Some observations:
1) Movement of UR Counter is usually slow compared to that of HWH
2) Day before yesterday, when I went there to book my tickets, I noticed only one counter for Reserved Ticket booking was functioning. The clerk was acting pretty slow and he took nearly 10 minutes per person. Seeing the increase in the number of people, another counter was opened.
The...
more... first person to come in had to change his boarding point. The other clerk seated at the 2nd counter clearly inquired about the reason of doing so. Further, he warned him not to enter the train from the station where the ticket has been booked after the boarding point gets changed.
He was presented with a request letter and he kept the same with him for future reference.
3) My turn came in after 2-3 other people. I had opted to book a ticket from Howrah to Bangalore with change at Chennai.
Trains selected were Howrah Trichy Express and 12692 Chennai Central-SSPN Express.
The first reaction of the clerk upon seeing the form was "Is this Connection Possible? I do not think this would be accepted."
To this, I had to tell him that Chennai and Hyderabad Route are very much possible and the system would issue ticket with telescopic benefits for the same since both the route would satisfy the 15% criteria. Hearing this, the clerk was stunned for a while. He now started feeding in the train numbers and notified me that both the trains are respectively in RAC and WL. On this, I replied that "Yes, I know that Sir. Both the tickets should get confirm before their respective journey dates. Kindly go ahead and book the ticket for me."
After this the name/age/gender and other details were put in. Here comes the twist. I had repeatedly request the clerk to let me know the fare before he books the ticket. At last he came up with a fare XXXX. Hearing this, I then got a bit surprised. As because I had pre-calculated the fare and I knew the one being told by the clerk was on a higher side. I straightaway asked him, "Are you Sure it is XXXX? If so, please then tell me the total distance. The distance should be 2051 kms as per Official Website.".
Glad I told the above lines that the clerk sprung up with more energy. He cross-checked something and then said, "It was my mistake. Thank you for correcting. I had chose the wrong station."
(Most probably he chose the journey leg from HWH to SSPN rather than SBC.
To end, I asked him what would have been the fare if I would have chose different classes for my journey trip. To this he replied say if you have booked by 1AC for the entire trip then the fare difference would not be much in case you opt for 1AC/2AC or 1AC/3AC combination. Latter would be slightly less.