With almost all the advance tickets for buses and trains already sold out ahead of Eid and Puja festivals, unscrupulous brokers are taking advantage of the ticket seekers’ desperation by selling tickets online for prices that are several times more than the original.
Instead of the actual passengers, a large number of tickets reportedly end up in the hands of profiteers during times when the demand for tickets are at the peak. As a result, an artificial shortage of tickets is created, allowing the unscrupulous scalpers to sell the tickets at outrageous prices.
Although most of such transactions were earlier dealt in person, touts were now also preferring to use websites that post classifieds.
Users at clickbd.com – a popular e-commerce site – post online advertisements offering tickets at higher prices.
A user named palas001 posted an advertisement for four Dhaka-Dinajpur bus tickets on Nabil Paribahan air-conditioned buses for October 4. Each ticket was offered at Tk3,000.
In the post, the seller claimed that he had bought the tickets from another website but had to sell them as his plans for travel had changed. When contacted, the user who claimed to be from Dhaka’s Uttara said he had bought the tickets for Tk2,500 each.
However, Nabil Paribahan officials said the bus fare for Dhaka to Dinajpur AC service was Tk1,200 during Eid, while the tickets for non-AC service was Tk700.
Asked about the advertisement by palas001, Mahfuz, an assistant manager at Clickbd.com, could not comment as he did not know details about the ticket price.
“Actually, we do not sell anything directly. We are just like a platform for e-commerce business. But when any user posts any ad for business, we verify the posted ad and we do not keep any unverified ad,” he said.
Meanwhile, touts also posted classifieds offering to sell train tickets to a variety of destinations ahead of Eid.
A user named Akram posted an advertisement on another e-commerce platform – ekhanei.com – on Monday, offering to sell train tickets for Khulna, Rajshahi, Chittagong and Sylhet for October 3 and 4 at the price of Tk450 each.
However, the pictures of the tickets that he submitted on the advertisement showed tickets dated for 2009 and 2012.
When contacted by this correspondent, Akram demanded Tk900 – double his asking price – for each ticket.
Asked if the user’s posts and asking price were verified before being uploaded, Ekhanei.com’s content manager Shamim Ara said: “We are very much conscious regarding this matter and we also have a moderator team that works for verifying the posted ad and price matters.
“But what can we do if anyone demands higher price over telephone, despite posting the ad with the actual price. Sometimes we keep some ads that ask for a higher price, but we do not keep any that demand twice or thrice the actual price,” she added.
However, when asked how the website verified advertisements which offered so many tickets on a variety of routes, she refused to comment.
Transport terminals
Visiting the Gabtoli bus terminal, the Kamalapur Railway Station and the Sadarghat launch terminal in the past two days, the Dhaka Tribune found that the rush of ticket-seekers was lighter than the previous few day as most of the tickets had already been sold.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune at the Kamalapur Railway Station, Pritam, a private university student, said: “I have just come from Sayedabad bus terminal as I did not find any advance bus ticket to go to my home in Feni. But I could also not get any advance ticket here as all of them are sold.
“Now I am trying to find a scalper who can manage an advance rail ticket for me,” he added.
Sources said touts and seasonal ticket scalpers are likely to become active at the transport terminals from today, in order to get the maximum profit from people who are desperate to head home to their families to celebrate the festivities.
