| E tickets and payment - cash on delivery or credit cards? JianShou, your two recent posts on E tickets and Cash payment are interesting. Until now when I have been in China on business I have always booked my tickets at hotel business centres - in my experience good 3 star hotels seem to have one. OK, they charge a booking fee but I do not speak Chinese enough to survive anywhere else. Its always been easy - about 15 minutes, payment in cash and its done. I am currently in China and ordered tickets the other day. They went to the computer and showed me available flights on www.elong.com . I was charged 860 RMB plus booking fee of 15oRMB. When the "ticket" arrived it was not a ticket -- like you said -- but a receipt for my money, with a E ticket number printed. OK, I thought, I can do that with elong - and save 150RMB!!! I already use elong for hotel booking and its been great!! So last night for my next flight I tried to book tickets nanjing to Beijing. I got to the point on the web where I was expecting to give credit card details, and instead I was asked for my address so they could deliver the ticket and collect cash!! However I went ahead. This morning there were two emails from elong, and one from my son in England saying they had called and wanted to confirm details. I called, spent 30 minutes on the phone, going over the details I had already given and was then asked for details of how they could deliver the "ticket" and collect cash, and when I would be available. I was not able to wait around so they said they would take my credit card details. They then again wanted to know where they could deliver the ticket. Ten minutes later I got an email in Chinese which I assume had the details of the ticket. Then I had an email asking me to call to confirm credit card details and also fax images of my credit card. To send a fax I would have to go to the business centre. And I would sttill have to wait around for the deliver of the E ticket!! So at that point I replied asking them to cancel the ticket. I went to the business centre and got the ticket in 15 minutes!! It will be delivered to my room tonight. All of that is to say, visitors to China would be well advised for now not to waste time with E Tickets!! I want to say I do not intend to criticise the system here. Chinese financial transactions are improving all the time, but security is obviously not yet good enough to enable reliable and secure credit card transactions carried out entirely on line and paperless E tickets delivered by email. I am sure China will get there. Its much easier now in 1997 when I used to have to make my way across town to buy a ticket!! But I just need to continue for now to use the business centre! But visitors from the UK, America, etc. who expect an e ticket to be in their email inbasket after 10 minutes on line may have to wait a while yet. |
Say Goodbye to Paper Ticket