Friday, July 05, 2013

ClearTrip’s App Ties Up With IRCTC Tickets Booking

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

ClearTrip.com’s Android app now has support for booking train tickets. ClearTrip has teamed up with IRCTC to help users book tickets. The option is available only on the Android version of the app and users will have to update their app to see the new options. The app will not only let users book train tickets, it will also let them check their PNR status for a train reservation.

Since ClearTrip is doing this in sync with IRCTC, users will also have to sync their ClearTrip account with IRCTC to book the train tickets.
This can be quite a tedious process since the IRCTC sync-in will require that you shell out every bit of information you gave it when you first set up your account –  from your mobile number to address to date of birth to country. The app lets you register an account for IRCTC as well but the fields remain the same even if you are linking an old IRCTC account to the app.

The good thing at the end of all this pain, is that your saved traveller profiles and stored cards are available at a one-tap selection for train bookings.

However the syncing process is definitely a little buggy as we found that we could not enter the information on all the fields. The app’s new feature definitely needs some improvement.

After entering all the information, IRCTC will send you One Time Password (OTP) and email. From the email you have to click on the link given by IRCTC and where you will be asked for the OTP to activate the account.

On the Google Play Store, users have mentioned that the sync feature is not entirely smooth. ClearTrip replied to them stating that the syncing of account was tested thoroughly before we pushed this version but we have to rely on a third-party API for this to work seamlessly. As far as PNR status number checking is concerned, it is working fine and rather smoothly on the app.

All in all it’s a good move by ClearTrip but clearly the sync feature with IRCTC needs improvement.

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