The new rules for refund by the Indian Railway in case of TDR states that “No refund shall be granted on Partially confirmed ticket against which none of the passengers has travelled, if it is surrendered /TDR filed two(2) Hours after actual departure of the train.” (SOURCE: http://irctc.co.in/beta_htmls/REFUND%20RULES%20wef%201-Jul-13.pdf). Now the well known fact is that the IRCTC website is not easily openable all the times, it gets jammed during peak hours of booking and even if the site opens, it takes several attempts before it processes the required request. Another important fact is that the internet services are not available to a customer of the Indian Railways round the clock. It may happen that when the TDR is to be filed the internet is not available or not working. Therefore, the new TDR and ticket cancellation rules that came into effect since 1 July 2013, is absolutely against the spirits of keeping the customer satisfaction and interests in mind. Moreover, for an entity like the Indian Railways, it is shameful that such an extraordinary demand be placed on its customers knowing well that its online arm IRCTC has so far been incapable in meeting the required load of internet traffic, and that internet would not always be available to those who have booked ticket online in hope for a confirmed seat/berth. The other important point that must be taken up by the Dept. of Consumer Affairs is the fact that the new refund rules of Indian Railways is very likely to harm its customers. It is a well known fact that the waitlisted passengers cannot board reserved air conditioned (AC) coaches. However, what has happened with me is that I booked a 2AC ticket for four persons and all were waitlisted at the time of booking. At the time of chart preparation just one passenger was allotted a RAC status and remaining three passengers were waitlisted. Now, technically their name is not automatically dropped from the chart as happens in normal waitlisted e-tickets. If a person fails to file online TDR in the said time due to unresponsive IRCTC website or internet unavailability, he/she will be robbed-off of his entire booking amount, even for the wait listed passengers. How can the Indian Railways put the names of wait listed passengers in the final chart knowing well that unreserved passengers should not board the reserved AC coaches, which will otherwise cause great inconvenience to those passengers who have a confirmed seat/berth. This irrational practice seems to be designed to unnecessarily harass both the reserved as well as unreserved passengers, who failing to file online TDR within two hours will lose all their amount. Therefore, I request the Department of Consumer Affairs to take up this matter in earnest as millions of railway passengers have started using the internet to book their tickets and hence many of them like me are likely to be trapped in this kind of situation feeling utterly cheated. Also, there is no channel available to

Resolution of my complaint that I have elaborated in the box for “Complaint Text”.

Complainant Information
name- Srikant e-mail srikantdelhi@gmail