Originally Posted by
jiejie
No foreign credit card surcharge? I'm wondering if by booking on the Chinese site, you exploited a loophole the programmers didn't anticipate when they set up the train ticket booking page.
Were you DCC'd? Ctrip has been doing this on plane tickets purchased with foreign cc, at least on purchases done in their office.
Also general note to readers: ctrip's train ticketing abilities currently only cover some high-speed rail services, primarily the Beijing-Jiangsu/Shanghai corridor. And their delivery service is only for some cities in the Jiangsu region. Likely they will expand on both of these aspects in the future, though.
Jiejie:
The train I booked was between Nanning and Guilin (i.e. an extremely unimportant route), and while it is not one of those "milk run" trains you mention in the Master Transportation Thread, there is nothing "high speed" about it.
I'll keep a look out for DCC, but it would be egregious for them to even attempt it in this case since not one of their confirmation emails or SMSs so much as mentioned USD.
BTW, I was somewhat reluctant to start this thread based on the "loose lips sink ships" theory, but I decided to do so anyway because I was really annoyed by the obnoxious "delivery" fee that only applies to persons booking via the English language site.