Indian Railways — Cheap parcel transport service, Hidden penalties.

Address:

Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh

My brother booked a parcel for me which included an Honda Activa from the so called 'Indian Railways' (PRR no. [protected]) from Gwalior to Hazrat Nizammudin on 8th of August, 2015. At the time of booking it was told that it would take 3-4 days for the parcel to reach destination and that too was responded after inquiring so much. There was no one who could give proper details regarding parcel delivery. But 'unfortunately' the parcel reached the next day. No notification, No call, No SMS, and the railway started imposing the penalty. I live in Gurgaon and unfortunately could not travel 40 kms everyday to check if my parcel is delivered as there was no contact no. given whom to contact to for any inquiry, so i thought to visit after 4-5 days as told during booking the parcel. When i visited NZM to receive my parcel on 13th of Aug, 2015 morning. I was shocked to see a whopping 1063 rupees penalty (first 6 hrs free then at rs.10/hour). If i would have missed few more days, the penalty could have exceeded the value of my goods. This is a cheat...since it was neither anywhere mention on the slip, nor any one told about it while booking. And there's a railway procedure too that u cant send the documents with the parcel. So all documents needed to receive the parcel were couriered through DTDC which took two days and thank god no mistake was done because if it would have been couriered through govt. speed post... forget about your parcel. Then how any one can receive the parcel within 6 hrs of reaching. So this is a so called strategy to make money. Well quite a cheap practice. Well this can happen only in India... and our lovely Indian govt. who see a dream of getting 'Digitalised' dont have any process of sending an sms to the customer for succesful delivery of their parcel. Its the only reason no one wants to use Government services and everyone is shifting to private services for better quality, services and care. I am really disappointed.