Boredworkers.com

Was trying to purchase a couple of train tickets down to Singapore from Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) via their eTicketing system. Since WL has done this before and there was no indication that anything was wrong, I assumed that the system was usable. Turns out that my assumption was wrong.

The thing was, every time I tried to pay for the tickets, the system would throw an error saying the berths were already taken. This didn’t make any sense since the system showed the berths to be available. This was really frustrating since KTMB tickets were selling fast for the days we were targeting. I watched helplessly as the available bottom bunks were sold while I was being continuously denied.

The disclaimer when purchasing tickets was that KTMB would hold reservations for 10 minutes while waiting for bank approval. If none were received, then the berths would be opened to the next user. I thought perhaps that this might be the culprit, as our first request was rejected due to error from the credit card company. But it seems really silly to me, since session data can be easily tracked.

After trying for 30 frustrating minutes, I finally gave up and called KTMB’s call centre instead (+603-2267 1200). I was put on hold for 5 minutes while waiting for an officer to be available. When the call was finally patched through, I had to wait nearly a minute before anyone picked up. Since I know someone is on the other end in the call centre office, the only conclusion that I could arrive to as a consumer was that the person on the other end was refusing to pick up or dragging their feet. Frankly speaking, that’s a bad first impression to give.

When the officer did finally pick up, I was told that the KTMB eTicketing system was out until the end of the month (or was it end of December… I forget which). Either way, if the system is faulty, they should take it down with an “Under Maintenance” notice instead of leaving it online and frustrating their users.

The good news was that I was able to make my bookings with the call centre. It took only a few minutes to process. Much faster in fact than the eTicketing system which involved a whole lot of popup windows for selecting berths, time, schedules, etc. which were slow to load. While I’m an advocate for online reservations, eTicketing, and self help systems, the one employed by KTMB was more trouble than it was worth. In this particular case, calling the call centre (or their ticketing booth) was faster.