Railway police in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, sort train tickets, cash and computers seized during crackdown on digital scalpers. (Photo provided to China Daily)
For the past several weeks, like many other people who look forward to an upcoming family reunion during the Lunar New Year, I've found myself stuck in a losing battle with ticket bots that have jacked up prices.
I've been a loyal customer of a popular travel site that charges a service fee for me to use its bot, or high-speed software to buy a ticket. It's a dubious business behavior because only licensed retailers are allowed to sell train tickets in China, for a fee of 5 yuan (72 cents) apiece. But I'm willing to pay a bit more so I don't have to check on the official ticketing site every hour and worse, leave my travel plan up in the air.
Perhaps it's a way of allocating resources more efficiently as only those who really need the tickets will pay more, I reckoned.
But such common justifications seemed to have fueled the revival of traditional scalping business that had been the target of police crackdowns not long ago. Since the end of last year, selling tickets through bots, known as "ticket snatching", has encouraged bidding wars that favor higher offers.
The basic service fee didn't work well for me this time when I tried to buy a ticket to one of the hottest railway destinations in the country. I was asked to pay 30 yuan more for the use of more powerful bots that promised to work round the clock to snatch a ticket from the official website.
While I hesitate about speeding up, horror stories abound among anxious buyers. One ticketing app charges an extra yuan for a 0.1-1 percent increase in the chance of getting a ticket. In some cases, final prices could be up to seven times more than the original, as consumers are forced to buy insurance or "speed up".
Some scalpers boast much faster internet connections and bots that can register with the official site three times in a second, with new releases or returns found by bots in a shorter time. Such efficiency beats even the most patient and diligent buyers hands down, including those who have free time for unproductive activities.
It seems only the rich, the powerful and technologically savvy can be sure about how and when to get a much-coveted train ticket, which touches a sore point about social fairness as tickets get out of reach of ordinary consumers
For many people, the railway continues to be the cheapest and easiest mode of transportation despite price hikes with the introduction of bullet trains. Unpredictable weather conditions and bouts of smog also add value to a train ride as it's always safe and punctual.
Getting a train ticket to be in time for the family meal on the eve of the Lunar New Year has special meaning as it is often the only time in a year to get everyone together for reunion, the same way that Christmas is often the only time Western families come together other than at a funeral.
Various counter measures have been floated to curb the digital scalping activities, including fixing loopholes in the official ticketing website and delaying times for cancellations to be resold.
But the most effective cure remains to make online scalpers illegal, whether they are individuals or tech companies. The dominant view now is that train tickets, like before, are scarce public resources that shouldn't be traded like ordinary goods or services.
The last time I checked my booking on the travel site, the bot showed it had already made tens of thousands of unsuccessful attempts, with my chances for a canceled ticket remaining abysmally low. The bot asked me to pay 30 yuan more to speed up, but I wasn't sure if it could beat all other bots to the ticket in the heated race.
