishnodevi Bhawan and Patnitop (I’ll write about the details of the visit soon). I went to reservation counter if the ticket could be cancelled as it was still on waiting list. They guy on the counter told me as this is a ticket booked from internet you need to cancel it from there and the payment you made will be credited to your credit card/debit card account.

When I reached Delhi next day I tried to cancel the ticket from internet, it alerted that this ticket cannot be cancelled from internet as this is i-ticket. Then I checked on the site for more details and found that e-ticket (which you print at your end can be cancelled but i-ticket which is sent to you as a normal railways printed ticket cannot be cancelled online.)

I called up customer care and briefed them about the issue and was told to take this ticket to any computerised booking center, from there you get your ticket cancelled and you will be given TDR (Ticket Deposit Receipt), which further needs to be sent to Chief Commercial Manager, Northern Railways via normal post and then your account will be credited.

My father went to the nearest booking center and was told this kind of cancellation is only done at window no.18 at New Delhi railway station. He went there and got the TDR after standing in queue for 2 hours.

After having gone through such a horrid time and still money is not being refunded. What Indian Railways need to understand that passengers book tickets online because they want to avoid queues and are short of time. They need to have some respect for time of their customers. If they could make cancellation of e-tickets online, it should not be that difficult to do the same for i-tickets. Just hoping Mr. Laloo Prasad and his ministry tries to improve their system of working to cause customers less agony and keep them happy but Indian Railways is a monoply anyways…nobody bothers , customers don’t have a choice.

They also should give an option to customer to book return ticket online at the same time when they are booking their ticket for going to a place. The customer should be charged for courier charges once and should be sent tickets in one courier rather than sending tickets seperately. There mismanagement is causing loss to public and unacceptable gains for courier company.