During the Spring Festival, a short period of peak migration makes it difficult to get a round trip train ticket.
According to data from China Railway Corporation, railways are expected to transport 413.3 million passengers during the 2019 Spring Festival travel rush, up 31.76 million or 8.3% year on year, with an average of 10.33 million trips per day, setting a new record. Now open the railway 12306 mobile app to check the information of remaining train tickets, many popular Spring Festival routes have been sold out.
The Spring Festival travel rush has spawned many third-party ticket buying platforms, such as Zhihang Train, Tieyou train, High-speed rail management, netease Train, Leopard Snatching Tickets master and so on. Especially this year, 12306 hair big recruit! Third-party ticket-snatching software was “blocked” and netizens commented “exploded”. According to a report by CCTV Finance, the machine features of third-party apps have been identified and restricted, and even if users pay for the accelerated service, the success rate of ticket purchase will never be the same as that shown by various ticket-snatching apps.
The “ban” on 12306 was only the trigger. Third-party platforms were originally created to help more users grab train tickets, but they were criticized in the process.
Third-party ticket-snatching platforms are often criticized for unjustified refund and repeated deduction
At the time of launch, third-party ticket snatchers did not charge any fees in order to attract users. Later, when the user volume reached a certain scale, third-party ticket snatching platforms began to consider cashing out. However, the operation mode of third-party ticket snatching platforms in the process of cashing out has brought some unpleasant experience to many users.
Xinmin Evening News has reported that there are cases of unjustified ticket refunds on these platforms. In other words, users participate in ticket snatching on the platform, and the system shows successful ticket snatching, but they are refunded after completing the payment, and the system shows failed ticket snatching. This really caused great inconvenience to ticket buyers. The reason is that there is a turnover process, that is, the third-party ticket buying platform does not have the ability to issue tickets for users directly, and the so-called third-party ticket buying platform only buys train tickets for users on 12306 ticket buying website after receiving users’ ticket buying information.
And in this turnover process will appear a lot of uncertain factors lead to “unjustified refund”. For example, if there are many users who buy the same train on a third-party platform, the system may give priority to the passengers who pay faster when the remaining tickets are limited. Therefore, users who also display “successful ticket snatching” may be “unjustified refund” due to slow payment speed.
At the same time, according to xinmin Evening News related reports, the platform also has repeated deductions. That is, after users purchase tickets on third-party platforms, there will be repeated deduction between 12306 platform and third-party platform. Although the repeated deduction will be returned to the account of users who purchase tickets after contacting third-party customer service, this one after another also leaves a bad impression on users.
The xinmin Evening News report also said that the platform’s “paid acceleration package” hidden. Opaque and asymmetric information about the acceleration of ticket grabbing is common on third-party ticket buying platforms. When users participate in ticket grabbing on the platform, the platform will evaluate a success rate of ticket grabbing, but this success rate is not reliable, and even if they buy the acceleration package, they cannot guarantee that they will get the ticket.
Some people believe that “grab tickets to speed up the package” is actually a third party ticket buying platform on the basis of the original ticket price, which seems to be no essential difference with scalpers. Some people also believe that third-party ticket buying platforms use their technological advantages to force frequent ticket brushing and repeatedly jumping the queue, so that they can get the remaining tickets earlier than ordinary ticket buying.
In addition, “payment acceleration package” is also suspected of hidden charges, specifically for the third-party ticket buying platform does not inform or prompt the relevant information of payment in advance when checking the payment acceleration package for users. Under normal circumstances, the system will bind sales, adding the ticket grab package by default. So a lot of times users are overpaying for paid acceleration packages without even knowing it. This makes the third-party ticket buying platform look less “open and aboveboard”, and no wonder it will be criticized by users.
However, knowing that the platform has deficiencies in these areas, but having the same problems exposed every year, shows that the platform has been making the same mistakes.
The third party grabs the ticket platform why inflexible change?
In fact, the third party grabs the ticket platform is difficult to change with its own operation model has a great relationship. The third party ticket buying platform essentially relies on Internet technology to “jump the queue” to buy tickets online, so only when 12306 tickets are released, the third party ticket buying software can snatch tickets. Third-party ticket buying is more of a “middleman” role, quite some of the Internet “scalpers” meaning.
Before the Internet has not realized the purchase of tickets, in order to buy a Spring Festival train ticket home, we crowded in the major train ticket office, some even in the railway station to play a shop not to buy a ticket oath. The years before the Internet were the most active years for “scalpers”, who resell tickets, buy them at regular prices and resell them at higher prices.
Third-party ticket-snatching platforms help consumers buy tickets through “accelerated services” and earn service fees. There is nothing wrong with working hard and getting paid. However, in many cases, consumers are not guaranteed to buy tickets as long as they buy an accelerated package. There is great uncertainty in third-party ticket purchase software, which is related to two aspects.
First of all, the third-party ticket purchase software is not the ticket issuer, so there is a certain lag in snatching train tickets for users. And this lag sex has two aspects to reflect. On the one hand, as the “agent” of the third-party ticket grab platforms, they do not have the power to release tickets, so the “business” of the third-party ticket grab platforms all rely on 12306. 12306 release tickets, the third party grab tickets platform they can grab tickets, if 12306 no tickets, you in the third party grab tickets platform plus hundreds of acceleration package is useless.
In fact, if it were not for the time and energy saved, snatching tickets on third-party ticketing platforms might not be as fast as users staring at 12306 themselves. Because the residual ticket information of the third-party ticket buying platform is changed according to the trend of 12306, that is to say, in the residual ticket information, the third-party ticket grab platform still has a certain time difference compared with the official 12306.
On the other hand, the third party ticket grab platform in the change of buying ideas also appears to be very lagging mobility. Third-party ticket snatching platforms only focus on the seat category of the selected train when snatching tickets for users. When a user’s selected train or class is sold out, third-party ticket snatching platforms will not be flexible for the user to purchase other class seats on the same train, or to purchase tickets to other destinations on the same train through the strategy of “make-up ticket”. Third-party ticket-snatching platforms will not notify users if they do not grab tickets, but will continue to grab tickets for users until the departure of the train.
Even so, the third-party ticket buying platform cannot guarantee users to grab tickets. Although some users add a lot of acceleration packages, the probability of grabbing tickets may soar to more than 80%, but the 80% probability may contain a lot of water, and it is still unknown whether they can finally grab tickets. That gives users a problem. If users choose to continue to wait, they will face the risk of not being able to buy tickets. If you choose to leave, the service fee will be “wasted”.
Secondly, it takes too long to recover capital after service output, making it difficult for business to realize. Come, at this stage the third party grabs the ticket platform the realization way is onefold. At present, the main source of income of third-party ticket snatching platforms is the platform service fees generated when users purchase tickets.
If 12306 cuts off all third-party ticket-buying platforms, then no matter how sophisticated the third-party ticket-grabbing platforms are, they will not produce tickets. In the off-season, when there are enough spare train tickets, people choose to buy directly on 12306 to avoid the service charge. Third-party ticket snatchers have even fewer opportunities to make money. The recent 12306 technical restrictions on third-party ticket-snatching software have been further strengthened, which is obviously not a good news.
Second, third-party ticket snatching platforms have a long return cycle, which is reflected in the fact that the platform has been outputting services, but not all the services outputting by the platform are paid. There are still a large number of users who cannot get tickets on the platform. If they cannot get tickets, the platform will refund the ticket price and service fee in full. The service provided by the platform to these users is regarded as “volunteer work”.
Moreover if get the ticket from the start, natural can share the user service platforms, but some users to start late to get the ticket, this means that the platform service for user will continue until the train start, even if the last will get the ticket fee income, this period into a lot of manpower and material resources, time, cost may be hard to make up for with limited service charge.
In general, due to the limitation of the way of realisation, third-party ticket snatching platforms can only try to provide third-party ticket snatching services, but the imperfect mode and technology make them lack in service ability.
The third party grabs the ticket platform people should work hard in the word of mouth
So, how to eradicate the third party grabs the ticket platform people common disease? In fact, as long as the third party grabs the ticket platform they still do the service of the agent, so these diseases can not get a radical cure. However, the third party grabs the ticket platform to seek better development can try from other aspects.
On the one hand, the third-party ticket grab platforms to seek more healthy cash channels. For example, the platform snatching tickets to develop a non-profit nature of the service, and in order to drive platform traffic. After the platform traffic reaches a certain volume, it can reap the flow dividend in the form of advertising cooperation. The third party grabs the ticket platform people if choose such development mode, actually already occupied an opportunity.
Because third-party ticket grab platforms have accumulated many users over the years, at present, there has been a certain volume. In this user base, once the platform changes the service of grabbing tickets charged by acceleration fee into public welfare service, this base will grow at a very fast speed. After all, the free service hits the user’s point of interest.
On the other hand, the platform’s ticket snatching mode should be more transparent, give users a certain sense of trust, enhance the trust value of the platform, and establish a good reputation of the platform. With good service to help users develop the platform to grab the habit of tickets. Once habits are formed, platform users become dependent and become engaged users of the platform.
With a large number of engaged users, it will be much easier for third-party ticket grabbers to navigate the OTA road. In other words, to break the OTA spell, third-party platforms need to think a lot more about user buzz. Users can obtain effective OTA spell breaking spells.
In general, if third-party platforms are fixated on grabbing tickets, the outcome may not be happy. Firstly, there is the official channel 12306, and secondly, the imbalance between the supply and demand of train tickets is not a problem that third-party platforms can solve, even 12306. Therefore, the third party grabs the ticket platform or as soon as possible to see the reality, as early as possible to plan a larger commercial territory.
Article/Liu Kuang public number, ID: Liukuang110, this article first kuang Venture capital network