More than 11,000 train ticket reservations for the Lunar New Year holiday had to be canceled yesterday after a foul-up with the ticket reservation system provided by Chunghwa Telecom, Chinese-language media reported yesterday.
When Taiwan Railways began accepting Lunar New Year's bookings for its eastern line at 6am yesterday morning through a telephone ticket reservation system, 4,793 reservations for 11,015 tickets for the western line were also mistakenly accepted, the reports said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-san (林陵三) said yesterday that 169 tickets that had already been collected would remain valid even though the reservations should not have been accepted.
Chunghwa Telecom had apparently neglected to turn off settings allowing reservations on trains connecting the eastern line with the western line, causing some callers to believe that tickets could also be booked on the western line.
After cancelling the reservations, Taiwan Railways said that reservations for the western line would be accepted starting tomorrow, as originally planned.
The reports said that Taiwan Railways discovered the problem at 6:20am and informed Chunghwa Telecom at 6:37am. By the time the settings had been altered at 7:17am, more than 11,000 tickets had been reserved.
Chunghwa Telecom took full responsibility for the mistake, the reports said.
However, the company erred again in trying to correct its first mistake by preventing bookings on the western line before the Lunar New Year holiday, as well as for those during the holiday, paralyzing Taiwan Railway's booking system for much of yesterday morning.
According to the reports, tickets for trains on the eastern line were sold out early yesterday morning. By 10am, 35,960 tickets to Hualien, 13,651 tickets for Taitung and 41,877 return tickets to Taipei had been sold.
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