Purchasing plane tickets in China

Two friends visiting from the States asked us to purchase tickets from Beijing to Shanghai for them since Chinese domestic tickets are much (i.e. four times) cheaper if purchased in China. This situation had two requirements: 1) we had to buy tickets from Beijing to Shanghai despite the fact that we were presently in Shanghai (this was a problem because most travel agents in Shanghai only have discounted tickets on flights leaving Shanghai, not on flights to Shanghai); 2) because we wouldn't go to Beijing to meet our friends, we needed to buy electronic tickets (relatively new in China). The total process of purchasing the two tickets took two full eight-hour days. Below is a detailed account.

Day 1. Morning

We first tried to purchase the tickets on yoee.com. We used to use yoee in Beijing to buy electronic tickets. They always screwed up somehow or another (badly misspelled passenger names despite the names being spelled correctly when entered in on their webpage forms; sometimes they also forgot to send us the tickets; etc.), but we always got the tickets in the end. In Beijing, we either payed on-line using a Beijing bank account (that we had spent considerable time setting up to allow us to make payments on-line) or we payed when they hand delivered the tickets. We had closed that particular bank account when we left Beijing and yoee does not have a Shanghai office, so neither of these options were available. Yoee has an option to use credit cards, so we tried that. After spending a good half hour filling in all the forms, we discovered the first problem: our friends had two-word surnames and the computer refused to accept these names. So we called yoee and had them manually enter the names; they then told us to go back on-line and use the webpage to pay for the tickets. We went back to the webpage, navigated to where we entered the payment info. I selected the "Mastercard" radio button and entered in my Mastercard number. The payment failed. Now with yoee, if a payment fails, you have to call the company so that they can clear the record and allow you to try the payment again. We called them up and first asked if we could just give the credit card number over the phone. They told us this was not possible and that we had to pay on-line; they told us to wait 20 minutes to clear the previous failed payment and then try again. We waited, tried again, and the payment failed again. We called yoee again; they put us on hold; then they explained that the Mastercard feature was not yet implemented (despite the fact that the web page allowed you to select Mastercard as your credit card!); you could only use Visa to make payments. I used to have one Citibank Visa and one Citibank Mastercard; but at one point about 3 or 4 years ago, my Visa was converted into a Mastercard (without my consent and without any warning), so I no longer have a Visa card.

Day 1. Late Morning
So we gave up on yoee, and tried to use a Shanghai-based company, ctrip. Now ctrip has a website for ordering tickets, but, unfortunately, they cannot issue electronic tickets on-line (only over the phone). So we bypassed the webpage altogether and called the company directly. This meant that we had to spell out our friends' foreign names over the telephone. It took about 30 minutes for them to get it right. Then they asked for our friends' passport numbers. We knew that passport numbers are required for domestic flights in China, so we were prepared. Then, something unexpected happened. They asked for our friends' dates of birth. We have bought dozens of domestic tickets in China over the past two years and never encountered this requirement. I didn't know the dates of birth. Was it possible to leave this blank? No. The system couldn't process the tickets without dates of birth. In retrospect, it probably would have been a good idea to just make up some dates, but we gave up with ctrip at this point, and went out for a quick lunch before continuing our mission.

Day 1. Afternoon
We next decided to try to use yoee again, but this time use our Shanghai bank account to pay directly. Gina was under the impression that when she had opened the account, she had asked to have it activated for on-line payments. We called yoee first to clear the account again so that we could reattempt to pay. There was some information on the yoee webpage about how to set up the bank payment for our particular bank (a Shanghai branch of the Bank of China). We downloaded the necessary browser helper object so we could use internet explorer to make the payment. This took a while because of the slow connection. We then tried to pay. The payment failed. We then went to the Bank of China, waited in line, and asked a representative what we needed to do. He gave us a phone number to call. We went back home and Gina called the number. They gave us some additional information which we tried. It still didn't work. At this point, yoee also told us that an excessive number of payments had failed and that the system would not allow us to purchase any additional tickets that day. It was about 5 pm by then and we figured that we would try again the next day.

Day 2. Morning
At this point, we tried another approach. The airplane tickets we wanted were for a Hainan Airlines flight, so we tried calling the Shanghai branch of Hainan Airlines directly. A woman answered the phone and told us that she didn't know if they could issue electronic tickets or not and that the person who knew wasn't in yet. We took a break to have breakfast. We called Hainan Airlines and the person who knew about electronic tickets told us he'd look into it and call us back. We waited. Eventually, he called us back and told us they could not issue electronic tickets for flights to Shanghai (only for flights departing Shanghai); we were directed to call the Beijing office. It occurred to us to check yoee again to see if any other airlines had cheap tickets (prices can suddenly drop on any given day). To our horror, we discovered that the cheap tickets we had tried to purchase the day before were no longer available and that only substantially more expensive tickets were now for sale. We didn't know what to do. Gina thought that yoee perhaps still had a hold on the tickets we tried to get yesterday and called them. They did indeed still have a hold on those tickets. But this meant that we had no choice but to use yoee. The Beijing bank account we had used in the past to pay for yoee tickets was a China Construction Bank account. So we decided to open up a China Construction Bank account in Shanghai and try to pay for the yoee ticket on-line that way. It was about a one hour wait at the bank before we could be helped. During the wait, I explained to Gina that Bank of America had just bought a 10% stake in China Construction Bank, partly because it was one of the least corrupt of Chinese banks (last year, a mere sixty thousand China Construction Bank employees had been disciplined). We had no problem opening the account. The woman then told us to wait in another line (only 20 minute wait) to activate the account for on-line purchases. Having succeeded with the first step of our new plan, we took a quick lunch break.

Day 2. Afternoon
We were very eager to try out our new approach. We logged onto yoee and navigated to the payment page. Access denied. We called up yoee and they told us that the tickets had not yet been cleared since the failed payments the day before. They told us to try again in 30 minutes. We waited 30 minutes and then logged onto yoee again. They had actually created new ticket entries in their system (at this point misspelling our friends' names, though not too badly, so we decided not to worry too much about it). We entered in the account information from our new China Construction Bank account. The payment failed. We called a China Construction Bank hotline for on-line payments and asked what the problem was. The guy said he'd get back to us. After about 30 minutes, he called back and said that new account numbers could not be used for on-line payments because the first four digits of all new account numbers were not recognized by the processing system; only older account numbers with older first four digits could be used. We then called yoee again and asked if they had any suggestions on how to pay them. They did not. We asked if we could wire money directly to yoee's corporate bank account. The lady on the phone checked with her supervisor and found out that this was a possibility. She gave us the account numbers we needed and we headed back to the China Construction Bank to wire the money. After waiting for an hour, we reached the counter and were given forms to fill out. After we filled them out, the person at the counter told us that 1) we had filled out the wrong forms; 2) we had to go to the counter for corporate finance; 3) money could not be wired directly from our account but needed to be withdrawn from the ATM first. We waited in line at the corporate finance counter. After a complex process involving three different forms (and the need to enter our account number multiple times...despite the fact that we had now withdrawn the money and were asking them to wire cash), the money was wired. We then called up yoee and told them we had wired the money and that they should receive the money within 24 hours. They replied that we would lose the hold on our reservation if we did not pay for the tickets that very day. We told them we had already wired the money. They did not believe us. Finally, they agreed to issue the ticket if we faxed them copies of the receipts from the bank proving that we had wired the money. Unfortunately, it had suddenly started to rain, a veritable downpour. Nevertheless, the clock was ticking, so I braved the rain with the bank receipts deep in my pocket (protected from the rain) and walked over to the nearest fax place (a 15 minute walk). I faxed the documents, waited for it to stop raining, and returned home. We called yoee to confirm receipt. The person on the phone said she had no idea if any faxes had been received but that we could call back in 30 minutes and she would tell us. We waited 30 minutes, called, and got confirmation that the fax was received and that the tickets would be issued. By then, it was about 6 pm.