To make matters worse, both ctrip and elong have now added a 30RMB fee for booking most airfares, at least the reasonably-priced ones. It's disguised as apparently mandatory hotel booking points on ctrip and points or insurance on elong. At least on ctrip, the hotel points are highly restricted: good for only 90 days, good only on selected bookings, and good only for rates 500RMB and over.

But is it mandatory? On elong, it says you must choose either points or insurance when selecting your flight, but then on the next page it seems you can de-select it, though I haven't gone through with a booking to see if it re-appears at a further stage in the booking.

In any event, this attempt to nickel-and-dime customers by adding more confusion to the booking process is dirty pool in my book.

(And if I've gotten something wrong in my characterization of these new fees, that just demonstrates how confusing they are.)