Originally Posted by
travelmad478
Well, I knew it. After trying many more times to book this thing on the web, then getting a reply to my e-mail from Indian Railways that told me to clear the cache, etc., I finally managed to book my return ticket. But then the real fun started today when my Amex bill showed up. Although I only have one outbound and one return, I've been charged TWELVE TIMES, once for every failed transaction, as well as once for each of the two completed transactions.
Great! Now I have wasted another 45 minutes on the phone with Amex to get these charges scraped off, plus 20 minutes composing more e-mails to Indian Railways to tell them that they need to credit me for ten duplicate charges.
Really, it would have been a lot faster (and hugely less of a hassle) to call my hotel in Delhi and get them to do the booking for me. That website is an embarrassment. Beware!
travelmad478 - relax!!! You have nothing to worry about
The issues you describe above are
completely normal, including the additional charges against your account for failed bookings.
I went through the same process last year and found the
indiamike website to be invaluable (need to do a search for train bookings). Indiamike is the same type of forum we have for flyertalk. Covers everything about india from trains to planes to hotels to business.
Regarding rail bookings, indiamike takes you through all the pitfalls step by step, including the fact that the
booking engine is only open for limited hours per day (don't quote me but its something like 10am through to 6pm Indian time). You simply cannot book outside these hours
Regarding the
multiple charges, the railways website actually tells you that you will be charged for the failed booking - then it says it will process a refund to you. This is in the small print at the failed booking page. I ran into the problem trying to book seats where availability changed between the beginning and then end of the booking.
In all cases, the
$$ was refunded to my CC in about 24 hours. In three cases the exchange rate had changed and I ended up making a profit of $1.34!
Booking trains in India via the website is actually very easy - if you know how. The initial registration process takes about 10 minutes, but after that, provided you log-on at the right time you can book everything very smoothly and transactions go through first time. The system is done well and amazingly, your name appears on a print-out at 2.00am at some station with directions to your sleeping berth!
Regards
lme ff