Nov 05, 2009 05:32 PM
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Cleartrip_Support is working closely with MouthShut.com to enhance customer satisfaction.
*About IRCTC
*For those of us used to doing things online(like online banking, booking movie tickets online, etc), booking Rly tickets online using IRCTC.co.in has been a big boon.
Though their interface leaves much to be desired, it served the purpose. But I always found that booking a ticket and its return sometimes took more than an hour - mainly bcoz I've to search for each date, then get the train list, then check availability for each train and all this added to the time taken.
*About ClearTrip.com
*Enter ClearTrip.com sometime ago and bookings became easier. You could type few characters of the station name and it would auto-suggest names. It also provided names like'Mumbai All Stations', so that you dont have to search separately for trains strarting from Mumbai Central and Bandra Terminus. First they started it as a search feature, then slowly they added the facility to Book tickets too.
IRCTC then woke up and added the facility to search for station names by typing few characters - similar to ClearTrip. I thought IRCTC is finally waking up and will make the process easier. But ClearTrip kept getting better. The best feature I liked on ClearTrip.com is something called a "Train Calendar".
*What is the Train Calender?
*Its a display of 15-days ticket availability for the input you provide - From and To Station, Date range(15-days at a time) and Class of travel.
*How is it useful?
*'Available' are shown in green background, RAC is in Yellow and WL is in Red. So simple, yet so powerful. At a glance, it provides us an overview of the position.
*Why is it not so widely used?
*ClearTrip has options like Flights, Trains, etc on top. And then an option called'more', which I guess not many use. And this'Train Calendar' appears under the'more' option, as a sub-menu. If only they could put it upfront, as a link, where people book train tickets, it would make it more accessible.
*What could improve?
*The calendar could have the train timing as a sortable column. This will help us plan our journey better, bcoz most times we are looking for'morning' trian, or'evening' train. We have to click each train name to see the timing and route.
I just happened to stumble upon it one day, few months ago and have since then shared it with some friends - everyone seems to love the simplicity of it all. Do give this a try and I am sure you would love it too.
As the Philips ad goes'Lets make things better'.
PS: I wanted to write this review under'General Advice on Indian Railways' as I felt this would be more relevant to someone looking for info on Indian Railways. But since only one review is allowed under any topic(which I find strange), MouthShut has advised me to write this review under ClearTrip.Com. So in case anyone of you think this review is not categorized correctly, please bear with me.
