[2Gkashmiri]

so let me get this correct for non indians here. a stupid ass government website for booking railway tickets which is the opposite of intuitive, crashes daily, has pathetic captcha and has all sorts of glitches. if facebook can handle a billion users on a daily basis, why cant the irctc website. in 2020 this unacceptable.

coming on to the guy here, >Developing an unauthorised software bypassing e-ticketing system is an offence. Such applications defeated the purpose of having a first-come-first-serve system and benefit only a few who use the software

so why not have this functionality in the first party website in the first place?

>However, railway officials clarified Yuvrajaa bypassed the railway system and made money illegally which is a crime. He wasn’t event an authorized agent registered with IRCTC to book tickets.

did this guy take a users money, buy a ticket on his behalaf and get a commission from the railways? no. from the customer? no. all he did was make a fucking autohotkey for their website. he charged 20 rupees, thats USD $ 0.30 for hosting the service, paying for the upkeep. any of his non customers who were disadvantaged because of his service, well no shit. go and ask the government to fix their website and bring it in parity with this guy

look. this guy automated typing, refreshing, probably even bypassing captchas. on that note, why should this be "illegal" to do automation? just because they say in Tnc's? grow a pair. why should the government rate limit customers by shoving captchas?

i had the misfortune of buying a couple of tickets back in june 20 or july was it for some relatives. that was the most agonizing time of my life. random refreshes, logouts, not being able to do multiple logins, having an actual monthly limit on the number of tickets you can buy in a month, the payment failed 4 times. i had to borrow money twice because the payment was deducted but credit not given. refund was sanctioned after 15 days AFTER a deduction of Rs. 2500 i think USD $ 40.

if i had used this guys service, i would have been glad to pay him 10 times over because the service which should have been promised by the first party itself IRCTC was in 1990's.

>regulations.

such a bs word in india. why doesnt the railway make their website like a 2020 website which does automation, remembers your shit, allows instant payment and refund, this and that

[sokoloff]

> so why not have this functionality in the first party website in the first place?

This functionality being to work-around the intended first-come, first-serve allocation of these last minute tickets?

It sounds like the overall system isn’t in a healthy, modern state, but I don’t think the essential feature this guy’s tool provided is desired by the original website.

[2Gkashmiri]

why do you have a lottery system?

can you buy an airline ticket at the airport 2 minutes before boarding? yes. does the system accurately track unbooked seats with 100% accuracy? yes. can you "automate" airline ticket booking with an almost 1 click operation? yes. can the millions of airline websites and agents manage simultaneous ticket booking of a single seat so that at no time are two people charged for the same ticket? yes. can they reschedule, do web check in, assign seats, book meals, cancel tickets? yes. can they offer error free painless booking experience without plastering user with stupid captchas or otps? yes.

if yatra.com can do it, irtctc not doing it because they follow some arcane regulations about "security" and not doing things intuitively is why they are shit and the onus is on irctc to provide feature parity with airlines experience. dont blame someone on helping

[sokoloff]

I suspect if you let these tickets become market-priced like airline seats, you wouldn’t have these problems either.

I think the core issue is that the rail operator (gov) for whatever reason wants these last-minute tickets to be available at an artificially low ticket price.

That’s not what airlines are trying to do. Trying to build a system that works with the natural effects of markets is much easier than creating a system that works against market forces.

Look at the Ticketmaster experience for popular concerts and sports tickets. Waiting rooms and bugs and software workarounds/hacks, all because it’s a raffle for tickets being sold below what the free market price would be.

This does not appear to be a primarily technical problem. If these tickets sell out in 10 minutes, creating a better technical solution to let them sell out in 2 minutes isn’t actually improving anything meaningful.

[idiot900]

The artificially low ticket prices are a way to allow India’s poor to travel. Market pricing is more efficient but it does not accommodate their social goals here.

[sokoloff]

Yes, I get that. The reason I brought that up is to point out that the comparison to market-based systems working better is not a valid comparison. And a system that allows people to pay more to "jump the line" is wholly against the social aims of this pricing mechanism.

If you raffle off these tickets to the luckiest fraction of people who want them, many prospective purchasers will end up disappointed. You can shift the mix of how many of them are disappointed by technical glitches versus how many are disappointed by the tickets going to other people, but you're still going to disappoint most of the people who want them.

[2Gkashmiri]

wouldnt keeping a fixed price solve the issue?

>This does not appear to be a primarily technical problem. If these tickets sell out in 10 minutes, creating a better technical solution to let them sell out in 2 minutes isn’t actually improving anything meaningful.

i am sorry i don't understand how is forcing users to buy those tickets in 10 minutes instead of efficient 2 minutes helping anybody?

its not like i can just buy PNRs like i can do on airlines to inflate the demand. i have to buy a ticket now, if its available, i pay and thats it. why do you need complications. its not like i could sell my ticket or transfer or whatever.

where does ticketmaster come in? that is a for profit system designed to charge people to buy more tickets for their own commissions.

why is irctc wanting to be like that?

[keutoi]

This a probably a symptom of a much deeper problem. In theory tickets are non-transferable, but it is not enforced at all. A passenger train carries more than 500 people and if someone gets caught they just bribe out of the problem. Since the ground level problems are hard to solve, a solution at the top gave IRCTC some power to control and lower the available black market tickets. When the problem with identity and transferable tickets is solved then I think technical problems will be resolved.

Keep in mind Identity is hard to check and for rural passengers. There were very few such documents before AADHAAR etc.

[sokoloff]

> wouldnt keeping a fixed price solve the issue?

It depends on what “the issue” is. If the issue is that they want to allow some poor-but-lucky people to win the right to buy tickets below the market-clearing price, then keeping a fixed price doesn’t solve that issue.

[2Gkashmiri]

and they only way a multi billion dollar revenue earning department finds no other way to solving this is by making the experience on the website miserable for everyone. Only "luck" can help you get a ticket. bravo. hats off to the ingenuity of these people

[2Gkashmiri]

>There are Maximum Waiting List Limits in the PRS booking system for which Waitlisted Tickets can be issued after all confirmed tickets are exhausted. Your ticket booking request may get declined as the Maximum Waiting List Limit may be reached in the booking system by the time payment success response is received from your bank. In such case, your deducted amount will be refunded back, without any deductions, to your bank account in 3-5 working days. Inconvenience caused is regretted.

do you understand having a waitlist in 2020 means you are doing something seriously wrong in your workflow