"Hangzhou, Hangzhou, 100 yuan per ticket." A train ticket to Hangzhou that usually costs around 54 yuan was being sold for twice its price by scalpers outside the Shanghai South Railway Station. Recently, our newspaper received complaints from citizens stating that due to the overlapping of student travel, Expo sightseeing, and tourism traffic, train tickets to and from Shanghai have suddenly become a scarce commodity. As a result, scalpers who profit from reselling train tickets have become more active. Thus, our reporter went to Shanghai South Station to investigate.
It is understood that in order to seize this business opportunity, some scalpers have mobilized their entire families to queue up and "grab" tickets, which they then resell at double the price.
In just five minutes, four "doubled-price" tickets were sold.
At around 10:30 AM, our reporter arrived at the entrance of the second ticketing office of Shanghai South Station. At this time, the ticketing office was already crowded with people, and long queues had formed in front of more than ten windows. "Where are you going? I have tickets," said a middle-aged man wearing a short-sleeved striped T-shirt as he approached the reporter who was lingering nearby.
"Do you have high-speed train tickets to Hangzhou?" When the reporter asked, the "striped man" became enthusiastic. "100 yuan per ticket, departing at 11:40, you can leave immediately," he said while pulling out several train tickets from his pocket to show the reporter.
"That's too expensive." When the reporter expressed that the ticket price was too high, the "striped man" confidently replied, "Friend, buy it if you want. All the tickets to Hangzhou for today are gone." He then turned his attention to a young couple nearby. Within five minutes, he managed to sell four train tickets at 100 yuan each.
"Teamwork" with clear roles
Aiming at this vast "business opportunity," some scalpers have abandoned working alone and instead mobilized their entire families. Outside the first ticketing office of Shanghai South Station, a middle-aged woman holding a child approached the reporter asking if they needed tickets. When the reporter indicated interest, the woman immediately led them to another woman dressed in black, who quietly pulled out a stack of train tickets.
"Relax, I sell over a hundred tickets here every day. They're guaranteed to be fine," the woman in black said while showing the reporter two high-speed train tickets. At this moment, two people who looked like students walked out from a distant ticketing hall and secretly handed a few tickets to the woman in black. After a brief whisper, they turned back toward the ticketing hall.
The reporter found that such organized "scalper teams" were not uncommon at Shanghai South Station, with clear responsibilities divided among buying tickets, soliciting customers, and selling tickets.
Ample supply of scalper tickets
Since the opening of the World Expo, the railway passenger flow in Shanghai has significantly increased, especially during the current summer vacation when tourist, leisure, work, and holiday traffic overlap, creating a prominent contradiction between the supply and demand of train tickets. Tickets for certain directions are particularly hard to come by.
Many out-of-town tourists visiting Shanghai for the Expo tend to purchase round-trip tickets only after arriving, providing a vast market for scalpers who offer "buy-and-go" tickets.
During the observation, the reporter learned that train tickets to various places from Shanghai were almost always available through scalpers. Tickets to areas surrounding Shanghai, such as Hangzhou, were the most popular, with prices typically doubling the original cost. For instance, a high-speed train ticket to Ningbo, originally priced at about 107 yuan, was being sold by scalpers for 200 yuan.
53 cases of scalping investigated
"There are no tickets left for Hangzhou today, not even for 8 PM." Although it was only 11 AM, the ticket window staff clearly stated so. Based on the ticketing information, the reporter discovered that all tickets for the remaining eight high-speed trains to Hangzhou that day had been sold out. Moreover, same-day tickets to areas surrounding Shanghai were also very tight.
Although the ticketing office was named the "Same-Day Ticket Office," most of the available tickets were for the next day. This undoubtedly made some tourists eager to leave Shanghai turn to scalper tickets. "I need to go back urgently, but there are no same-day tickets available. Scalper tickets are expensive, but there's nothing I can do," some customers lamented during interviews.
It is reported that since the start of the summer transportation season, the railway police have investigated 53 cases of scalping, arrested 56 ticket scalpers, confiscated 108 train tickets worth a total of over 23,000 yuan, administratively detained 17 individuals, and criminally detained three others.
In response, the Shanghai railway police stated that they would take a series of special measures to form a powerful crackdown and further deter various illegal activities such as scalping tickets, striving to purify the public security environment.