Ticket-grabbing software can increase hand speed to a certain extent, but whether you can grab a ticket or not depends on probability.

Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “burning finance” (ID: rancaijing), author Tang Yahua, editor Wei Jia .

The Spring Festival is approaching, and the annual population migration is coming again.

Although 12306 has recently announced that it has blocked some ticket-grabbing software and launched an official standby function, there are still ticket-grabbing services available on the market including Zhixing train tickets, high-speed rail steward, Ctrip, Meituan, Flying Pig, Tongcheng Yilong, etc. Multiple software.

However, many users reported that “this time the ticket-grabbing software is not working”, even if they used the acceleration package and bought VIP members, they still could not grab the tickets. Technical experts told Ran Caijing that in principle, the ticket-grabbing software simply copied the link where the user manually purchased the ticket, operated it with a machine, and used the enterprise bandwidth and machine speed as “purchasing”. The difference between purchasing an acceleration package or VIP is that the refresh frequency may change from 30 seconds to 10 seconds or 5 seconds, or multiple servers can grab tickets at the same time. However, it is still a matter of probability whether tickets can be seized.

Even so, there are still a lot of ticket-grabbing software that use their brains on such items as acceleration packages, VIP members, priority ticketing rights, and security grabs. “It costs 138 yuan on Ctrip, and 80 yuan on Meituan. This also makes many people criticize that the ticket-grabbing software is bound to induce consumption.

In fact, the root of the difficulty in grabbing tickets is that the huge demand gap caused by short-term large-scale migration such as the Spring Festival is difficult to meet. All consumers can do is choose carefully, find the right time, pay attention to leaks, and match with various methods. Under the huge demand, ticket-grabbing software and its business opportunities will also exist for a long time, but the routine is not a long-term solution. Only by providing value to users can people continue to pay.

Ticketing is a metaphysics

Since entering the Spring Festival on December 12, 2019, “I grab a ticket at XX, come and help me speed up. Pippi shrimp, let’s grab”, “Help me go home”, “You don’t click me No matter, the copywriting of “X is dangerous to go home” has begun to appear in the major WeChat groups. Helping to grab votes and “cutting a knife” have become a way to test your popularity.

Although 12306 recently announced that it has blocked multiple ticket-grabbing software, Rancai has learned that there are more than 60 platforms such as Zhixing train tickets, high-speed rail housekeepers, Ctrip, Meituan, Flying Pig, Qunar, and the same city elong Ticket rollout is still available.

However, this time, the user feedback is different from the past. In combination with the feedback from netizens in the forum and the interview with Ranjing Finance, everyone generally reflects that “this time the ticket-snatching software is not working.” If you can’t get the tickets, this has also triggered discussions on whether the Spring Festival Ticket Snack Package is “really useful” or “IQ tax.”

Why isn't this ticket-grabbing software working?

Picture / Pexels

The user Xiaoli told Ran Caijing that he had reserved a train ticket for the Spring Festival home on the Zhixing train ticket. As soon as the ticket was released, the ticket-buying software kept showing “Ticket-buying” but did not succeed. Anxious, he went to the 12306 official website and found that there were still more tickets, so he bought it very smoothly. “I doubt that if you don’t buy the acceleration package, the ticket-grabbing software will not grab it at all.”

Another user, Zhang Yu, has submitted a ticket booking order and purchased a 40 yuan speed ticket booking service on the Zhixing train ticket, Ctrip, and Meituan, and has not grabbed a ticket from Beijing to Rizhao for three consecutive days. She said that in the past few years, the ticket-grabbing software was able to grab it smoothly, and this time it was a bit disappointing.

“I used Flying Pig to grab tickets for the past two days, and added a 30 yuan handling fee. Since the ticket was released, I have been standing in front of my mobile phone and computer. As a result, there is no ticket displayed in Flying Pig software. Look, it was found that someone bought the ticket on the official website of 12306, but Feizhu still showed no ticket. After spending 30 yuan of VIP handling fee, I did n’t see the ticket displayed from start to finish. It ’s better to grab the ticket free software.

Ticket grab software routines

Although the effectiveness of ticket-grabbing software cannot be guaranteed, there are still many routines.

Ran Cai has experienced ticket grabbing on platforms such as Zhixing Train Tickets, Ctrip, Meituan, and Flying Pig, and found that the ticket grabbing methods of major platforms are similar. The overall feeling is that you can’t basically grab tickets without speeding up the package or buying VIP. But I did not promise to grab it. Because the rules of each platform are not transparent, no one promises to grab the ticket 100%, and only provides an estimated success rate. Whether this success rate is 70% or 98%, no difference is perceived by the user.

In summary, there are roughly the following routines for ticket grabbing software.

The first is to entice users to purchase “acceleration packs” or VIP members with inconspicuous font colors. As shown in the picture below, on the ticket purchase pages of Ctrip and Meituan, the “fast-speed ticket purchase” of the acceleration package is in red font, and the “low-speed ticket grab” without additional money is an inconspicuous light gray font. Users who do not look closely may Not smallBe sure to check the option of paying fast to grab the ticket. When Ranjing was testing, it almost didn’t find a free ticket grab option.

Why isn't this ticket grab software working? Why isn't this ticket-grabbing software working?

Pictures: On the Ctrip and Meituan ticket grabbing pages, low-speed ticket grabbing are not obvious gray characters.

Also, creating anxiety in copywriting is a common way. Tips such as “low-speed ticket grabbing is very difficult and is likely to fail”, “low-speed ticket grabbing success rate 52.2%, fast-speed ticket grabbing success rate 68.86”, “52% accelerated users choose light speed ticket grabbing” and other tips are easy to create There is an anxiety that you can’t grab the ticket without speeding up the package and spending no money.

Third, the platform will constantly remind users to upgrade the acceleration package, and use the ticket-grabbing software to start stepping into their routine step by step.

Ticket-buying software is divided into low-speed, fast, high-speed, extreme speed, light speed, and VIP. If you choose the low-speed free ticket grabbing first, the system will display “invite friends to help, up to the speed of light At this point, inviting friends to click on help and watching ads is the purpose of the platform.

When the ticket is not grabbed, there will be multiple options on the page to prompt you to upgrade. Ranjing Finance tried to choose the speed of 40 yuan on all platforms. I thought that I would sit back and relax. . For example, Ctrip also set up the “priority ticketing privileges: found that the remaining tickets will be issued for you first, 10 yuan / person”, “open a super member, free VIP upgrade ticket grab, 88 yuan / year”, Ran Cai calculations found that if It costs 88 yuan to open a Super Membership directly, and it is expected to increase 138 yuan to upgrade to the top ticket grab step by step.

After selecting the 40 yuan speed ticket on the US group, the system reminded that there is still a 10-point acceleration package to upgrade to the speed of light. The success rate is 59%, 10 yuan per person, and the VIP ticket success rate is 61%, 30 yuan. / Person, want to upgrade to the top match needs 80 yuan. Zhixing train tickets show that from low to medium speed, fast, high speed, extreme speed, VIP requires 10 yuan, 20 yuan, 30 yuan, 40 yuan, 50 yuan, respectively.

In addition, where to go there are “Easy to Grab”, “Ask a friend to hang up for me”, “Buy an annual ticket to grab a ticket, 72 yuan”Enjoy 3 VIP ticket grabs”, and when a friend is invited to help, the software will obtain the user’s location, mobile phone number and other information.

Why isn't this ticket-grabbing software working?

Picture / Where to go to help friends grab tickets, the system will get information such as location and mobile phone number

Finally, although some ticket-grabbing software promises not to refund the full amount of the ticket, the ticket-grabbing software will prompt the user to select more trips, more time, and cross-station to grab the ticket to increase the probability of success. What the user bought was not “most preferred”, but there was no refund.

These routines are also the hardest hit areas for user complaints. There are 152 complaints about ticket-grabbing software on Black Cat’s complaints, such as “Secondary fare for Zhixing train tickets”, “98% success rate of tickets purchased by Yilong in the same city, but tickets cannot be seized”, “High-speed rail housekeeper mandatory package consumption”, etc. Mostly, it is difficult to induce consumption and refund fees due to ticket-grabbing software.

The existence of many ticket-grabbing software actually raises the threshold for everyone’s ticket-grabbing. These various acceleration options increase the cost of screening for consumers, and it is luck that they ca n’t grab themselves.

In addition, many APPs are at risk of personal information leakage. As a tool plug-in, the ticket-grabbing software has a low threshold for technical development. After the user enters personal information such as the website username and password of 12306 and is transmitted to the platform server, if the security protection is too low, personal information can be easily leaked.

Ticket-buying software is equivalent to plug-in. Whether it can be grabbed is a probability

Is the acceleration package of ticket-grabbing software really effective? What is the technical principle behind it?

Zhang Yinghui, Chief Architect of Waypoint Technology, told Ran Finance: “When we go to 12306 to buy tickets, we need to enter information, query, and purchase. All ticket-grabbing software is based on the same principle, and these manual steps are programmed. To implement, and then try again and again. Under the constraints of user hand speed and ticketing frequency, third-party ticket grabbing platforms have the advantage of using machine ticketing and fully automated processing.

He also mentioned that the difference between purchasing an acceleration pack or VIP is that the refresh frequency may change from 30 seconds to 10 seconds or 5 seconds, or multiple servers can grab tickets at the same time. Because consumers mostly use ordinary 4G and 20M optical fiber broadband, the network speed of the enterprise-grade broadband used by the platform is naturally incomparable. In this mode of fighting speed, ticket-grabbing software combines enterprise broadband and machine speed. “Purchasing”, justEquivalent to adding a plug-in when playing games.

In general, the more frequently you brush, the more servers you use, the greater the probability of winning the ticket, but in actual operation, whether you can win or not depends on the time window of that second. “Because there are more than 60 ticket-swapping software on the market, the situation of the remaining tickets of a train from one station to another station is changing at any time. In this case, who can win the ticket depends on the ticket issue Which software is being used in seconds. “Zhang Yinghui emphasized that ticket-grabbing software cannot increase tickets. When there are no tickets on the 12306 system, no number of acceleration packages are useful.

During this process, there are also offensive and defensive game battles between 12306 and ticket-grabbing software.

Zhang Yinghui pointed out that, technically, the 12306 background can detect ticketing software. If the burden of ticketing exceeds the load of the website, the background usually restricts such accounts. Ticketing for the same IP address is too frequent or the same purchase request is submitted too Frequently, it may be dragged into slow speed or blocked. But as for the specific current-limiting rules, it is formulated, adjusted and implemented by 12306.

Of course, the blocked ticket-sweeping software may evade detection by changing IP addresses and using multiple servers to take turns to operate. The ticketing software is also continuously researching how to bypass the official rules, and the two sides are constantly playing games. Therefore, the user did not buy the ticket with the ticket grabbing software, it may be because it was not obtained, or it may be blocked.

Shan Xinghua, director of the 12306 Technology Department of the China Academy of Railway Sciences, said in an interview in 2019 that 12306 has identified the relevant characteristics of third-party ticket grabbing software and implemented traffic interception, even if users spend money to purchase The accelerated service of the three-party ticket grabbing platform will greatly reduce the success rate of ticket purchases. In addition, 12306 has introduced the “official ticket grab” standby function. If you encounter a ticket that is returned by a passenger, or a ticket added by the railway according to the capacity of the train, it can be given priority to those who have waited in line. .

“The ticketing software itself is not technically difficult. There are even many free ticketing programs or source codes on the market. People who know a little bit can install ticketing themselves, but it is difficult to make the ticketing function powerful. Support The needs of a large number of users, and to avoid the supervision of 12306, may require more servers and manpower. To put it bluntly, it is easy to brush a ticket at a low speed for one person, and it will become complicated to quickly brush a ticket for 1 million people. ” A technical person Li Yuan said.

Why isn't this ticket-buying software working?

Figure/ Pexels

In theory, the platform needs to invest in equipment and manpower. After completing the ticket grab, it is reasonable to collect additional resource occupation fees. Zhang Yinghui believes that the problem lies in the fact that while ticket-buying software increases the probability, it also increases the psychological expectations of ticket buyers, and some people who have spent money to achieve their goals will have negative feedback. The user expects to buy the ticket after paying the money, but this is obviously a probability mode, and there will be some cases where it can be obtained and some are not.

Ticket grabbing problems and ticket grabbing software will exist for a long time

Sometimes people say that hundreds of millions of people are using WeChat at the same time. On Double 11, Taobao ’s traffic can work normally. Why isn’t 12306 even a ticket buying software?

Zhang Yinghui explained that the business logic of 12306 is far more complicated than that of WeChat and Taobao. For example, a train passes by with a dozen stations in the middle. With hundreds of possibilities, the system inventory is changing at any time. If WeChat did not send a message or sent it twice, it is a trivial matter, but if a ticket is sold to two people, this is a major mistake.

In addition, the inventory change of 12306 is also affected by real-time changes of multiple parties such as websites, APPs, ticket halls, and automatic ticket machines. User needs have countless permutations and combinations of time, trips, and locations, and the entire journey is in a short time. It must be completed within the year, and the identity of the user must be verified to eliminate repeated purchases by the same person on the same trip. The numerous ticket-buying software on the market has also increased the data pressure of 12,306. The system is far better than the technical integrity and resource scheduling. The businesses of WeChat and Taobao are much more complicated.

He also pointed out that the application that was initially purchased by 12306 may be able to support 100 million people to visit at ordinary times, but during the Spring Festival, hundreds of millions of people will visit at the same time, and the equipment that needs to be purchased in the background can not be achieved at one time. Purchase, deployment The whole cycle of debugging and debugging is very long, but after the Spring Festival, there is no such a large amount of traffic, hardware depreciation loss, and labor maintenance costs will be wasted, so if 12306 is only for the Spring Festival and several major holidays to add technology and hardware, the actual It is also not feasible.

In the final analysis, the total railway transportation capacity is certain. The extraordinary demand for the Spring Festival transportation is extremely huge. Ticket-grabbing software does not increase the supply, nor does it increase the overall probability of buying tickets. The root cause of the difficulty in grabbing tickets is Supply and demand are imbalanced.

The way home, no matter how far away or difficult. So how can we increase the probability of buying tickets?

Ctrip train ticket experts told Rancai that users who did not purchase tickets for the first time can wait for leaks. “Usually there are about 3 chances for leak detection on a train. The first time is 45 minutes from the start of the sale. There is a 30-minute payment time after the successful ticket grab on the network. Some passengers will choose to give up the payment and can grab a ‘return ticket’. ; The second is 15 days before the departure, someone will change the itinerary or other reasons to refund the ticket; the last is 4 before the departureAt 8 hours and 24 hours, the system will release some remaining tickets. Users can hide in these nodes to pay attention to their trips, waiting for leak opportunities. “

In addition, the train ticket release rule is usually that there are many sources of tickets at large stations, and small sources of tickets at small stations. Buying more stations, buying fewer stations to replenish tickets, and hopping to buy tickets are also good choices. Various modes of transportation, such as home, air and rail, general express and high-speed rail, are used together.

Ranjing Finance has found that there are five peak points for ticket grabs during the Spring Festival: 9: 00-9: 30, 11:30, 13: 00-13: 30, 14: 00-14: 30, 16:30. 16:30 is the most intensive period of ticket sales throughout the day. The data shows that the period with the highest success rate is usually within half a minute after the ticket is released. This half-minute is also called the “golden half-minute”. In addition, if you don’t grab a suitable ticket, you can pay attention to the passenger trains added by the railway department before the Spring Festival.

In any case, the ticket purchase for the Spring Festival is just needed, and there will be business opportunities when there is demand. Therefore, in the short term, the problem of ticket grabbing and software for the Spring Festival will still exist, and the game between 12306 and the ticket grabbing platform will continue to exist. After being “educated”, users will even open their eyes and choose carefully. Only those platforms that truly provide high-quality services can continue to pay.

* The title picture is from Pexels. At the request of the interviewees, Zhang Yu and Li Yuan are pseudonyms.