Overcharged For Ticket At Cm Rail Station

[NancyL]

I went to the Chiang Mai rail station to buy round-trip tickets for a little trip Hubby and I have planned to Bangkok. At the window, I learned the trains were full for the times I'd selected and alternate ones either didn't have aircon cars available or two sleepers near each other or some other "problem". The ticket agent's English was better than my Thai, but it was difficult to communicate thru the heavy glass window. He pointed to a schedule on the counter, which was a different format than the one on their website. Initially I decided to buy tickets for one way and go to Thai Airways to see about flights for the other way. Then I changed my mind and selected a train route instead.

He punched out some numbers on a calculator for the total and I paid him in cash. I remember the amount because I counted out exact change. After the transaction, I spent a few quiet moments on a bench in the station checking the tickets and making sure the dates and times were going to work. It wasn't until I got home and input the financials into our expense tracking program that I realized I'd been overcharged 540 baht.

That's a lot of money for a retired couple but I don't have any "proof". The transaction was in cash; there was no receipt for the total, just the amounts listed on each of the four tickets. It would be a waste of song thaew fare to return and ask for a refund.

Admittedly, I should have paid more attention during the transaction. But, I was disappointed that the routing/service class I'd planned wasn't available, weighing options on the fly, communicating thru a heavy glass window and referring to a schedule in a format I found confusing. Plus, there were impatient people behind me in line. Frankly, I think the clerk took advantage of the situation to make some extra baht. If I'd caught it during the transaction, he could have claimed a math error or confusion because I kept changing my mind on what I was telling him. But, if he gets away with this type of "error" two or three times a day, he has a nice extra source of income, doesn't he?

Yes, I was a dithering idiot, but I thought I'd share this tale as a warning to others to take a deep breath, slow down and be sure about everything that makes up the total when someone shoves a calculator at you with a "total due" that is several thousand baht.

[gotlost]

Do not fell bad NancyL that can happen to anyone even if they have been hear for 20 years. I had an experience yesterday where I paid to much. Oh well live and learn, but we never learn.

[harrry]

How about posting details of train class etc sowe can know if you were really overcharged or just forget one of the extra train charges that apply to all tickets such as rapid etc.

[Bill97]

Yeh, the clerk at the train station has been doing that for decades. He has an amazing ability to detect marks who are nervous and uncomfortable about buying train tickets. He is quite wealthy, if you do not believe it, watch him leave work at the end of his shift and get into his BMW. Always use a travel agent, even for train and bus tickets. Those impatient people in line behind me really piss me off too, they are so dam_n impatient that I can not be patient enough to get my transaction done correctly. I am always going out of 7-11 with Marlboros when I wanted L&M, too shattered to even check my change.

[NancyL]

Harry, one way we're going 2nd class sleeper, uppers, fan car at 531 baht each. The other way we're in 2nd class sleeper, air con, upper and lower at at 791 and 881. Those are the amounts printed on the ticket and agree with the html schedule on the Thai Railways website. I was charged 3274. If you can help me figure out if the 540 is for some "extra" charge, I'd sure appreciate it, but I think Bill97's explanation is more plausible.

I've never had problems in buying train tickets in person before, but have never bought them for a round-trip and never during a busy time. They always had the routing/class/seating I'd planned so I knew what the charge was going to be before I got to the train station.

[Mario2008]

The ticket shows the fare and all the extra charges. There are no hidden costs to a ticket.

Either a mistake or a scam.

[harrry]

Harry, one way we're going 2nd class sleeper, uppers, fan car at 531 baht each. The other way we're in 2nd class sleeper, air con, upper and lower at at 791 and 881. Those are the amounts printed on the ticket and agree with the html schedule on the Thai Railways website. I was charged 3274. If you can help me figure out if the 540 is for some "extra" charge, I'd sure appreciate it, but I think Bill97's explanation is more plausible.

I've never had problems in buying train tickets in person before, but have never bought them for a round-trip and never during a busy time. They always had the routing/class/seating I'd planned so I knew what the charge was going to be before I got to the train station.

You have not said what type of train you are travelling on. There are multiple addons and diferences.

[vagabond48]

It may be coincidental but 2734b what you should have been charged has the same numbers as 3274b. Perhaps he mistakenly inverted the numbers. A friend of mine once go a very large check that was $18K over because the bank inverted 2 of the numbers and the difference was $18K.

[NancyL]

Mario's right. The charge on the ticket agrees with the listing on the Thai Railways website for the class, type of train, aircon, etc that shows on our booking. We've traveled by train here in Thailand about a dozen times and the only time I paid more than what was printed on the ticket was when we had the travel agent at our hotel in Bangkok make the arrangements and go pick up the tickets because we were in the U.S. at the time. There we paid 150 baht (total, not per ticket) over the printed price on the tickets, which I thought was more than fair for someone going to the train station in Bangkok to buy the tickets for us to hold in the hotel safe.

[harrry]

Mario's right. The charge on the ticket agrees with the listing on the Thai Railways website for the class, type of train, aircon, etc that shows on our booking. We've traveled by train here in Thailand about a dozen times and the only time I paid more than what was printed on the ticket was when we had the travel agent at our hotel in Bangkok make the arrangements and go pick up the tickets because we were in the U.S. at the time. There we paid 150 baht (total, not per ticket) over the printed price on the tickets, which I thought was more than fair for someone going to the train station in Bangkok to buy the tickets for us to hold in the hotel safe.

That is fine. A mistake seems to have been made or less likely there was a scam. The reason I asked for the details is that when I have hadproblems like that it has generally been me who was embarrassingly wrong as I had overlooked or not known things like the many kinds of surcharge.

[Thakkar]

This sort of thing happens to the most careful of us. It could've been a scam, or it could've been an honest mistake. I've experienced both and some have fallen in a grey area. For my equanimity, I deal with such experience by assuming it had been an honest mistake while reminding myself that in future, I'll be more careful. In short: Trust But Verify.

Mrs. T is a shrewd Thai-Chinese businesswoman who's always on her toes, and even she's been occasionally short-changed. She gets all worked up about it every time and consequently has a high blood pressure.

Either way, the money that's gone remains gone.

As for the impatient queue behind you, yes, that can be unnerving. I humbly suggest a smile and an apology in advance as an effective emollient.

[Ulysses G.]

Mario's right. The charge on the ticket agrees with the listing on the Thai Railways website for the class, type of train, aircon, etc that shows on our booking. We've traveled by train here in Thailand about a dozen times and the only time I paid more than what was printed on the ticket was when we had the travel agent at our hotel in Bangkok make the arrangements and go pick up the tickets because we were in the U.S. at the time. There we paid 150 baht (total, not per ticket) over the printed price on the tickets, which I thought was more than fair for someone going to the train station in Bangkok to buy the tickets for us to hold in the hotel safe.

That is fine. A mistake seems to have been made or less likely there was a scam. The reason I asked for the details is that when I have hadproblems like that it has generally been me who was embarrassingly wrong as I had overlooked or not known things like the many kinds of surcharge.

Thank you Harry.

I am not criticizing NancyL, but when I first came to Thailand I was constantly feeling that I was being cheated, only to find out later that I was 100% wrong. Now, like Harry, I am very careful to look at my own actions as the problem is usually caused by me.

That does not mean that Thai people never cheat anyone, but I bet that it is a lot less frequent than one would think.

[NancyL]

Ulysses, I understand what you mean. When we came here as tourists, I was paranoid about being cheated, didn't think the ice served in the restaurants was safe and refused to talk to a Thai who would offer to lead me to the place I was looking for when I was on a street-corner studying a map. I figured they, at best, wanted a tip or, at worst, would lead me to some place that would mean trouble.

Admittedly, I'm not an old-pro, but we've lived here a year, I've taken all the conservational Thai classes at the YMCA, eat street food daily and find myself approaching lost tourists, offering to lead them to their destination. I even ask the same questions that the Thais would ask when I was a tourist: "Where are you from? How long are you here? Where else have you been in Thailand? How do you like Chiang Mai?"

I hope the incident at the train station was just a misunderstanding, but somehow I think not.

[Ulysses G.]

I think that you are probably right.