Digital scalpers to blame for Spring Festival rail ticket woes

For the past several weeks, like many other people who look forward to an upcoming family reunion during the Lunar New Year, I've found myself stuck in a losing battle with ticket bots that have jacked up prices.

I've been a loyal customer of a popular travel site that charges a service fee for me to use its bot, or high-speed software to buy a ticket. It's a dubious business behavior because only licensed retailers are allowed to sell train tickets in China, for a fee of 5 yuan (72 cents) apiece. But I'm willing to pay a bit more so I don't have to check on the official ticketing site every hour and worse, leave my travel plan up in the air.

Perhaps it's a way of allocating resources more efficiently as only those who really need the tickets will pay more, I reckoned.