From July, send an SMS & book train tickets!

BANGALORE, INDIA: Here comes good news for all those angry Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) fans, who were fed up with booking railway tickets online.

To offer an enhanced experience for Indian Railways customers, IRCTC recently announced that it is planning to launch non-Internet-based ticketing services or a menu-based dialling service starting from July 1, 2013.

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With the new feature yet to be rolled out, it looks like IRCTC is now targeting new set of customers, who use entry level phones or feature phone to book tickets.

"I will be the most happiest person, if IRCTC launches this feature," said a techie working for a leading MNC in Bangalore.

"At times, I get annoyed with the kind of service that the IRCTC website offers to cutomers. I was looking for some simpler way to book tickets and I hope the new feature will not only help me as an individual to book tickets faster by sending an SMS, but also helps IRCTC to get good name, just because they are known for providing bad service," he added.

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To make use of this service, customer needs to register his mobile number with IRCTC and with bank. After registration, the customer receives an MMID (Mobile Money Identifier) and OTP (one time password) from the bank, from which they can start booking railway tickets.

Also, one has to provide details about the train number, destination, journey date, class and passenger details, such as name, age and gender on the SMS box.

This service can be availed through all mobile service providers and each SMS will be charged Rs. 3. Payment gateway charges are Rs. 5 for the ticket amount up to Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 10 for more than Rs. 5,000.

Although IRCTC has launched several new initiatives to woo its customers, there is a huge demand from the online user community to update IRCTC's IT infrastructure for smoother operations.