Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi,

For the last couple of days when trying to purchase tickets from worle using either the fgw site or the trainline site it keeps saying there's no tickets available, no matter what destination i select, yet there is from Weston Milton or Weston-super-mare, have they forgotten worle station exists?!

Has anyone else been having problems?

Erm ... no.  ::)

I'm really not trying to be funny, but you are entering 'WOR' as your outward station?  :-[

Yes I'm entering it correctly, tested it by either typing in the station name myself or clicking on the station name that pops up when the site recognises the station your entering, neither works, also getting the same problems using the fgw app on my smart phone.

Well, that's really odd, then.  :o

I've just 'bought' a ^3.70 ticket from Worle to Nailsea & Backwell for 14:45 tomorrow without any problem.  ::)

Is popping into Weston-super-Mare station an option? If not you can order the full range of tickets over the phone

Hi Smartie36.

Could you tell us the exact journey you are trying to find tickets for, including date and time of travel?

Looks like I may have to do that, certainly something weird going on with the booking system, choosing just a single from worle to St Ives works but a return doesn't, says no tickets available yet if I keep to the same date but change the departure station the return ticket option works!

Sorry, saw your post after typing my other reply up. It's worle to St Ives for the 16th may. The 8:50 from worle, arriving St Ives 13:31, returning on same day, departing St Ives 17:02 and getting back to worle at 22:07. It's a day trip I make down to St Ives quite often.

Well I've just tried Worle - St Ives using a WebTIS based booking engine (redsnottedhanky) and a trainline based one (FGW). No problems bringing up the range of trains that day, or the fares.

Do make sure you don't have an inappropriate 'via/avoid' station entered and try clearing your browser's cache/cookies.

I can only find a single train for that day which is the 1607 Worle to St. Ives. (Using Trainline's ticketing engine)

I take it this is the ordinary service for Worle?

Not sure as I've always caught the train from St Ives to make it to St erth in time for the 17:49 hst service to Taunton, then the 21:29 hst service to worle.

My apologies, had the wrong date when I checked FGWs site. There is indeed a problem with the FGW booking engine, and others powered by thetrainline. I've reported the bug to FGW.

Suggest you make your purchase through a WebTIS based booking engine. I recommend redspottedhanky.com (http://www.redspottedhanky.com/). Independent of any train operator and no booking, payment card or ticket collection fees.

Thanks, least I know I'm not going crazy lol. I will check out that site you mention.

Out of interest, what does NRE use to plan it's journeys. NRE decided that there were no journeys available (Bug too).

I see this bug still hasn't been sorted, would have thought they'd had sorted it out by now.

NRE provided journeys from Worle to Exeter St David's, but no further (not even St Thomas!)

I've finally got the message through to thetrainline after some confusion on their part. Their bod on twitter thought WOR was Worcester.  ::)

It still took some explaining as they were adamant that you could book Worle - Plymouth and beyond. Well yes, you could. But only on three trains a day, two of which were giving an itinerary with the first leg going the wrong way to Bristol. thetrainline now agree that the journey should involve the first leg heading toward Taunton.

thetrainline have told me that they will get their techie bods to look at the bug. I suspect they'll need to involve NRE as well, as their journey planner is also giving incorrect journeys.

Bad form of FGW to merely forward my initial tweet on this matter to thetrainline. They could've investigated the bug themselves and requested thetrainline fix it.  ::)

In the meantime anyone wishing to purchase tickets from Worle to stations beyond Exeter St Davids should book via a WebTIS based booking engine such as redspottedhankey.com, londonmidland.com or eastcoast.co.uk

How so? Surely the people that would investigate would be the people that run the website, in this case The Trainline, I doubt there would be much FGW could do about it other than what was done for you..?

So I have to chase up thetrainline myself do I? Which I did by the way, knowing that FGW had passed the buck. thetrainline then proceeded to make a right horlicks of the information I gave them.

No. The lead operator for the flows in question is FGW. They should investigate and request the fix, not pass the buck.

Whilst I know that thetrainline provides the booking engine for FGW, Joe Public doesn't. All JP sees is FGW's booking engine giving him some weird (and incorrectly limited) journey opportunities from Worle to points west.

Where did I say you chase it up yourself? I said The Trainline should investigate.
You stated that FGW forwarded the tweet that you sent them to The Trainline, in my view that is FGW asking The Trainline to fix it.
The fact that the online sales for FGW are done by The Trainline is available to "Joe Public" - it all comes down to reading those Terms though - or if you look in the help bit.

Anyway it's pointless me posting further as I don't think you are going to agree with me anyway.

I'm not disagreeing Ollie. It just would've been nice if FGW explained that they were passing on my concerns to thetrainline. They didn't. I only became aware of thetrainline's involvement when they replied to the tweet I sent to FGW.

That lacked a bit of courtesy on FGW's part, as did getting no response on Facebook, and gave me the impression of buck passing.

For my twopenneth - if a customer has a problem with my services and it is down to a supplier, I go to the supplier not simply forward an email.  Any communication between me and a customer is private.

That I would agree with, I wasn't aware that you hadn't been told it had been forward to The Trainline as that wasn't mentioned in your post.


Fair point, although a tweet isn't private unless it's a protected account.

And for what it's worth, I doubt FGW would've mistaken WOR for Worcester, which is what thetrainline did, in my correspondence on twitter!!!

Working in the rail industry, that's an elementary mistake to make, particularly when entering WOR into thetrainline's booking engine brings up Worle.  ::)

For completeness, here's the correspondence between myself and thetrainline on twitter:

https://twitter.com/search/%40justinmcaree (click on the 'In reply to Justin McAree' links to see my tweets)

Ignore the most recent tweet from @FGW, that refers to a different matter.  ;)

Many thanks for chasing this error up with thetrainline, hopefully it'll be sorted asap. Still can't believe that's what the bug is, confusing WOR with a completely different station!

I bought this to National Rail Enquiries' attention too on Apr 15. No response and no fix yet, so I politely reminded them today, I was told "we shall investigate and get it fixed" (again).

I've just been informed by Jo at FGW Facebook that the bug has been fixed on their booking engine. Appears to be fixed across all thetrainline based booking engines. Yay.  ;)

Don't go looking for times at National Rail Enquiries though. Anything from Worle heading west is still bringing up an error message for weekday journeys and incorrect 'via Bristol' journeys on Saturdays and Sundays.   ::)