Indian Railways

Indian Railways has recently started e-catering service. My experience with this service has been harrowing.  I booked a ticket from delhi to hoshiarpur on 29th June, 2016 and ordered food via e-catering at DLI station and it was to be delivered to me by 9 PM which was the train's scheduled departure. The train started its journey 20 minutes late due to some reasons known best to Indian Railways. In the meantime I gave atleast 5 calls to their customer care service number 1323. Everytime the operator on the other side, assured me of necessary action and probably tried to contact the so-called Comesum brand which had to deliver me the food but of no avail. The food never reached and IRCTC never made a provision for arranging it on any of the next stations despite my giving an option to them, because it was 10 PM(their duty ends at this time) which was more dear to them than a hungry passenger who trusted them and had paid already for the food that was never meant to reach them. I followed a complaint procedure of sending them an e-mail with all the details, to which I got a usual reply of acknowledgement to cooperate in the 'interim'. The word 'interim' is great. It does not require any definition of say 24hrs/48hrs/72hrs/1week/1month/1year/endless. Then, I tried to contact them via twitter but the same reply. We are pursuing the complaint. We are doing our best. If the best, that too by all the powerful Govt. of India, takes so much time, I feel pity on those who are pro-government in their tasks. Till date my money has only been not refunded to me, leave aside the penalty I asked for. I strongly feel that irctc should stop its services. Their may be some improvements in some areas of Indian Railways but then the government, the bureaucracy and the cheap politics only were(and are) responsible for the sorry state of Indian Railways and bad image of Govt. of India.

IRCTC has lost a customer for its e-catering service and I would caution everyone who reads this post to order from e-catering service of IRCTC as they will solely be responsible for their money and hunger.