Ticket

About time, I wrote about the ticketing issues that we had in Kodai.

As I said in the previous blog, on the KSRTC bus from Kodai to Bangalore, 10 tickets are reserved for bookings from Bangalore. So if you aren't lucky, you'll have to go to the ticket booth in Kodai and buy/book the tickets.

Now after reaching Kodai, you'll notice that there is no KSRTC booth in Kodai. And if you need tickets to Bangalore, you should come to the bus stand at 6 pm (6:30 pm is the departure time of the bus), and buy ticket from the bus conductor. Obviously this should be in first-come-first-serve basis. Apparently, this isn't the way things work.

You're supposed to book a ticket with an agent, who will charge you more than the ticket amount (266 vs 325 per ticket). He will give you a "receipt" for the amount you've paid. Note, this is not the official ticket as we thought it is.

Now this agent has an understanding with the bus conductor. He'll pay the conductor a certain amount per ticket. So the conductor doesn't sell ticket to any person when the bus arrives at the stand. I guess, he would simply say that all seats are booked and no more tickets are available, even if no one is sitting inside the bus.

Once the agent comes, he pays the conductor his share and gets seats to all passengers as alloted by his own fancy. And takes the "receipt" back. The conductor then issues the official ticket. So in effect, you buy a ticket worth Rs 266 in Rs. 325 (59 minus conductor's commission goes to the agent).

When we realized this, we went to take the receipt back (saying that we want to claim the amount in our company). But he was smart and didn't give saying that we can claim for the ticket amount only (the official ticket which is given by the conductor).

We missed the camera. Wished we could take the picture of the guy and the "official KSRTC board" that he was pointing at.