Spring Festival travelers, beware of ticket apps
With the approach of China’s Spring Festival travel rush, the largest human migration in the world, the taxing battle for train tickets home has begun. Anticipating the surge in ticket purchases, tech-savvy buyers anxious to return home have turned to add-ons, plugins and other software applications, overwhelming the official ticket booking system. The emergence and flourish of ticket-snatching apps, which automatically refresh the page and search for available seats, is making the already-inefficient train ticket market more chaotic.
About 3 billion trips across China are expected to be taken during this year’s Spring Festival, according to media reports. However, the official booking website and phone service seem to have failed to accommodate the need of billions of ticket-buyers. This has opened loopholes for ticketsnatching software applications. It is not surprising that passengers eager to reunite with their families back home would cut corners to gain an edge in the cutthroat fight for every single ticket.
Worse still, if one person tries to use ticket-snatching apps to his advantage, everyone will panic and battle to get ahead. After all, few will choose to stay in line if a queue jumper has seized an unfair advantage without being condemned. Everyone rushing to grab as much as they can will fuel the already-tense battle. Downloads of third-party plug-ins and other ticket-snatching “amulets” are reported to have far exceeded those of the official ticketbooking application.
A number of software companies like 360, Ctrip and Sogou have noticed this business opportunity. After the huge success of providing free ticket-snatching services for customers, some profit-oriented commercial enterprises started to charge their app users. A ticket-snatching industry is thus in the making. This is alarming to the train-ticket market.
The more third-party ticket-buying plug-ins and add-ons there are, the harder it is for people to secure a seat home. Battling to get ahead, people are not gaining an advantage, but damaging the very system that everyone depends upon. The apps are turning ticket-buying into a zero-sum game. They are not helping customers, but are making the market more disorderly. As a result, everyone will be worse off.
Ironically, some software companies advertise how “helpful” they are in securing tickets for customers. To be blunt, ticket-snatching app operators are scalpers in nature. They are cheating under the guise of technology. The unfair advantage given to app users will make it more difficult for those having limited access to the Internet to buy a ticket. Rural migrants, with relatively low education level and thus little knowledge of advanced technology, are among the biggest victims. Queue-jumping in the digital world is jeopardizing social justice, an emerging problem that cannot be overlooked.
Security risk is another concern. Passengers need to submit their name, ID number, bank account, phone number and other personal details to book tickets online. Their privacy may be at risk once personal information that ought to be wellprotected is leaked and taken advantage of by some unreliable ticketsnatching apps. After all, online fraud is not news in the digital era.
Ticket-snatching is a worrying phenomenon that deserves more attention. Some netizens vent their dissatisfactions entirely with the official ticket-booking system. Admittedly, properly allocating train tickets to accommodate demands during the Spring Festival travel rush and simplifying the official ticket-booking process is a fundamental solution. However, it should be noted that the Spring Festival travel season is something that other countries have never encountered before, and there is no reservoir for China to draw experiences from. Compared to the past, the situation has become much better, and the unremitting efforts by the Chinese authorities should be recognized and respected.
After all, time and patience are needed to curb the jostling traffic. At present, the authorities are advised to regulate and tighten supervision on third-party ticket-booking software applications before an industrial chain of ticket-snatching is formed.