Chinatripadvisor.com - a complaint

[onebir]

I'd never been to shanghai before, so i decided to fly there, then take the train to hangzhou and finally beijing. Because the 1st may's coming up, i thought it best to book in advance. Chinatripadvisor looked ok based on various online sources. But...

1) they couldnt get get the tickets

2) i didn't get the email they sent telling me this

3) they couldn't get a SH-BJ sleeper ticket when i discovered the situation yesterday (calling them to find out when the tickets would be delivered)

4) the agent at my hostel could, without difficulty

1 & 2 may not have been their fault (my trip plans are still somewhat banjaxed however). but 3 seems strange, given that it only took the agent at my hostel 1 2 min phone call.

judging from other people's comments online, they operate pretty well most of the time - but if you do use them, it's worth bearing in mind that emails sometimes dont arrive (for whatever reason)

but they do add around a 50% margin to the ticket price - roughly rmb200 compared to the rmb30 booking fee i've been asked for here. i think this is probably only really worth it if you're travelling at peak times (& when, like me, you're not 100% confident you can deal with booking situations over the phone in chinese)

[sissi]

What you encountered is quite common in China for the agents have special channels.If you know some Chinese,this website(http://www.kooxoo.com) will help you with your ticket.Many of friends get tickets there with no extra money.

[self-taught-mba]

This is great--we need more reviews on here!!!! Save others or help others (and the good companies)

[mrtoga]

I just used a site called elong.com to reserve hotels in Beijing and Dalian. It was really easy - literally a five minute process and they send confirmation to your mobile phone and e-mail immediately. I didn't book any plane / train tickets, although I imagine they do this too. They have 360 degree rotating pictures of hotel rooms and comments from people who have recently stayed in the hotel with marks. I was impressed anyway.

As for the payment - I just pay the hotel direct when I arrive. I am paying 450 renminbi per night for a four-star hotel in Dongzhimen between 4th - 7th May. Sounded reasonable to me! Will see what the hotel really looks like when I arrive of course.....

[panda18]

I ordered two train tickets from Xi'an to Shanghai at chinatripadvisor.com and they did deliver the tickets to my hotel in Xi'an. I worried so much because they cannot confirm the booking until one day before, but luckily they got the tickets 8 hours before i left for Shanghai. Overall chinatripadvisor.com was really helpful as I was travelling from 1st ot 7th of May, the busiest time. I heard from my Chinese colleague that you cannot buy the tickets at any railway station even you tried several days before, but you may get tehm from an agent at last minute because they have some Guanxi <- special channel.

[zeberdeebeebs]

I'm sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with chinatripadvisor.com - but our experience was completely different...

My girlfriend and I booked our 1st Class tickets from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar and from Ulaanbaatar to Moscow through chinatripadvisor.com - I have felt compelled to go online and review them positively everywhere because their service was amazing.

 

They helped take something that could have been incredibly costly, difficult and stressful and made it cheap, easy and carefree.

 

Our first set of tickets (Beijing to Ulaanbaatar) arrived to our address just outside of Seoul, couriered and with no problems about 14 days after we ordered them. Our second set of tickets arrived  at our accommodation (Zaya Guest House - also excellent) on the morning of Sunday 1st March 2015, we arrived later that afternoon and were delighted to find those tickets there waiting for us - it took all the stress out of our time in Mongolia!

 

And the best part of all of this - despite booking 1st Class tickets, not to mention through an agency, we found the cost of this had all been cheaper than other travellers had paid for 2nd class tickets through different agencies!!

 

So in totality, you would be foolish not to buy from chinatripadvisor.com - I only bother to give glowing reviews like this when a company has really gone out of their way for me and they did this for me and my girlfriend through their constant e-mail replies, high quality service and help in ensuring our plan to go across Asia by train came to fruition! Thank you Alex and Yongmei!

[imron]

I only bother to give glowing reviews like this when a company has really gone out of their way for me

Do you also only wake up threads 9 years old just to do that?

[Matthewkell]

Do you work for Chinatripadvisor by any chance?

[abcdefg]

I just ran into the same unbelievably glowing spam by the same individual on two travel websites.

 

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/forums/asia-north-east-asia/china/a-big-thank-you-to-chinatripadvisor-com

[roddy]

Actually, and having checked out other postings which I won't link you to but can be easily found, I'm fairly sure it's a genuine post. It happens now and then. 

[zeberdeebeebs]

Indeed roddy I am genuine - I just wanted to find a way to say thank you to this site for helping me out so much and thus hopefully keep them in business so they can help themselves (which they deserve) and help other travellers in the future.

And as for the idea that it's spam because it's the same message in different locations...would there really be much point in writing a different review in each place you post when you could just copy and paste...think it through a little more carefully chaps and chapesses!

[vellocet]

Google has thought of that, and marks down duplicate content in search results.  Even if it is a genuine positive review, it sure looks like spam.  Who are Alex and Yongmei?  They are never identified.  Do they own the site or something?  If so that makes it look even worse as you have a personal relationship with them. 

[abcdefg]

Despite Roddy's reassurance, I also remain unconvinced.

[889]

Problem is, this review checks practically all the boxes for spam:

FIrst-time poster. Check. Multiple postings. Check. Ridiculously over-the-top praise ("You would be foolish not to buy from chinatripadvisor.com"). Check. Wave-by at the owners ("Thank you Alex and Yongmei!"). Check. Far too wordy and glowing for an agency which, at best, did nothing more than what it was hired to do. Check. A business with a number of negative postings elsewhere on the web. Check.

If the posters are in fact for real and had used some common sense, they would have simply posted a couple of sentences saying they'd had no problems using this agency. But gush on like that and it looks like they're being paid by the word.

And as to service, this agency's website says, "How early can I know if my [train] tickets are purchased or not? You can know 20 days in advance the earliest." That's just wrong, since bookings have for some time been available 60 days in advance.

Finally, look at their markup! They're selling a second-class ticket on the D2282 Shenzhen-Hangzhou for US$93, while the station price is 432RMB (US$70). That's a US$23 markup. You can buy the same ticket on ctrip's English site for just a 20RMB markup. Looks to me like you would in fact be foolish to buy domestic train tickets from chinatripadvisor.com, unless you enjoy tossing money away.

[roddy]

I agree it looks like spam, and I should probably have added a note to that affect when approving it. 

[zeberdeebeebs]

I assume Alex and Renmei are the owners - they were the names at the bottom of the e-mails I received from the site.

 

I don't know what their other prices are like but the tickets I bought (Beijing - UB and UB - Moscow) were definitely cheaper than anywhere else (that looked legitimate).

My intention was to help these guys out for helping me and my girlfriend...clearly that doesn't seem to be happening! Is there something I can post to convince you guys, my travel photos perhaps or a link to my tripadvisor page (which, believe it or not, I am not a first time poster on!)?

If that doesn't do the trick, I think I'll stop at that as this is beginning to take up a bit more of my time than it was worth!

[Matthewkell]

To be honest you're wasting your time here.... your determination to praise a company you say you had a good experience with comes across as a little weird. It's just not normal behaviour, I don't think I've ever experienced anyone go so out there way to give a company good reviews, of course it makes people suspicious. It's not that people think chinatripadvisor is a terrible company - every company makes mistakes, and nobody would even have read this 9 year old post if you hadn't bumped it back to the front page - it's just your "review" reads more like an advertisement, and it's far too glowing to elicit any response other than a cringe or an eye-roll.

 

And most people on this forum are unlikely to use chinatripadvisor in the first place, this forum is mainly used for people who live in China, working or studying, can speak fairly well or are trying to learn Chinese, so the vast majority of people here are quite capable of organising their own trip around China independently. 

[abcdefg]

Furthermore, "Chinatripadvisor" is a company which depends for its very existence on customers erroneously assuming that they are a branch of "Tripadvisor."

 

Their name exploits confusion. I don't like that kind of dishonest approach to doing business; an approach which is designed to fool the unwary.