To be honest, I had such stunts from many travel agencies (outside of China) as well, recently (2015) with booking.com and HRS, for example..

I agree. In fact, Expedia has given me the most grief of the lot. However, I continue to patronize all sorts of online travel agencies. For me, these online channels are valuable because they provide good perspectives on the broad market (e.g. they often clue me in on hotels that I would never know about otherwise).

Same here. Usually I'll write a complaint (if they don't honour a confirmed booking) and get some sort of compensation.

It's a hassle, but more like the principle. I've had a case where I've had a flight booking with Ebookers and a separate hotel booking (had a overnight at the transit point on that very flight) - 4 days before departure, the airline apparently cancelled the late-evening flight, and Ebookers contacted me about it. Told them to put me on the early-morning flight next day (that was still making the connection the my longhaul) - they refused, wanting to put me on the earlier afternoon flight which would have been extremely uncomfortable for me.

They refused to change to next-days flight, stating that the airline told them that they won't do that. I smelled a lie from their part, went to the airline in question, got an extremely helpful and friendly service from them, quickly confirming me on next-days morning flight, including the confirmation that Ebookers never contacted them about my change wish.

As the hotel I had booked before was no longer needed anymore, I contacted Ebookers about it, and told them I won't pay that night (the free cancellation period by now was over by a few hours, as they delayed everything with their behaviour) - stating that it was their fault, they lied to me regarding the flight/airline willingness, and that I might consider not to use them anymore. Don't know if they checked my "business" with them (about 50k� in the last 5 years all together) or if they would have done it in any case, but they waived the hotel night.

It was a long process, but in the end, I had the much better early-morning flight (which was originally 200� more than the late-night one, reason why I booked like this originally) and didn't required the hotel anymore, plus my Karma must have been positive, as I scored an OpUp on the long haul

ok, that went very much off topic. But to come back on topic, a similar experience was with Ctrip about 6 or 7 years ago.. Air China cancelled a flight, I asked to be put on the earlier flight instead. They said "can't do, we refund you the money of the flight booked, please book yourself a new flight" - given it was 2 days before departure, I was extremely pissed - till I noticed that the earlier flight (it was a domestic within China) had discounted F availability for 100 RMB less than what I paid for the flight (in Y) originally..

Sometimes, it's not the worst thing when a hotel/flight gets cancelled, especially when it was a non-canc rate, and there are better/cheaper options now to book.

And if not, and the cancellation makes you having to pay more, a complaint often makes you even. So, not every "bad" news is in fact bad

Apologies for the thread bump; I don't want to clutter this forum with --yet another-- Ctrip thread.

I'm posting here to advise all to try their best to opt out of the insurance (that gets automatically added to your tab). In the past, they would pay you Y300 for delays of more than 3 hours, which was an okay proposition (a net positive on some routes, in fact).

But, now the benefits have been stripped down to this (and, only this):




That's a $9,000 contribution towards my hospital bill if I am injured.

And, $250,000 if I die.

In spite of the fact that I'm not an actuary, my math skills are decent enough to declare that this is a complete scam (the cost is Y40).

While Y40 is a meaningless sum to most people, I simply loathe business practices that rely upon consumer ignorance.

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.)

I booked on elong recently and it was easy to deselect it. Did they changed it? Exactly for the Hotel scam with ctrip i stopped using them and switched to elong

On ctrip, the cheapest fares seem to be available only as a mandatory "Promo Package" with the 30RMB hotel points.

On elong, when you select the cheap fares with a small notation "+30Up", a menu suddenly opens below with the choice of points or insurance, saying in Chinese "选择以下产品（可多选，至少选一项 . . ." It seems mandatory. But you can uncheck the box on the next page and the 30RMB apparently disappears. Maybe it comes back later in the booking process, I don't know. As I said, it's confusing and that's half the problem.

Will request a mod edit of thread title.

By the way, ctrip pays out the big money on that passenger insurance not only if you die but also if you're crippled 残疾.

Thread title updated, thanks to forum Ambassador jiejie's suggestion.

JDiver
Senior Moderator

Thank you for adjusting the thread title. I have a feeling that we are going to have more thoughts and experiences to add here....unfortunately.

Also, for those that might see references on older threads here, and on other forums, to online agent Travelzen (www.travelzen.com) which was another popular alternative to ctrip and elong: For most of 2015, the booking function has been offline and the website changed. It appears that this company has changed its business focus and therefore the retail B2C functionality may not be returning. A pity, there needs to be another option that is user-friendly to those outside China. 9588 http://ticket.9588.com/FlightTicket/Main_E.aspx is used by some expats and they've been around for quite a number of years and seem to take foreign credit cards, but I have no recent experience with their policies and customer service.

My Chinese colleagues continue to use Taobao and Qunar (both are just gateways to actual sellers) for airplane tickets because they like saving us money.

The savings are rarely more than Y50, they still end up buying BS insurance, and when they are hung out to dry, they are pretty much screwed because the actual seller has no pull with the airlines.

I will continue to endure Ctrip because, scam charges or not, their customer service remains exemplary.

But, today, I am flying Spring (booked directly from their extremely annoying website) in order to save Y350.

Agree that Taobao/Qunar are not portals that non-residents/non-Chinese readers should try to fool with. Little value-added, lots of potential hassles and risks.

These days it appears that the best option is to use any aggregator site such as ctrip to search for the cheapest fare, and then call up the airline direct and book over the phone. The fare is often cheaper and they don't try to sell you unnecessary insurance.

Ctrip is not an aggregator site, it is a travel agent site.