Moondog answered your questions pretty well, but I will add in my two cents as well...
Originally Posted by smunky
Hi - I have a few more questions about booking domestic flights in China that I was hoping someone could answer.
1) Which of ctrip, elong, and yoee (and any other sites that ppl can suggest) allow booking intrachina flights using credit cards from the US? From past threads, I'm pretty sure yoee does, but am not sure if the other 2 do and if any of them have an additional surcharge for using international credit cards
I have used yoee. I tried to use elong when I was in the states a few months ago and they said they could not take my credit card online. I think they could have done it if I faxed my card to them but I did not have fax access at the time. Yoee is all online, and I believe ctrip just set it up for all online purchase as well. There is a surcharge, that is charged by the payment service used. Yoee had 2 or 3 options you could choose for services. The one I choose, the Agriculture Bank, had a 4% charge. The other option was 5%.
2) Out of the above sites that allow international credit cards, does anyone recommend one over the other or does it not really matter? I've found that they all have similar fares
They have all the same fares as far as I can tell. I personally have used Yoee several times and been happy with them. I have not tried the others so I can not really say. I have used elong from within China, paying cash on delivery, so I can not say on their e-ticket service from overseas.
3) It appears that most of the tickets I'm looking to purchase have a 5% of the fare cancellation fee. I'm planning to purchase discounted tickets and if the fare goes down even more, cancel the ticket and repurchase it - does anyone see anything wrong with this? Is it easy to cancel?
I agree with moondog- don't bother. It is probably more hassle than it is worth. That being said, it may be possible to do, but there is no telling just to what degree of hassle involved.
4) Has anyone seen discounted Xian->Guiyang tickets? I haven't found any discounts for any date so I plan on just purchasing them now
If there is no discount there is no harm in waiting. In cases like this where there is only one airline serving the route it is much harder to get a discount. With limited flights though you may want to purchase, if you are worried about the flight selling out. Usually on these one airline routes they do not even offer discounts at the last minute. That has been my experience anyways.