I’ve had it with Elong…its Ctrip from hereon in.
April 16th, 2008 by Greg
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.
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What a nightmare eh?
I use elong and used them recently for a trip to Hong Kong. I always find them competent and reliable but I do always pay in cash. Yes it can be frustrating using international credit cards here, which is why I try to pay everything in cash. It seems to be how they do things here.
Last week, Qian helped me order a ticket to Shenzhen through a normal chinese agency. The ticket arrived later that evening but the date was wrong – 11th instead of the 12th of April. So naturally I told them that I didn’t want the ticket unless they changed the date to the one that I had specified – not unreasonable surely.
This however seemed unnacceptable to the guy who delivered the ticket and after a 20 minute heated discussion (during which he basically shouted at Qian) in my apartment he told me that I would have to buy the ticket otherwise he would get the police involved, make sure I couldn’t buy another ticket from another agency in Kunming etc etc. As far as he was concerned there was no way that the agent could have made a mistake by ordering a ticket for the wrong date – Qian must have said the wrong date when ordering and that was it. She didn’t as I was listening to the conversation to make sure she got the details right.
Qian called his bluff and told him to go fetch the police. He said he would go back to the office and check the call (because they are all recorded) and if Qian had said the 11th then I would have to buy the ticket. This was last week and I’ve heard nothing since. I logged onto elong the next day and bought a ticket without problem. An agent called back, spoke to Qian and asked her to confirm all the details such as the date before processing.
This is the kind of thing which really p*sses me off in China. Such a backward approach to customer service – blaming the customer when problems occur due to gross incompetence on the part of employees of the company. Nobody seems willing to admit that they could have made a mistake because they will “lose face”. Instead they just look at the floor and then start shouting if necessary. In the west this is totally unacceptable but here it is normal. Surely such attitudes can only hold China back in their attempt to become a major business superpower. But of course, they will never accept that!
Anyway that’s my rant!!