Ok, before I say anything, I must tell you that I dont have any proof and I am just speculating.
BUT FRAUD IS HIGHLY LIKELY!! REASONS below!!
Following are my assumptions:
From Google - About 14000 trains run daily.
Lets consider just half of it. i.e. 7000 trains
Assuming 200 tatkal seats per day on average (shud be more on long distance trains)
Assuming agents charge 100Rs extra for tatkal tickets (may be more)
so that makes 28 cr per day = Fraud of Rs.10220 crore a year
Note that I am trying to GIVE BENEFIT OF DOUBT to railway in my calculations, by down scaling the figures heavily because I do not have enough data. Otherwise FRAUD cud be even larger.
So why am I calling it a fraud?
Ok from last 3-4days I am trying to book tatkal tickets online.
Before clock ticks 7:58AM. IRCTC site runs just fine without any problem. It gives instant responses. No sooner the clock ticks 7:59AM. It starts giving "service unavailable". Railway claims that server comes under huge load.... ok I agree.. but, read ahead.
I keep refreshing page for some time and manage to login at around 8:04 or 8:05AM
And to my horror, tatkal tickets are almost sold!! You still hope that you stand a chance to book the ticket, but site just WONT let you book. When you click BOOK, it just wont do anything for minutes, by the time your payment process is over, you end up having WAITLIST ticket in hand.
The points to note here are:
Why does it give "service unavailable" only to end users like us? How come others (read agents) be able to book tickets so rapidly?
May be they have bots doing the job. I dont mind bots doing the job, but look at this mathematically, below.
There wud be 14 lakhs tatkal tickets (based on my above assumption). And other 5 lakh tatkal waitlist tickets (assuming 75 per train). So railway is able to sell almost 19 lakh tickets in 30-40 minutes. (from 8AM to 8:40AM). Now assuming that 50% tickets get sold in first 10 minutes.
So railway servers are capable of selling almost 10 lakh tickets in 10 minutes. That is huge capacity of the servers and very impressive figure.
But now I dont think there wud be more than 1000 persons like me who are trying to book tickets online. Each person can buy tickets for maximum 6 persons at a time.
Which means persons like me ADD ADDITIONAL LOAD of 6000 tickets.
(Note that I am considering agents running at half capacity and we running at full capacity - which actually shud be reverse)
So if railway is able to PROCESS 10 LAKHS tickets FOR AGENTS in 10 minutes, how does our 6000 tickets, OVERLOAD a server??
How come agents are able to book 10 lakh tickets as if they are not feeling ANY LOAD on the SERVER and we keep getting "service unavailable" message?
Okay even if IRCTC server gets overloaded, why have they kept one single server (single IP 202.93.154.28)? Why are they not upgrading the network and server capacity when problem is known? Why ignorance to normal customers?
Why agents are given priority when railway's principle is first come first serve?
Is someone getting under table cut for all this? Say, 0.5%, of 10000 crore fraud wud be 500 crore rupees! That's a big amount with such a small percent! Now I understand why railway is turning blind eye to this issue.
Workarounds I tried to SPEED up my booking:
Obvious thing I tried to do is login before 7:58AM and keep everything ready.
But IRCTC has FOUND WAYS to block this too!!
If you login before, 8AM, and then try to book ticket, even after 8:02AM, it will keep saying you that "I cant book before 8AM" (something like that)
So then I have to logout and relogin, but oh well, if u logout then u shud forget about being able to relogin in before 80% of tickets are sold to agents.
I further tried to work AROUND that too by selecting previous days listing. i.e. if i want to book tickets for 20th, i actually select date as 19th. After that, IRCTC will show you available tickets for next 5 days as well.
And what I find? Availability count for 20th keeps on reducing (i.e. agents are able to book) but it wont show me "BOOK" link next to it... unless I completely LOGOUT and relogin.(i.e. initiate my session after 8AM). And now if I repeat same process again, i.e. select 19 as date, it will start showing me BOOK option for 20th too. But then it will be TOO LATE to book anyway.
THESE ALL IS CLEARLY DONE SO THAT END USER LIKE ME CAN NOT SHOW HIS SMARTNESS and BOOK TICKETS WHICH HE HAS RIGHT OF BOOKING! IRCTC makes sure that user is completely HANDICAPPED!
Add to this, the IRCTC site is made to have worst USER INTERFACE.
You cant go back OR forward, if you do that, ur session expires!
So if u make a mistake in name or age...you have no option but re-do everything from scratch as you cant go back and make changes.
Will Mamta Banerjee wakeup and look in to this? She has done good thing by reducing number of days for tatkal from 5 days to 2 days and allowing travel fee to pay, only for traveled distance and not full distance. So why cant she look into this?
BUT FRAUD IS HIGHLY LIKELY!! REASONS below!!
Following are my assumptions:
From Google - About 14000 trains run daily.
Lets consider just half of it. i.e. 7000 trains
Assuming 200 tatkal seats per day on average (shud be more on long distance trains)
Assuming agents charge 100Rs extra for tatkal tickets (may be more)
so that makes 28 cr per day = Fraud of Rs.10220 crore a year
Note that I am trying to GIVE BENEFIT OF DOUBT to railway in my calculations, by down scaling the figures heavily because I do not have enough data. Otherwise FRAUD cud be even larger.
So why am I calling it a fraud?
Ok from last 3-4days I am trying to book tatkal tickets online.
Before clock ticks 7:58AM. IRCTC site runs just fine without any problem. It gives instant responses. No sooner the clock ticks 7:59AM. It starts giving "service unavailable". Railway claims that server comes under huge load.... ok I agree.. but, read ahead.
I keep refreshing page for some time and manage to login at around 8:04 or 8:05AM
And to my horror, tatkal tickets are almost sold!! You still hope that you stand a chance to book the ticket, but site just WONT let you book. When you click BOOK, it just wont do anything for minutes, by the time your payment process is over, you end up having WAITLIST ticket in hand.
The points to note here are:
Why does it give "service unavailable" only to end users like us? How come others (read agents) be able to book tickets so rapidly?
May be they have bots doing the job. I dont mind bots doing the job, but look at this mathematically, below.
There wud be 14 lakhs tatkal tickets (based on my above assumption). And other 5 lakh tatkal waitlist tickets (assuming 75 per train). So railway is able to sell almost 19 lakh tickets in 30-40 minutes. (from 8AM to 8:40AM). Now assuming that 50% tickets get sold in first 10 minutes.
So railway servers are capable of selling almost 10 lakh tickets in 10 minutes. That is huge capacity of the servers and very impressive figure.
But now I dont think there wud be more than 1000 persons like me who are trying to book tickets online. Each person can buy tickets for maximum 6 persons at a time.
Which means persons like me ADD ADDITIONAL LOAD of 6000 tickets.
(Note that I am considering agents running at half capacity and we running at full capacity - which actually shud be reverse)
So if railway is able to PROCESS 10 LAKHS tickets FOR AGENTS in 10 minutes, how does our 6000 tickets, OVERLOAD a server??
How come agents are able to book 10 lakh tickets as if they are not feeling ANY LOAD on the SERVER and we keep getting "service unavailable" message?
Okay even if IRCTC server gets overloaded, why have they kept one single server (single IP 202.93.154.28)? Why are they not upgrading the network and server capacity when problem is known? Why ignorance to normal customers?
Why agents are given priority when railway's principle is first come first serve?
Is someone getting under table cut for all this? Say, 0.5%, of 10000 crore fraud wud be 500 crore rupees! That's a big amount with such a small percent! Now I understand why railway is turning blind eye to this issue.
Workarounds I tried to SPEED up my booking:
Obvious thing I tried to do is login before 7:58AM and keep everything ready.
But IRCTC has FOUND WAYS to block this too!!
If you login before, 8AM, and then try to book ticket, even after 8:02AM, it will keep saying you that "I cant book before 8AM" (something like that)
So then I have to logout and relogin, but oh well, if u logout then u shud forget about being able to relogin in before 80% of tickets are sold to agents.
I further tried to work AROUND that too by selecting previous days listing. i.e. if i want to book tickets for 20th, i actually select date as 19th. After that, IRCTC will show you available tickets for next 5 days as well.
And what I find? Availability count for 20th keeps on reducing (i.e. agents are able to book) but it wont show me "BOOK" link next to it... unless I completely LOGOUT and relogin.(i.e. initiate my session after 8AM). And now if I repeat same process again, i.e. select 19 as date, it will start showing me BOOK option for 20th too. But then it will be TOO LATE to book anyway.
THESE ALL IS CLEARLY DONE SO THAT END USER LIKE ME CAN NOT SHOW HIS SMARTNESS and BOOK TICKETS WHICH HE HAS RIGHT OF BOOKING! IRCTC makes sure that user is completely HANDICAPPED!
Add to this, the IRCTC site is made to have worst USER INTERFACE.
You cant go back OR forward, if you do that, ur session expires!
So if u make a mistake in name or age...you have no option but re-do everything from scratch as you cant go back and make changes.
Will Mamta Banerjee wakeup and look in to this? She has done good thing by reducing number of days for tatkal from 5 days to 2 days and allowing travel fee to pay, only for traveled distance and not full distance. So why cant she look into this?
Eventually had to pay an agent, cannot help it, we live in a crooked country.I heard that when booking via mobile, the servers are different and that usually succeeds, not sure though.Also there is a quick book in irctc, that should typically be used when booking tatkal.
