I booked a train ticket on Ctrip today
 

It was painful, but now that I've taken the plunge, it should be easy for you guys.


-I tried to book on the English site first
-Site stalled just before the credit card screen, but I wasn't planning on completing that transaction anyway because were trying to tack on a y40/ticket "delivery charge"
-So, I jumped on the phone and asked them to book manually for me AND remove that stupid charge because I'd either grab the ticket at the train station or send my own courier to their office to pick it up
-The rep told me that it is only possible to book train tickets on line at this time, and that I should use the Chinese site if I didn't want to pay the extra y40
-As such, I repeated step 1 on the Chinese site; instead of a delivery fee, there was a y20 "road injury insurance" fee
-I got back on the phone, and the lady who picked up told me to press the back button on my browser, click on the tab the right of VIP, and I would have the opportunity to remove it... sure enough, she was right
-I used my US issued MC to pay for the ticket (exactly face value), which was shockingly easy... no need to even enter my billing address, much less do the front/back scan drill

This is even cheaper than buying tickets over the official website because they don't hit you with the y5 convenience fee... trivial, I know, just sayin'.

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.

Did Ctrip issue a code to show upon ticket pickup?

Yes.

Looks like you can bypass the fees entirely by using the ctrip mobile site.

days prior
 

Was it at -18 days, window rule. Or -20 days ?, the online rule ?

Why would you as resident use ctrip, when there are plenty of cheap and reliable other options that express mail the ticket to you, such as tieyou.com or huoche.com?

Ctrip’s fees are higher than most hotels and is therefore completely uninteresting, even for tourists.

Regarding the train ticket, if you know of any channels that sell at or below face value, I'm all ears. I don't care whether or not tickets are mailed to me because will call is absurdly easy. Being to use my foreign plastic was also a nice bonus.

Insofar as hotels are concerned, I don't use ctrip so much any more, but their generous hold policies do come in handy when plans are up in the air and/or you are going to a city for the first time, and have no clue where you should stay (i.e. nice to have a backup plan in place).

For airplane tickets, I still almost always use ctrip because their capability to pull off miracles when things go awry is unrivaled.

Aforementioned sites tieyou.com and huoche.com sell usually for a 0 to 25 CNY surchange depending on their promos, including mailing the ticket to you by shunfeng etc. You'll eventually need online banking (which I presume everyone living here has) or Alipay.

Ctrip continues to have ridiculously great customer service; their chauffeur driven cars are the newest excellent service, making the hassle with tongcheng no longer necessary. I would still not purchase train tickets with them, though.

Then unless I'm mistaken, you also appear to have found another difference between what ctrip is offering on the Chinese site (the entire network?) vs on the English side (D/G trains only for some routes). Read the English FAQ on the train ticketing subsection, Item #21. http://pages.english.ctrip.com/webho.../train.html#21

I admit to not having actually played with either English or Chinese sites for train ticketing, since like Chinatrvl, ctrip wouldn't be my on my radar screen for this function.

hi there, did anyone tried using a foreign credit card with ctrip chinese website? Is this method still valid?
Upon a quick research it seems thou most merchants in china charges 3% fee for using foreign credit card?

I booked a train ticket in May on the ctrip Chinese site and paid the face value of the ticket: no insurance charge and no credit card surcharge. I paid with a non-Mainland card.

However, you may now have to have a 12306 account to avoid the insurance fee.

Also, I booked using a mobile device, and ctrip may have (may have had) a promotion to waive credit card fees when booking on mobile devices.

Ctrip desires the insurance/delivery fee money, bit I'm quite sure that it's still possible to opt out; they've just made doing so really difficult/confusing.

Sounds like a lot of trouble to save a couple of dollars. Depends what your time is worth.