Articles | Ran Finance (ID: rancaijing)
Author | 苏 琦
Edit | Wei Jia
Title map | Picture creative
“I have 10 first-class tickets that were almost swallowed by Tong Yilong.” Chen Bin had 10 tickets bought on the same trip near the expiration date. When he was about to refund, he discovered that the tickets had already been refunded, but the money was Did not return to his account, the refund amount reached 10,000 yuan.
This is not the first time he has encountered such a situation. Similarly, Tongcheng is not the first OTA platform he has encountered to do so.
“If a person does not fly often and is not very familiar with airline regulations, it is easy to be flickered.” Chen Bin was helpless. He is still the highest-ranking member and was treated equally when he was cut. “Not even the member customer service channel.
This kind of chaos has actually existed for several years. As early as September 2015, the China Air Transport Association issued the “Emergency Notice on Prohibition of Malicious Suspend and Refund of Valid Tickets”, requiring “No matter what reason The malicious operation of refunding the ticket “is called an illegal act.
But until now, this phenomenon still exists. According to statistics from the Civil Aviation Administration, of the 126 complaints received in 2018, 85 related to ticket sales services, accounting for 67.46%; 39 related to signing, changing and refunding, accounting for 30.95%; 2 related to after-sales service, accounting for 1.59%.
Statistics of Civil Aviation Administration’s Complaints about Aviation Sales Agents
A small ticket with endless routine behind. It’s the annual Spring Festival again. For those who are going to buy a ticket to go home, they have an OTA.The platform can compare prices and choose routes, but fancy bundling sales, changing sign-off rules, and big data killing pricing are exhausting.
Why do OTA platforms “bash” while bundling? What is the relationship between airlines, agents and OTAs? What should I do when I buy tickets?
If you have a complaint after you have refunded your ticket, the customer service will say please
Because of his frequent business trips and flight bookings, Chen Bin is already the highest-ranking member of OTA platforms such as Ctrip, Tongcheng, and Flying Pig. To his surprise, not only did he not enjoy the matching services, but he became a stepping experience on these platforms.
In November 2019, Chen Bin received information from more than a dozen air ticket refunds pushed by Air Travel.
He told Ran Cai that he purchased more than 10 first-class tickets for “Hangzhou-Shenzhen” on the same trip on December 13, 2018, and the travel date was from December 15, 2018 to March 2019. Inside. Due to the transfer of work schedules, most of the tickets are not used, and they have become open (scheduled tickets) , which can be changed within one year at a fee. Or refund.
On the day he received the refund information, Chen Bin didn’t take it seriously, because other platforms also helped him refund the ticket, and the ticket will be returned to his payment account in the same way.
But until December 10th, Chen Bin did not receive the refund, so he called Air China customer service to check the ticket details, and the customer service provided the ticket status and refund time. After receiving the confirmation information, he called the same customer service on December 14 and asked for a refund of the ticket. As a result, he was informed that the ticket had expired and no refund was given. After he stated that he had checked with Air China to check the information, the customer service changed his name and said that it was wrong. It should be a system operation and a refund would be arranged.
“I said I would find a 12315 complaint, and the customer service said please. It ’s not the first time to look at their proficiency.” Chen Bin told Ran Cai, regretting that it was a telephone communication at the beginning, and there was no recording.
Chen Bin believes that airlines can not refund if the ticket has expired, but there is no third-party platform for packaging and recycling. “I haven’t received any refund text messages or phone notifications on my mobile phone. If I haven’t used Air Travel, I don’t actually know that my tickets have been refunded. Who allows the same journey to be refunded without the user’s consent and after the refund, Tell the user? Where is the refund after the refund? “Chen Bin expressed dissatisfaction.
Xiao Ge, a ticket agent with more than ten years of experienceComing to Ran Cai Finance, the situation of refunding the ticket without the user’s consent can be achieved in practice.
Most of the air tickets on domestic OTA platforms are provided by third-party agents. Although airlines also have direct stores on these platforms, the proportion is not high. If the ticket is issued by the agent, the agent will use its own account to place the order and payment, so the airline cannot confirm whether the refund request was initiated by the customer, and the verification information will only be sent to the agent’s mobile phone number, causing a loophole. Xiao Ge said, “Whoever issues a ticket should bear this responsibility. The refund may be done by the agent or the platform, and the platform’s management of the ticket agent is very confusing.”
This refund situation seems to be the “hidden rules” of major OTAs. Chen Bin has also encountered it in the US delegation. At that time, he bought a ticket at HNA and wanted to operate a refund. The airline informed that the ticket had been refunded, and also informed the reserved mobile phone number (Should be the number of the ticketing agent) . He found Meituan’s customer service. After verifying, the other party said that it was indeed their problem. In the end, he returned a few hundred yuan and paid a few hundred yuan as compensation.
Screenshot of Chen Bin’s conversation with customer service
“I have screenshots of Alipay payment records for ticket purchases, but I only have those ten purchase records and no records of refunds.” Chen Bin said that he was still a platinum member of the same journey. In order to communicate with customer service, he himself Purchased a black whale member on the app. After several days of communication, Tongcheng finally agreed to refund the refunded amount.
As to the issue of “the user’s ticket was refunded near the expiry date but no money was received”, as of press time, no relevant response has been given for the same journey.
Fancy style for ticket agents
An airline source told Ran Cai that the situation like Chen Bin should be counted when the system clears records at the end of the year. Some ticket agents and sales platforms can reclaim hundreds of thousands of dollars through private refunds. .
Another offline ticket agent said that every year a large number of tickets close to expiry are processed in this way, which has become a “rule”. For the agents, this money is Baizhai’s net profit, and this profit is at least 20%. Xiao Ge told Ran Cai that temporary refunds were just one of the routines, and he also summarized some common routines:
Routine 1: Fancy refund
In addition to temporary refunds, there is also a refund based on the weather. For example, the recent heavy snowfalls in Beijing are a great time to make money. Because the snow is an accident, the airline will refund the full amount. However, many users are unaware that the agent only compensates the user according to the normal refund rate, not the full refund, and earns the difference. “Thunderstorms in spring, rain in summer, fog in autumn, and snow in winter are all good times to make money.” Xiao Ge said that with so many airports in China, which airports often have heavy fog and which often have strong winds, agents are know.
Routine two: group ticket dissemination
The team tickets sold by airlines to travel agencies definitely have an advantage. Many agents will quietly increase the price to individual passengers, but the price is still cheaper than normal tickets, and users will buy it. However, because it is a group ticket, this part of the ticket is not changed, not signed, and is not refundable. If there is something that the user wants to refund, it is prone to disputes.
Routine III: Special routes promote life
In order to promote a certain route, the airport has a unique policy of intermodal transportation between two airlines. For example, Zhengzhou Airport needs to open a Hong Kong route, but if its passenger source is not enough, it will give a certain airline discount, let them bring in the passenger source, and ask Zhengzhou Station to depart. For example, the original direct flight from Hong Kong to Yunnan has become a joint ticket between Zhengzhou-Hong Kong-Zhengzhou-Yunnan. The original ticket price of 1200 yuan was subsidized by Zhengzhou Airport and only sold for 200 yuan. The agent splits and sells the one-way sale, allowing passengers to earn the difference under one of the stops. In addition, this part of the ticket is not changed or signed, and will not be refunded, which will cause passengers to suffer some losses.
Routine 4: Specified people / companies
Every year in China there will be a group of people who go abroad to work / study abroad. The time period and the country are relatively fixed. The airlines will do some price tilts for these users. There are also some airlines to do their own B-end market and give preferential prices to some large domestic companies. Many agents will sell these tickets to users of non-specified groups. Once the airlines find out that the passengers are not in compliance, there will be a risk of violations.
Routine 5: Fight the time difference and make the difference
The ticket price fluctuates greatly before the flight. If passengers book in advance, some agents will choose to refund it immediately after issuing the ticket, and buy the ticket at a low price before the flight to earn the difference. But if you don’t wait for the low-price ticket, the agent will choose to refund the money to the passenger, and often it can only be a one-shot deal. This is also the reason why some passengers did not find their tickets or their ticket numbers updated when they arrived at the airport. In fact, the agents have performed a round of behind-the-scenes operations.
Routine 6: Fixed routes
Fixed several agents, only for a certain route, with low prices by virtue of extremely unique relationships. For example, the average annual price of this route is 1,000 yuan, and he can achieve 500 yuan. “But there are such” fairies “in various parts of the country. Why did you go to Ctrip in that year? It is because where you integrated a batch of such suppliers and won the price that others can’t.” Xiao Ge said .
In short, these agents use the information difference to set the price difference. Even if the price of the air ticket is only 5 points of profit, because the e-commerce company has no cost, and it can produce tens of thousands of tickets a day, the profits are extremely considerable. However, there are “rules” that are not changed or signed, and there are risks of violations.
These “hidden rules” have a long history. In 2016, the industry successively broke the chaos of changing ticket refunds without authorization, and not charging refund fees for changing visas in accordance with airline regulations. In the same year, many domestic airlines promulgated the “7.1 New Deal” to strictly control the order of the air ticket market.
At that time, the purpose of the New Deal for air ticket agencies was to “upgrade and reduce agency”-to increase the proportion of direct sales and reduce the proportion of agency sales. The agency fee changed directly from 8 to 10 rebates to zero. That is to say, originally, every ticket sold can get rebate points. Now for every ticket sold, there is only a fixed amount of rewards, and the profit is greatly reduced.
After the news came out, some people in the industry said that about 10,000 qualified agents nationwide, by the end of the year, more than 98% of the agents will be eliminated.
After the “7.1 New Deal”, major OTA platforms have reduced the proportion of non-direct-operated air ticket agent products, and the commissions they have collected have risen all the way, increasing from the original 1.5 points to 3 points.
The profit margins are getting thinner and thinner. In order to survive, the agents are also increasing in irregular market behavior. Xiao Ge said that nowadays, basically whether it is C- or B-end, it must be done something that should not be done to survive.
Service fee becomes a new profit point for OTA platform
“A thousand agents were injured and one hundred were damaged.” The implementation of the New Deal for air ticket agents at that time was also a fatal blow to OTA platforms such as Ctrip and Feizhu, which are mainly engaged in the sale of machine wine, but they quickly found new profit points from users.
The survey data of CICC that year showed that self-operated air tickets accounted for approximately 20% of Ctrip’s domestic air ticket business, and direct flights from airlines accounted for 10% to 20%. The rest were agency tickets. Before the New Deal, Ctrip could earn 40 yuan for each self-operated ticket, and ticket agents could earn 30 yuan. After the New Deal, the revenue of self-operated air tickets dropped by about 20%, and the profit of agency air tickets was minimal.
“As ticket prices become more transparent, competition has also begun to shift to pre-sale and after-sale.” A travel agency official told Ran Cai that China originally did not have a service fee. As far as agents are concerned, it is uncontrolled The product does not control the channel, and the people in the middle do not recognize it, but now, in order to increase the thickness of profits, domestic airline tickets are beginning to charge service fees.
On July 11, 2019, the Civil Aviation Administration of China issued the “Regulations on Management of Passenger Services for Public Air Transport”, which became more apparent after regulating carriers and air sales agents to prohibit default tying.
The reorganized booking pages of various platforms have converged, and the display mode of bundled sales is also more secret-many costs are directly labeled as service fees.
Lan Cai tries to buy a flight from Beijing to Shanghai on New Year’s Eve on Ctrip, Where to Go, Flying Pig, Tongcheng and Meituan.
Where the first recommendation is a special ticket for machine wine, the payment details include the price of machine wine package, machine building + fuel, and single room difference. If you choose the direct store of the airline, there will be a 38 yuan fee for the exclusive flight service, and the payment button is divided into ordinary booking and immediate booking. Immediate booking will display the words “plus 38 rescheduled free of handling fees”.
Where the ticket comes with 38 yuan exclusive flight service fee
Similarly, the airline flagship store on Ctrip also includes a gold service package of 38 yuan, and it will jump out of the 30 yuan purchase of aviation accident insurance when paying.page.
The airline flagship store recommended by Meituan includes a free gift package (including hotel 188 gift packages, study training vouchers, teeth cleaning vouchers, overseas Hotel red envelopes) , looks a bit tasteless. The Meituan self-operated ticket will jump out of a 40 yuan aviation accident insurance.
Grilled Gift Packs Included in Meituan Tickets
Flying pigs are relatively restrained. No matter whether it is self-operated by the airline or self-operated by the platform, except for the 30 yuan purchase page for aviation accident insurance, there are no traces of bundling, and there will be 2-10 yuan And other discounts, some tickets support instalments.
The “low-cost” tricks on the same journey are the most common in these homes. The first page of the homepage is divided into two columns: regular reservations and +20 yuan flight delay insurance reservations. The payment page also has a bargain to return 90 yuan. Text and lucky win free pages.
The booking delay for the same bound delay insurance channel is up
In addition, OTA platforms are also looking at another big high-margin business-insurance.
According to Chen Bin’s description, the insurance for the same trip started with a cash loss. The user bought the delay insurance. After the flight is delayed, the user is required to contact the corresponding insurer with the policy number to settle the claim according to the normal process. At the beginning of the same journey, in order to optimize the user experience, it will directly pay the money to the user in the form of a ticket refund, and it will go to the insurance company for reimbursement.
But it was later changed to a red envelope coupon. red