{"id":165,"date":"2011-04-01T14:04:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T13:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/?p=165"},"modified":"2011-05-01T16:59:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T15:59:20","slug":"booking-trains-thanks-a-bunch-amex-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/posts\/165\/booking-trains-thanks-a-bunch-amex-not","title":{"rendered":"Booking Trains &#8211; Thanks a Bunch AmEx (Not)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div id=\"attachment_166\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><br \/>\n<a title=\"By Enzipp (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons\" href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Train_enroute_green_route.JPG\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-166\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/3\/33\/Train_enroute_green_route.JPG\/500px-Train_enroute_green_route.JPG\" alt=\"Train enroute green route\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-166\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Booking Trains<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nBooking trains for the last trip was a breeze (<a href=\"http:\/\/big-cats-and-holy-ghats.winchcombe.org\/post\/Booking-Trains.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/big-cats-and-holy-ghats.winchcombe.org\/post\/Booking-Trains.aspx<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>All you had to do was to figure where you wanted to go; use <a href=\"http:\/\/erail.in\" target=\"_blank\">erail.in<\/a> to check on train availability; book the train using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irctc.co.in\" target=\"_blank\">www.irctc.co.in<\/a>. The only tricky part was that if you had an international credit card you had to select the Axis payment gateway.<\/p>\n<p>Recently I&#8217;ve been reading that international credit cards don&#8217;t work and that you&#8217;re only option is to use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cleartrip.com\" target=\"_blank\">www.cleartrip.com<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.makemytrip.com\" target=\"_blank\">www.makemytrip.com<\/a> or get yourself an American Express card.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to choose the latter option and just as I was booking the flights an advert for British Airways&#8217; AmEx card appeared on the screen. The forms were filled in and moments later came the decision: we&#8217;re sorry but an instant decision cannot be made, we&#8217;ll contact you within 14 days (or something). Fourteen days came and went and nothing, then the letter arrived stating that I&#8217;d need to send a copy of my passport\/birth-certificate contersigned by a Financial Director or Judge or Doctor. Well thanks, AmEx, I don&#8217;t know (m)any of those. I&#8217;d also have to send in <strong>original<\/strong> copies of some utility bills, which also wasn&#8217;t going to happen: who gets originals these days? Not me!<\/p>\n<p>Thinking cleartrip.com was my best option I had a look at how to use it, getting ready for later this month when I need to start booking trains.<\/p>\n<p>And then some wonderful words were put in IndiaMike by a new member bluemax: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiamike.com\/india\/indian-railways-f10\/can-i-book-train-tickets-on-irctc-website-using-international-credit-card-t113622\/3\/#post1137611\">An international card worked!!!<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What great news this was, as was that of the people that followed to confirmed that IRCTC now accepts international credit cards.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks IRCTC for sorting this out.<br \/>\nAmerican Express: thanks for absolutely nothing. It&#8217;s no wonder you&#8217;re going down the pan fast, anyone with a card can&#8217;t use it in many places and now it seems that someone with an impeccable credit rating can&#8217;t even get a card.<\/p>\n<span class=\"facebook-like\"><fb:like layout=\"box_count\" show_faces=\"false\" width=\"45\" href=\"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/posts\/165\/booking-trains-thanks-a-bunch-amex-not\"><\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Booking trains for the last trip was a breeze (http:\/\/big-cats-and-holy-ghats.winchcombe.org\/post\/Booking-Trains.aspx). All you had to do was to figure where you wanted to go; use erail.in to check on train availability; book the train using www.irctc.co.in. The only tricky part was that if you had an international credit card you had to select the Axis payment [&hellip;] <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/posts\/165\/booking-trains-thanks-a-bunch-amex-not\">&darr; Read the rest of this entry&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[4,8],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-planning","category-travel","tag-planning-2","tag-trains","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-kev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monsoon-meandering.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}