Procedure Regarding Refund / Cancellation of PRS and UTS Tickets Booked Through Point of Sale (POS)

Procedure regarding refund / Cancellation of PRS and UTS tickets booked through Point of Sale (POS)

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS
(RAILWAY BOARD)

No.20 IS/TG-I/10/P/Payment through electronic means(Pt.II)

New Delhi, dated 19.01.2023

The General Managers
All Zonal Railways.

MD/CRIS, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.

MD/IRCTC, Parliament Street, New Delhi

(COMMERCIAL CIRCULAR NO. 12 OF 2023)

Sub: Procedure regarding refund / Cancellation of PRS and UTS tickets booked through Point of Sale (POS).

Ref: Railway Board’s letter of even number dated 12.01.2017 (Commercial Circular no.8 of 2017)

Reference Board’s letter of even number dated 12-01-2017 stipulating procedure for feeding data for booking of tickets through Point of Sale (POS) machines installed by SBI at different locations.

For refund, the RRN shall be the reference number. In case of wrong feeding of RRN, it will not be possible to process the refund. Correct feeding of RRN is thus of utmost important for proper accountal and refund process. In continuation of the above mentioned commercial circulars, the following procedure is laid down with regard to cancellation of the tickets booked through these POS machines.

I. Cancellation cum refund procedure for UTS/PRS tickets booked using SBI POS for payment:

Refund of PRS/UTS tickets shall be done using the offline process as detailed below:

i) The offline process of refund shall be followed in case of tickets booked using SBI POS for payment which means that the refund amount shall be credited to the account of card holder without any need to swipe his card at the time of cancellation at the counter.

ii) The customer can approach any counter anywhere for cancellation of ticket booked from S81 POS. Needless to mention that PRS ticket can be cancelled only at any PRS/PRS cum UTS counter and UTS ticket shall be cancelled only at any UTS/PRS cum UTS counter. The ticket can be cancelled at non POS location also.

iii) Responsibilities of the Booking/reservation clerk

a. The booking/reservation clerk shall follow the existing procedure for cancellation of the ticket except no cash refund should be made. The ticket shall be cancelled and accounted for in the PRS/UTS application as the case may be.

b. The booking/reservation clerk needs to ensure that if customer approaches a counter for cancellation of ticket issued from SBI POS, he should not swipe the card. CRIS shall do changes in software to alert operator not to swipe the card as refund would be given offline.

iv)The print of cancelled PRS ticket would have a message indicating that “Electronic Refund” for the information of the customer. The customer may also be informed verbally or through information board that the refund shall be credited to the account of card holder within 7 days.

v) Responsibilities of CRIS/SBI

a.A ‘refund file’ shall be generated by CRIS on T + I day for each ‘SBI Service provider’ in the format as at Annexure A. This will be uploaded on CRIS dashboard on daily basis which shall be downloaded by the respective SBI service provider to process the refund. Here, T is that day on which ticket has been cancelled.

b.The SBI service provider through whose POS the ticket was booked shall process the refund for crediting the refund to the customer account and upload a refund validation file with refund status at CRIS dashboard against the refund file for each transaction date. The refund validation file format is enclosed as Annexure-B.

c.Thereafter, the SBI service provider shall debit Railway pooling account being maintained with SBl for respective zonal railways.

d. SBI shall provide statement for each credit and debit transaction to Railways as per format given in Annexure C.

e.CRIS shall process the refund validation file to provide MIS for refund reconciliation and accounting. The format for MIS file is enclosed as Annexure-D.

vi)The same procedure shall be followed in case of partial cancellation of the ticket.

vii)In case of cancellation is advised by the customer on 139, cancellation can be done as per existing process and the refund shall be processed only after submission of ticket at the counter.

viii)Jn case of Non issue transaction the operator has to use void option available in POS. This transaction shall not be processed for offline refund; Operator has to ensure correct feeding of invoice number to void the last transaction. The invoice number is printed on the ‘charge slip’ printed by the POS machine for every transaction.

ix) The modification in ticket like pre-ponment or post-ponment of journey shall not be allowed on tickets issued for time being.

2. In case, the cancellation amount does not match with refund amount as some refund may fail due to card block, account close, wrong RRN etc an exception report may be generated and this issue may be taken up with SBl for making necessary adjustment separately.

3. IRCTC customer care dealing with the refund issues of e-tickets is entrusted with the responsibility to address refund related complaints of tickets issued using POS. The IRCTC shall have to coordinate with SBI, CRIS and concerned Zonal Railways to monitor the processing of refunds on daily basis and to resolve the issues/complaints in expeditious manner.

4.Cancellation cum refund procedure for PRS tickets issued from POS of other banks

There are around 75 POS machines which were operational at different locations of Indian Railways prior to awarding contract for installing 10,000 POS machines to SBI. The refund is processed through online method in some of these POS machines, wherein, the customer needs to swipe his credit/debit card at the POS machine at the time of cancellation of the ticket and the due refund amount as fed by the booking/reservation clerk is credited to the account of the card holder. However, his process of refund is possible only at locations having POS machines of the same bank from whose POS the payment was made at the time of booking. At non POS locations, the Ticket Deposit Receipt (TDR) is issued to affect the refund. In case of the POS of other banks, the extant procedure shall continue till further advice. However, the refund of the ticket issued using SBI POS shall not be processed by swiping the card on non SBI POS. While cancelling the ticket, the system shall prompt the booking clerk about the POS (SBI or other bank) which was used at the time of booking and advice the booking clerk not to swipe the card.

The zonal railways, which have entered into agreement with other banks, may advise the concerned bank to adopt above offline process as explained in Para 4.0 for refund in due course of time.

This issues with the concurrence of the Finance and Accounts Directorates of the Ministry of Railways.

sd/-
(Amit Kumar Jain)
Director Traffic
Commercial (G)
Railway Board

sd/-
(T.D. Dwivedi)
Director Finance
(Accounts)
Railway Board

sd/-
(Rabindra N. Mishra)
Director Finance
(Commercial)
Railway Board

Click Here to Download the Original Order

Source : http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/