Sending goods to another city by train is cheap and safe, but the journey to the railway station and the long paperwork there make people sweat. Indian Railways has taken a big step to eliminate this problem of common people. Railways is soon going to expand its service coverage and start door to door parcel service. This simply means that now your goods will be picked up from your home and delivered directly to the destination address. The pilot run of the scheme has been successful, after which preparations for its large-scale implementation have been completed.

People of first 8 big cities will get benefit

According to a report in the Economic Times, the Railways has prepared ‘Rail Parcel App – Ghar Se Ghar Tak’ (RailParcel) for this special facility. Initially this service is being launched in eight major cities of the country. These include Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune. People living in these cities will be able to book pickup and delivery of their parcels at home through this mobile app. The app is designed like a digital marketplace, which will directly connect customers with select logistics companies. Customers will be able to make bookings on the app itself and make online payments from there. With this, people will no longer have to go to the railway station premises with the parcel or fill the form in the old way.

How will this model work from pickup to delivery?

Under this new system, railways have divided the work into two parts. The logistics partners will be responsible for picking up the goods from your home (first-mile pickup) and delivering them from the station in the destination city to your home (last-mile delivery). At the same time, Indian Railways itself will do the work of transporting goods by train from one station to another. Not only this, these logistics partners can also provide other necessary facilities to customers like packaging of goods.

The last date for booking the parcel has been fixed

According to a senior railway official, the booking window for door-to-door parcel delivery will open 15 days before the scheduled departure time of the train. Customers can book their parcel up to one day before train departure. On the other hand, logistic partners who pick up the goods from home have been given freedom to hand over the goods to the railway staff up to one hour before the departure of the train. With this, the goods can reach their destination quickly and on time.

Refund rules on cancellation

If for some reason the customer has to cancel his booking, the railways has made clear rules for that too. If the booking is canceled before the goods are picked up by the logistics partner, the Railways will only charge Rs. 10 will deduct a clerkage charge. The remaining entire rail fare will be refunded to the customer. However, refund of home pickup and delivery charges will be decided as per the respective logistics company’s own policy. All these conditions will be communicated to the customer at the time of booking.

Big relief to traders

Apart from this, in view of the Diwali and Christmas festivals, the Railway Board has also given a big relief to traders earlier this month. A discount has been introduced on round-trip bookings of parcel coaches for traders who place bulk orders ahead of the festive season. According to a circular, parcel aggregators will now be able to book a round trip fare at 1.5 times the one-way fare. This new formula directly reduced the total freight by 25 percent. However, the Railways has also clarified that this relaxation will not be uniformly applicable to all types of general parcel bookings, but only for round-trip parcel coaches.