IRCTC - Money deducted but Ticket not booked

IRCTC is the website of Indian Railways allowing people to reserve tickets in advance. Indian citizens can reserve tickets before 120 days of travel and the foreign nationals visiting India can book up to 365 days in advance. The user friendly site allows nearly one million people to book the tickets. Sometimes the site will be very slow and the payment Gateway needs processing time more than expected. Even after processing for a long time the transaction will be failed, the money will be deducted from the account but the ticket will not be booked. This is the common problem people face while booking ticket during the peak hours of the day.

For the people having only required amount in account will end up in problem because of failed transaction as the ticket will not be booked and no money will be there in the account to do fresh reservation. It takes minimum of two to three working days for the money to be refunded into the payee account. The repayment system is good, the money will be refunded without any hassle but the problem is we cant get the money back instantly. The anguish and the helplessness experienced by the people landing in such situation is very difficult to explain.

Other problem is with the payment gateway of the banks. All banks are encouraging online banking, as a result many like to do online transaction instead of standing and sweating in the long never-ending queues. It takes much time by the payment gateways to confirm successful payment and lead to successful booking or successful payment.

A simple solution to avoid such unsuccessful transaction is to do reservation during the non-peak hours. The normal peak hours of transaction is during 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM in morning as this is the most convenient time for everyone, people reaching office early or planned for a trip on the day before will like to do reservation in this time period. Also, the people planned the last minute journey will like to do Tatkal reservation in this time period only making the transaction speed very low. In the evening from 4:30 PM to 9:00 PM is again the peak time people trying for booking tickets as all will tend to think about leisure and spending time outside with family or travel trip after deciding in meetings.

Usually the non-peak hours are after 9:00 PM in the night till next morning and also the number of people trying to reserve ticket is less during the time gap 11:30 AM to 3:30PM. The ticket reservation done during this time will be successful most of the times!