This may be the first of many rants about various large companies and service providers in China. There are two large online travel booking services in China (well actually there are many more but these two companies supposedly have English service and can take international credit cards). They are Elong and Ctrip.
I believe Ctrip is the largest. However Elong has substantial investment from Expedia. Indeed if you type in www.expedia.com into a browser address bar from within China you are taken to this page, which offers you a route to Expedia if travelling outside of China and Elong if travelling inside China. So the two corporations are very much connected. However, to me it seems unlikely that Expedia have any influence at all over Elong’s customer service and payment procedures.
Buying air tickets online has never been easy in China. Tickets are usually delivered and cash handed over even when it is an e-ticket. It is now possible to choose e-tickets and to pay by credit card for most of the domestic routes. However, if you pay by international credit card you are subject to a surcharge of up to 3%. Paying by Chinese credit card is a laborious process as there is no real unified payment system just an umbrella organisation called China Unionpay which then leads you to the page of the particular bank your credit card was issued by (and this is usually only in Chinese). However credit cards in China will be the subject of a rant for another day.
I’ve long been a customer of both Ctrip and Elong although I’ve almost exclusively used Elong in the last year or so, usually paying cash for tickets because the credit card payment process is so antiquated. If using a foreign credit card they require a faxed or scanned copy of the cardholder’s passport, a signed authorization letter and scanned or faxed copies of both sides of the card. So unless you are close to a fax machine or scanner you can forget about paying by credit card. This is supposedly to combat card fraud although I know there are easier methods, described later.
Sometimes this system works and sometimes you get a phone call saying the payment has not gone through. Yesterday I was buying domestic tickets from Beijing to Kunming so members of my family could come to my wedding in May. Because I was not one of the passengers I couldn’t use my card to pay and didn’t have enough cash for 4 return tickets (more than 10,000 RMB). So I had to get my father to send me scanned images of his credit card (both sides), passport and signed authorization letter which I then forwarded to Elong.
I received a call from Elong saying the payment was not successful. Although I can’t be 100% on this I am almost definite that this is a flaw in their payment system connecting to get authorization from the UK rather than a problem with the credit card account itself. However I persevered and said I would get back to them with a new card shortly. I then sent them scanned images of an alternative card of my father’s to the email address listed in the authorization document. Nothing happened. A couple of hours later I did this again. Nothing. Then again and then finally once more this morning. Still Nothing. After lunch we called them up and they were completely oblivious to the whole thing. It seems checking email is something they do only if they can be bothered. I decided to cancel the booking and try Ctrip.
Incidentally despite claiming to have an English speaking call centre whenever Elong have called me they have only been able to speak in Chinese. On the odd occasion I’ve called them the conversation has started in English but then I’ve always had to switch to Chinese about 30 seconds into the conversation so that I can be understood.
Ctrip took the card payment online and within 5 minutes I had received booking confirmation. They didn’t require scanned documents, declaration letters or any such nonsense. The difference in the process was very simple.
Ctrip, like most online retailers outside China, requested the billing address and postcode/ZIP code, something that was lacking from Elong’s online payment form. I understand that companies need to protect themselves against card fraud but surely requesting the billing address is a lot swifter and less painful than a signed authorization letter, card copies and passport copies. If a card is stolen and used by someone else they have access to the card number, expiry date, security code and card holder’s name but, crucially, NOT the billing address. That is why most websites use this particular detail for verification purposes. Why oh why does Elong choose something so much more complicated.
And even if that weren’t enough verification most card issuers these days belong to ‘Verified by Visa’ or ‘Mastercard SecureCode’ which provide an extra level of security. I realise that online payment in China is in its infancy and that most of Elong’s customers don’t have international credit cards. The Unionpay system is hugely flawed and most people use escrow payments like Alipay or pay cash on delivery. However surely with more and more foreign tourists and expats with overseas credit cards it makes sense for companies like Elong to join the 21st century. It really can’t be that difficult for a company that size with investment from and co-operation with one of the largest online travel services in the world to do what much smaller businesses (including my own) do every day – take secure online payments.
So for now I am sticking with Ctrip as I was impressed by the ease with which I was able to make an online purchase with them.
Greg in China