Another year, another fuck up for China’s government-run train ticket sales site

Image by: Alex and Stacy

When it comes to examples of successful internet businesses, China’s 12306 train ticket sales site should not be on your list. While the site probably boasts revenue numbers that would blow you out of your chair if they were public, that’s only because it’s state-run and has a state-mandated monopoly – all online train ticket sales run through its platform.

Perhaps as a result of this utter lack of competition, it has been plagued with problems, and these problems always start to spring up right around this time of year, as huge numbers of people begin hopping online to buy train tickets home for the Spring Festival holiday.

This year’s fuck-up

This year’s problem: dual-factor authentication. 12306 has recently released an updated security system that mandates dual-factor authentication with one’s phone. You text the number “999” to the 12306 system, it texts you back a security code, and you use that to log into the site. The ostensible purpose is that forcing users to verify and link phones to their accounts will help them log in using their phones if they happen to forget their email address or password.

The problem, though, is that there’s a three-day window for doing this once you log in, and after that window closes you can’t buy train tickets. This would be fine if the system actually worked but – as seems to be tradition for the 12306 site – it reportedly doesn’t. The China News Service (also a state-owned company, by the way) reports that numerous users have been complaining that when texting the 12306 system, they’ve encountered problems getting a security activation code they can use to finish verification.

“I sent a dozen messages and never got a response,” wrote one complainant. “Do I really have to go to the train station to fix this?” Many complained that their registration texts seemed to vanish into the ether, never getting a response.

Other users did get responses back, but the response came so late that the security code was unusable. “After the registration text sent, I waited half a day for the security code,” one wrote. “When I went to enter it, the system said the code had expired, so I had to send another registration message; in the end I never got a security code.”

Still others reported that they had to send the registration message seven or eight times before finally getting a code back.

12306 customer service has responded that it’s not sure what the issue is. “There are lots of reasons for not getting a code,” a rep told China News Service, “but most are due to service issues, some phone numbers don’t have this kind of service.” Since the 12306 verification requires only text messaging service, which is ubiquitous among the sorts of people who buy train tickets online, this is difficult to believe. But the rep did admit that the issue could also be a problem with the 12306 system. “Today there have been too many verifications, and right now there are dozens of customers still in line,” the rep said.

A history of incompetence

Of course, this is just the latest in a long line of problems with 12306. Here’s a partial timeline of the carnage:

December 2011: For the first time ever, 12306 will sell tickets for all trains during Spring Festival (it previously had been offering only high-speed rail tickets). It went poorly, with the site bugging out, crawling, and crashing on the first day of sales. The system was also accused of being unfairly biased.

March 2012: 12306 fails to issue customers refunds within the legally-mandated 15-day period for doing so.