[Closed] Train tickets - WTF

Obviously booked the £104.00 tickets, what with all the hassle of travelling on two trains.

I bought a ticket recently to travel from St Albans to Liverpool. OK, I didn't buy it in advance and needed an open return... but surely £300 is taking the piss somewhat.

To add insult to injury, they didn't even manage to get me all the way to Liverpool, diverting to Warrington because of overrunning engineering work.

Just glad it wasn't my money!

It gets worse.

My booking confirmation now proudly states that I have saved £57 vs buying my 2 tickets on the day.

WTF - but that makes the regular price of ticket from Sheffield to Glasgow (via Manchester) £79.50. So why could I buy an advance fare for the same journey for £104?

Its just broken.

I've also just noticed that my train (with the change) is 40 mins faster than the direct. Its mental.

You have a choice of several tickets, one costs £x another costs 2*£x and the third costs 5*£x. All are for pretty much the same thing. Do you
a - buy the cheapest because it's cheapest
b - buy the most expensive because it's one less click on a mouse button and we all know how difficult and stressful that can be
c - none of the above, just whine on the internet with some well worn daily mail'isms, then buy the most expensive tickets because the cheap ones have gone whilst you've been whinging.

My booking confirmation now proudly states that I have saved £57 vs buying my 2 tickets on the day.

oh no, it just gets worse, they told you that you've SAVED. You idiot. You should have taken the most expensive ticket, then you wouldn't have had the stress of reading about how much you've saved and then posting to tell us about it.
Oh no, and the train will be quicker - I feel for you dude, I really do. or at least whoever gets stuck next to you on a train for a couple of hours.

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I buy a train ticket to Brookwood each day for work despite getting off in Woking (as I'm allowed to break a journey according to the T&Cs). A Woking only ticket is more expensive and I would have to change trains in Woking to get to Brookwood if I used all my ticket.

WTF!

I agree. broken.

Obviously booked the £104.00 tickets, what with all the hassle of travelling on two trains.

You have a choice of several tickets, one costs £x another costs 2*£x and the third costs 5*£x. All are for pretty much the same thing. Do you
a - buy the cheapest because it's cheapest
b - buy the most expensive because it's one less click on a mouse button and we all know how difficult and stressful that can be
c - none of the above, just whine on the internet with some well worn daily mail'isms, then buy the most expensive tickets because the cheap ones have gone whilst you've been whinging.

Why can you buy two different tickets for exactly the same thing, one being 5 times the price?
Why is a restrictive advance fare higher than an on the day fare?
Why did the timetable website know the price but not allow me to buy a ticket and because I needed two tickets then not be able to redirect me properly?
Why could I not search for the two journeys at the same time on the actual site I then needed to find to actually purchase the tickets?

The issue is not the personal inconvenience to me (which is admittedly tiny) but how bats**t crazy it all is.

Imagine what a visitor to the country would think. They would think we are all completely loony for putting up with it.

Our rail network is envied by many countries actually. The fare structure is daft though!

You have a choice of several tickets, one costs £x another costs 2*£x and the third costs 5*£x. All are for pretty much the same thing. Do you
a - buy the cheapest because it's cheapest
b - buy the most expensive because it's one less click on a mouse button and we all know how difficult and stressful that can be
c - none of the above, just whine on the internet with some well worn daily mail'isms, then buy the most expensive tickets because the cheap ones have gone whilst you've been whinging.

Imagine what a visitor to the country would think. They would think we are all completely loony for putting up with it.

To be honest it is a very good point.

Compare it to some where like Switzerland. One price is what you see and pay for each train fare, no quadroupling of price if you want to travel at a peak time, a single is half a return, same price no matter when you book.

njee which are they ?

ive traveled by train alot in uk , australia , holland , ukraine & new zealand

uk - shite - example , this morning an ALWAYS busy train and there wasnt even standing room in the carridges for me , i had to stand in the door way with the door closing on me- surely there must be a limit on the number of folk who can stand in a train !
australia - very busy/well used but works well
ukraine - very punctual but very old/ manky
holland - very very good , punctual , clean and plenty spaces
nz - very low service volume but what they have works very well and on time.

not one of them has come close to the cost of the uk . example in holland i traveled 200kms each way for 22 euros return - in the uk i cant even travel 100kms one way for that - its used alot more than the uk and the trains thus are much much bigger !

uk train companys seem to be operating a minimal service maximum cost train service.

uk train companys seem to be operating a minimal service maximum cost train service

erm, a lot of lines are operating at capacity, so its not quite a minimal service as there is no possibility at the moment to increase it.
And the overrunning engineering works mentioned earlier are to address these problems.
You can't fix it without doing some work.
However, the ticket pricing is total nonsense, and the amount of money wasted by various parties involved in the industry is just daft.

service includes upgrades

they have just let it run to rat shit over the years more like than upgrading as required.

surely there must be a limit on the number of folk who can stand in a train !

uk train companys seem to be operating a minimal service maximum cost train service.

Compare it to some where like Switzerland. One price is what you see and pay for each train fare, no quadroupling of price if you want to travel at a peak time, a single is half a return, same price no matter when you book.

get a car or stop being poor....

yeah i use the train cause im poor not be cause it can proove to be convienant at times to use the train.....

Upgrades are expensive though, the extent of works required to increase capacity/speed on lines is huge, and on some lines it just isn't possible to squeeze any more out. Look at the Northern Hub project for a good example of this kind of work in action.
The other option is new lines (like HS2 for example) but even with compulsary purchase just the land aquisition is rediculous, never mind actually designing and building the thing!
I'm not sure what else there is to do to be honest?!? you can't keep doing little upgrades due to the nature of the problem, you need to run something up to capacity, then upgrade it with some additional capacity for future upgrades. Then the same situation occurs a decade or two later. This lifecycle is the way the network evolves!
(no, I dont work for Network Rail or a train operating company).

I can buy a ticket for £104, for this I have to pick a specific train with a choice of journey times of between 4 or 5 hours. All options arrive within 30 mins of my desired arrival. 1 option is direct.

I think seat reservations are separate from the ticket? So you train ticket isn't for a specific train, but the seat reservation is.

I might be wrong.

It's definitely confusing.

maybe its different down your way but at my end of the country ive actually seen a reduction in service

i used to be able to get a train leaving my home town going north or south every 20 minutes.

now its once an hour or twice an hour at rush hour

Well i still don't understand it
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/

[b]Advance [/b]- Buy in advance, sold in limited numbers and subject to availability. These tickets are only valid on the date/train specified (compulsory seat reservation)
[b]Off-Peak[/b] - Buy any time, travel off-peak
[b]Anytime [/b]- Buy any time, travel any time - You can reserve a seat on this as well, which may make it seem as though its for a specific service even though it isn't (but the seat reservation is).

Also, sometimes seat reservations are compulsory on busy trains.

Each train companies have slightly different rules on when you can reserve a seat
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/booking_horizons.html

is that right?

It's definitely confusing.

Imagine what a visitor to the country would think.

I've travelled by train in several countries. In many, it's no better. Commuter trains are crowded, they sometimes break down, sometimes are late.

If you talk to people from other countries, they pretty much all complain about something being crap or bonkers. So what does that tell you?

Re odd fares - the airline industry is the same. Flight from London to Chicago change in Madison, £450. The exact same plane but with a ticket terminating in Madison, £600. So they actually pay you to fly from Madison to Chicago, when you'd rather be in Madison.

Demand management.

I've found the best prices for longer journeys can be had from booking all the steps of the journey as individual journeys - It can be tons cheaper this way - and sometimes leads to quicker journeys too.

The online booking systems seem to want to keep your connection times short for through tickets so it'll suggest longer or less direct routes to acheive that short connection time when you could get there in less time with faster / more direct journeys and a longer wait between them

I had to travel from Birmingham to Selby last autumn- the system wanted to me to use a train that took me past selby to york to wait a short while then connect with one coming back the other way. As individual tickets I was able to go via Sheffield instead, have enough time there to walk into town and get lunch at the lovely Rutland Arms, get back on a train to selby and still arrive quicker than I would on the through tickets and save about £40 too

I like trains... But the train I generally use starts in Glasgow, goes through Edinburgh, then to London. It's often more expensive to book a ticket from Edinburgh to London than it is to book a ticket on the same train from Glasgow to London, passing through Edinburgh.

It's all about supply and demand... Except it isn't, because train companies admit that they will opt to have small crowded trains with expensive tickets at peak times, rather than adding more carriages or (whisper it) another train and charging less for tickets.

This gets more and more barmy.

A colleague asked me what train I was going on as they also wanted to travel to Glasgow at the same time but they wanted to start in Nottingham instead.

A search on National Rail Enquirers shows you tickets for £108 (the anytime price, no advance fares available at all) all of which involve 2 or 3 changes.

But because I already had my ticket I knew there were advance fares available between Manchester and Glasgow. A lot of fussing around finds you a ticket from Nottingham to Glasgow, with one change in Manchester for less than 1/4 the price of the anytime fare, on a train that only tales 15 mins more than the fastest suggested train that required 3 changes and was faster than all the 2 change suggestions. But this required prior knowledge and a load of faffing with searches.

In essence I have no problem with the confusing pricing structure and pricing as per the demand with cheap advance fares available.

But the rail companies must be forced to hide this from the customer and just present them with the cheapest options that match their search criteria and allow them to purchase it in a sensible way.

no quadroupling of price if you want to travel at a peak time

Counter argument is that thats the normal price, but prices are reduced at off peak times to smooth the passenger load and stimulate numbers.

Otherwise, you might as well only run your trains at peak time, as the other journeys won't have enough passengers to make them worthwhile - no point in having a train with only half a dozen people on it!

Counter argument is that thats the normal price, but prices are reduced at off peak times to smooth the passenger load and stimulate numbers.

It's probably a bit of both - 'discounted' tickets off-peak to encourage numbers, artificially high prices at peak times when you've got a captive audience who (in the main) have no choice but to travel at these times.

An amusing side effect of this is that off-peak travellers often get quieter trains with more seating choice than the peak travellers who've paid 4x more more their ticket.

I agree 100% that train operators should be required to clearly display the cheapest ticket options.

Regional operators in particular are the worst.

A national operator like Virgin (are there any others?) I have found pretty clear when it comes to finding cheapest prices if you're travelling direct between two major destinations.

Don't know if this will help but try this (recieved in a moneysaving expert email a while ago)

click [url= http://splitticket.moneysavingexpert.com/ ]HERE[/url]

works better for simple journeys (it got Stirling to Blair Atholl correct, but struggled with Shef-Glas, could be the stations i chose though)

This one really baked my cookie... A few weeks ago, I phoned up to book a ticket for me & my bike on a train from Machynlleth to Knighton. I had to phone as it didn't seem possible to reserve the bike slot online. I was told that I could pick up my ticket from the counter at Mach just before travelling. Great.

However, the bike required a separate ticket, and I could only collect that from a ticket *machine*, not the real live person at the ticket counter. Now, as Mach doesn't have a ticket machine, I would have to go to another station, many miles away, to pick up the bicycle reservation ticket. WTF??! After ranting down the phone to the poor bloke that I was cycling the width of Wales in the space of 12 hours, I was ****ed if I was then going to cycle to some far off train station to then cycle back to the other train station again. It was clear that my totally unreasonable request was completely breaking their process & they couldn't quite work out how to cope with it. After a very long conversation, I finally persuaded him to contact the person at Mach station for them to make a written note of my booking and "stick it to their screen". Of course, when I got to the station they couldn't find any record of my bike reservation. Bonkers.

It's completely bonkers and they might as well have a random number generator.

whatever capacity management they're doing obviously doesn't work, as people will scrabble for cheap tickets and all end up on the same overcrowded (and I'm on on about ones in the provinces) train which will eventually be followed by two half empty trains.

Same with planes, the problem is the prices only ever go one way so the real excess capacity never gets sold at a fair price.

One word:

THATCHER.