How do you frustrate travelers? By overselling non-reserved tickets.

As background the Taiwan High Speed Rail (HSR) mirrors the Japanese Shinkansen. The trains speed through the Taiwanese country-side from north to south in about 2 hours. That’s approximately 400 km. Each train line contains 12 cars of which cars 1-7 for patrons who reserve seats. Cars 8-12 are non-reserved, first come first serve seating.

Because of a National Holiday, the HSR was packed full of travelers. And as it turns out, they over sold the non-reserve seating so much that to compensate for the overflow, the HSR authorities opened up the reserve cars to non-reserved with a small caveat…. Non-reserved ticket holders can only stand.

For a traveler after crossing the Pacific, having to stand for 2hrs is an annoyance. But to oversell something is just gross stupidity in my opinion.