http://ashisha.com/consumer Issues dealing with consumer rights Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:22:01 +0000 en hourly 1 http://ashisha.com/consumer/2008/03/05/irctc-has-a-sms-alert-service/ http://ashisha.com/consumer/2008/03/05/irctc-has-a-sms-alert-service/#comments Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:03:15 +0000 ashish http://ashisha.com/consumer/2008/03/05/irctc-has-a-sms-alert-service/ Typically, Indian Railways has not been known in the past for its customer oriented nature; to get information, you need to either queue up at long lines for information, or dial a number where there is no guarantee that you will get through. However, change can happen to anyone, and the Indian Railways is trying its best to go modern.
So, in addition to being able to book tickets through the internet or mobile at the IRCTC site, customers can also subscribe to receiving alerts for changes in the ticket status. Say, you are waitlisted and want to find out your ticket status, then the service will send a SMS when there is any change in the status. This can be very useful since it is not so easy to find this information in an alternate way.
Details are available at this site.
- Services are provided currently by Airtel, Hutch, Idea, MTNL Delhi, MTNL Mumbai, Reliance and Tata. Subscribers have to register for this service by sending an SMS to 7245 with short code “PNR” followed by a space and the 10 digit PNR number.
eg : PNR 1234567898.
- PNRs of all reserved Railway tickets can be registered for this service irrespective of the mode of booking (Internet/Counter/Agents)
- On successful registration for this service, periodic SMS alerts would be sent to the registered Mobile numbers, with the status of the PNR at that time. The periodic alerts would be sent as per the following schedule :
a. On the 8th, 3rd, 2nd day and the day of journey (the days being counted with the day of journey as day 1) – the alert would be dispatched after 0700 hrs.
b. On the date of journey, the alerts would be sent as per the schedule below :
i. For trains with scheduled departure between 0001 hrs. to 1200 hrs. the scheduled PNR alerts would go after 2200 hrs. on the previous night (the day before the journey).
ii. For trains with scheduled departure between 1200 hrs. to midnight the alerts would be dispatched after 0700 hrs. on the same day.
- In case a ticket status is confirmed between any of these scheduled alerts, then an SMS alert would be sent as per the schedule, and the next SMS alert would be sent on the date of journey only.
- In case a ticket status is found as ‘Cancelled or Modified’ during any of these scheduled alerts, no more alerts would be sent.

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