Great Western Coffee Shop

There's a few useful tips here, but even as a fully paid-up member of the Guardian-reading fraternity I found a lot in this video that irritated me, like the casual side-swipes at the train service in this country, lack of explanation of Advance versus walk-up fares and the implication that the only walk-up ticket to Manchester is over 300.00.

What do other users think...?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/video/2013/apr/02/cut-cost-rail-tickets-video (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/video/2013/apr/02/cut-cost-rail-tickets-video)

That's par for the course. 

They almost never mention the availability of reasonably priced 'offpeak' walkup fares in such articles.  Must be one of the main rules for railway stories.

Paul

A bit of a disappointment really.  They should have:

1) explained off peak fares;
2) explained the rules for advance fares
3) explained the rules of split tickets.

Mentioned that a return to Penzance from Paddington is ^250 (roughly) which is correct but is only needed for 2 direct trains down to Penzance and only 2 going up. Regular price is half that! What he got wrong was his split ticket which would not have cost him a measly ^50 had that been in walk-up prices.

As said before, he does have a go at the high prices of train travel (especially compared to prices of flights). However you tend to book your flights IN ADVANCE hence the cheap price. Its the same with the railways.

He is right about trainline.com, but he did make it look as though East Coast was the mecca of all online tickets!

Yes, his video content, particularly the comparison between walk up full fare and advance split fare was so trite it counted as a unintended falsehood.  An agenda there I suspect, or he is just not very bright, possibly.

One thing however is true.  It does end up with one often paying more for the rail journey to the airport than the flight to a distant holiday.  One reason this may be so, is that one can book one's air ticket more than 6 months in advance but one's rail ticket not before three months from the intended date of travel.

This is an appalling and inexcusable situation.  We are flying to Lisbon in a months time for ^34 each, return.  Our tickets (or petrol and parking) vastly exceed that sum.

No need for engineering work on the flight path between UK and Lisbon. So no need to plan possessions. 

I don't see, with respect,  what that has to do with it (anyway), and what it has to do with giving people a big reduction for giving the transport company one's cash nine months in advance!

There will be a 6 mins past the hour train to WAT from AXM every hour from now until the end of time and SWT know it.  If there are later alterations after one has booked, they can do what Easyjet have coincidentally just done, namely emailed me to tell me my flight is half an hour earlier and given me the option of my money back or select an alternative.

But of course they are a proper commercial outfit and not a half way house, who throw in the towel on their obligations if it is less profitable and when it suits them.

You gather I feel strongly about this.

Remind me which obligation the owner of SWT has reneged on?

Air travel and rail travel are two very different beasts, and in my humble opinion there are far too many utterly specious comparisons made between them when it comes to the matter of ticketing. I can tell you feel strongly about this, but with respect I think you have fallen into this trap, and I vehemently disagree with your argument.

Firstly, your initial point: the railways release their cheapest fares 12 weeks ahead of travel, the airlines six months (or indeed longer, as I believe many airlines open reservations a year ahead of time). You wouldn't get things any cheaper if the railway released fares six months ahead of time, the fares wouldn't change.

Secondly, airlines are obliged to maintain passenger manifests with names, addresses and where applicable passport or ID details of all passengers on-board. Every single passenger has to provide these when they book. That means that the airline industry is set up with databases that contain all of this information for all passengers who have booked, making it a relatively straightforward process to contact all passengers on a given flight should the time change. Rail passengers in this country are, quite rightly in my opinion, able to book tickets, including advance fares at a station, without providing any personal details at all: this means they are not necessarily contactable once they have booked should there be a change in the timetable.

Thirdly, Easyjet and other budget airlines operate strictly as "point-to-point" carriers, so they make no allowance whatsoever for connections even with their own services. They can, therefore, change the time of a flight almost on a whim should they choose to, and have no liability to the customer for connections that they will miss as a result. The railway provides a huge variety of connecting services and has an obligation to get passengers there by the last train or accommodate them overnight, so again it would not be reasonable to open advance ticket sales until the timetable has been confirmed, which happens 12 weeks out.

Fourth, the density of airline traffic isn't even close to that of rail traffic, so the odd time change here and there won't be a huge administrative burden to process. Try contacting everyone with a seat reservation on every train service for weeks or months if the timetable has to be altered after the booking.

It would be possible for the railways to adopt the same ticketing policy as the airlines, but you should be very, very careful what you wish for: try travelling on Amtrak in the US which effectively does ticket as an airline. You'll find utterly eyewatering walk-up fares even off-peak, so that last-minute or spur-of-the-moment travel is just not possible. You'll find yourself denied access to any train without a reservation. You'll find staggeringly long booking office queues whilst the bureaucratic ticketing process (which involves giving full contact details and producing government-issued ID) grinds slowly along.

In summary, I think that what you suggest is utterly unworkable.

Finally, you mention that the airfare costs less then the train to the airport or the cost of fuel and parking. Doesn't that suggest to you that the flight you're taking is artificially cheap, rather than the ground transport being artificially expensive? There will be plenty of other people on-board your Easyjet flight who didn't have the luxury of being able to book months in advance and have paid through the nose for the privilege of being there.

Thanks IB.  My main point (your points duly noted) is that I find that the inability to publish bookable timetables more than three months in advance is what annoys me.  If you book online (that's what an online booking is) you give all the details that enables you to be emailed if anything needs to be altered.  I'm not referring to out of course delays or even planned engineering work and so on, but the situation where the service is totally altered.  Pax can be warned when booking that they need to check nearer the date if such has taken place and given the link to do so in the confirmation.

Regarding companies throwing in the towel (thanks JR), it was FGW and the east coast lot (GNER was it?) I had in mind, not SWT.  However that debacle could be seen as the fault of the DfT and its franchising process (that's another topic), rather than the franchisee, I concede.

I take the point that an advance fare might not be cheaper 6 months in advance than it would three months in advance (how is one supposed to know that as customer btw and what does it matter?) but it is the *convenience* (thinking of the customer) about which I am complaining.  One wants to feel one has booked everything in one shot.

Travel selling is a package activity and rail has a mountain to climb to reach the levels achieved by travel industry colleagues (I wonder if the concept of air, coach and others being 'industry colleagues' even really enters the awareness of some rail firms.  I mentioned here before that airline web sites enable you to book hotels, car hire, etc, in one fell internet session swoop).  Yes, I am aware of plus bus and the like, good stuff, but such could be built upon.

If everyone bought a ticket with reservation for a particular train (as they do when booking flights), I might agree with you.

But we value the flexibility of rail, and the TOCs won't know which train you are expecting to catch (and you would be currently at ease to change your mind, even frequently, with flexible rail tickets.

To do the same with flight tickets is more complicated - you would need the airline to re-ticket you 90% of the time, especially when deciding to fly later....

Its not the same animal, as has already been explained :-)

ChrisB, I'll take your points head on if I may.  I don't see why, if some pax book a service in advance, how that prevents anyone else not doing so and turning up on the day.  I was not pleading for all trains to be reservable, although I think there is a case for some long distance ones to be so, even if you 'reserve' just minutes before boarding (but that point aside).

My example is the Bristolian customer who wants to get an afternoon flight from Gatwick to Tenerife in November.  I've noticed that the FGW service (which timetable expires May 18th this year) allows one to book a ticket on Wednesday May 29th for the 10 00 at ^25.50 single, I just looked it up.  (Clearly I would probably want to book a return, but let's keep it simple for the moment).  But what's this?  29th May is for a new timetable that has not been made available yet.  When it is, does anyone doubt that exactly the same service will be offered every half hour even interval from TM connecting at Reading?  If it were so in doubt, what is FGW doing allowing me to book for that train?  If FGW knows it's not changing that pattern of service already, what's wrong with not making the service in November available to book now?  The timetable is not going to change between now and halfway through December, if ever during the life of the franchise.

The fact that I would get the same fare by waiting until halfway through August to book is neither here nor there.  (Perhaps it should be so reduced; after all FGW will have my money now and a certain sale).

I don't mind in the least being thought a fool, but please be gentle and point out where my logic (and commercial sense) fails.  If mods think this is boring or unhelpful, I will accept that of course.   

First, the May TT has been finalised - some TOCs even have theirs available as a pdf on their website. (is it T-12 or T-16 when new TTs are final?) - this one must be as you can buy Advances for that day too.

Other than Advance tickets, which are specific (like airline tickets) for one service, all ther tickets are somewhat flexible, and can be used as such without advising the TOC. So although you specify a train as an 'indication' of what service you are likely to be using, you aren't tied to it unless you buy an Advance fare.

THat is the point I am making - the ticket is flexible in some way - can you imagine the grief there'd be on here & elsewhere if you HAD to advise the TOC every time you changed your thinking on which actual train you were catching? Because to ensure trhe TOC then advised you of any disruption, they'd need to know exactly which service you were *definitely* catching - as the airlines do at the moment.

The printed TT is subject to change and it often does because of engineering work. The timetable for a given day is confirmed roughly 12 weeks in advance and is unconnected to the printing of timetable booklets. This week for example services are all retimed through Reading. The standard printed timetable won't reflect this, but roughly 12 weeks ago the altered timings would have been uploaded to the railway systems and when advance tickets were released passengers would have been booking on the basis of the revised times. If bookings had been opened 6 months ago the times given would have been the standard, not revised ones, and passengers could potentially have missed connections.

What also has to be remembered is that a railway timetable is a much more complex beast than an airline's schedule.

Going back to the Lisbon comparison, a quick search for tomorrow returning Sunday brings a price of ^230.  I'd also question whether a fare of ^34 covers marginal costs once APD (^13) is deducted, together with whatever landing and other airport charges are imposed. Though maybe the expectation of margin on an overpriced tiny box of Pringles and a cup of coffee will tip the balance.

Weekend travel is a particular issue regarding advance tickets. I was waiting for tickets to Scotland on the 23rd May to become available, as advance fares during the week from Crewe (long story) to Glasgow are very reasonable. But sadly once the times were loaded up a couple of weeks ago the prospect of a bus from Lancaster to Preston appeared less attractive.

 

Surely whether an advance fare is profitable or otherwise is up to the company advertising it?  I don't follow the reasoning in the previous post at all.

That said, I discover that the discussion has been furthered on UK Rail Forums and I will not add anything at this stage as many points have been made there.  The poster HowardH there caught my sympathy as you can imagine.

Here's the link.

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1422348#post1422348

I wonder how much business is being lost to airlines and as pondered by posters, and whether the likes of Eurostar give a monkey's.  I see the DB Bahn (tautology?) web site advertises a great through service from StP which does not exist!  I can't wait for them to muscle in on the ES monopoly.

Here is the link to DB.  Their booking pages, which I sampled, are a joy to use (if one could actually book any trains from England   :(  :D  ).   The DB web site does most  of the right things I am pleading for.

   

I agree that rail tt's are more complex than an airline schedule - but, having some knowledge of both, I would say 'only just'. Full service airlines (as opposed to point to point 'low cost' carriers) have to consider complex working hour rosters for up to a couple of dozen staff for each service  and which rosters may cover periods of up three weeks. Additionally, all staff have to be kept up to date on each airframe type that they may encounter. Additionally, major airlines will work on the basis that there needs to be a period of 'rest' ( a day or two) after each long haul rotation. It is accepted by the airlines that such rest must count as part of working time and not encroach into a period of leave  - ie staff cannot commence leave immediately on return.
Different problems, but still complex. I am not sure whether there is a period of grace in mileage that a trainset can run at the end of a maintenance cycle? But as they say in the airline world - "the wings are due to fall off tomorrow". . .

Point I was trying to make is that if you comparing the cost of any item with a similar item, then the validity of the comparison is diminished if that item is being sold as a loss leader. Another example might be to compare alcohol sold as a loss leader by supermarkets with an independent off license, and claim that because the off license is more expensive then its prices are unreasonable.

And as I also pointed out, Easy Jet has very expensive fares too when it suits them. I know this all too well, having booked a family of four to Turkey in the summer holidays and getting no change out of ^1,500. But it charges them because the market will bear them.  So its rather simplistic to compare an expensive rail fare with a cheap air fare.

With respect, (sigh)  I wasn't.  I was comparing advance airline bookings (possible 9 months in advance or more) with rail advance bookings (*not* possible, say, nine months in advance).

There is no logical reason for preventing an advance booking on a standard route, which the TOCs know 'fine well', as my Scots friends have it, will not alter.  Even if they did, since pax have booked online, it is the simplest task to send out 'choice' emails to them if circumstances changed.

What happens now within the three months itself?  If pax have booked an advance ticket and the TOC (albeit at NR's behest) change a train schedule, are we saying that the pax will not be allowed to get on the substitute service?  Will they not be emailed and told?  If not, why not?

I think I will pursue this, if mods allow, because I am just after the conclusion to a logical argument that may just get around the NR and TOCs' inertia.

If wrong, will always cede, of course. :D

Advanced fares are not regulated, and it's up to the TOC how many, how far in advance, and with what conditions they offer them.  They're even allowed to offer them at a higher price than a walkup fare for the same journey. So 3 months - allowed. 12 months would be allowed.   As would a 2 weeks to 1 week ONLY window!

What's good customer service, encouraging people to come back, should help shape the policy, but they're not actually going to loose all that much business by being rather tight with what they offer, and at certain times of day they're in a seller's market where they can generate more passenger traffic than they can handle.

The refranchise has been aborted ... but what was to stop one of the bidders (including the existing operator) coming in with a simplified fare structure that offered no advanced tickets, no groupsaves ... on the grounds that (a) the system has become too complex and (b) the trains are full anyway, with slower passenger number growth allowing the service to carry on longer without extra stock?  Could actually have bee quite attractive to the Treasury  :-\

Wasn't this the 'last gasp' position of British Rail on fares?  Keep them high to prevent too many people travelling as there were no new trains to absorb any increase. Ah, the good old days   >:(.

It simply isn't possible to tell the timetable that far in advance though, the standard timetable may not change but engineering works may well have a significant impact on the journey. What happens if you book a ticket 9 months in advance to travel from the South West to Heathrow, on the first service in order to arrive in good time for your flight. But if there is engineering work then scheduled on the route and the journey time is extended by two hours you may not make your flight, and there'd be no earlier service you could catch either. If that happened you can guarantee people would start, quite fairly, moaning about TOCs advertising services and taking bookings which they can not fulfil. Even worse, you could have booked your ticket at the station and the TOC would have no way of contacting you.

Currently it is very rare for times to change within the 3 month window, it is usually only as the result of some serious disruption. Passengers will be allowed on an alternative service if the original cannot be provided, but not they would not be contacted. They would not have any means to do so for anybody booking at the station, and quite possibly even online. I'm not even sure you could get a list of passengers booked on a service, and email addresses are unlikely to have been associated with particular trains in systems, in a way that would enable the easy emailing of passengers. The exception is the sleeper service where you have to provide a contact phone number, where it is made clear the specific purpose of providing the contact number is to allow for contact in the case of alterations. You can see this situation is far from ideal, and if you allowed bookings further in advance it would just happen more often.

I guess the point is that the TOCs can sell all the advance tickets they need within a three month window, as the majority of train travellers only plan that far in advance. So there is no business need for them to sell further out, and considerable issues if they do so. I would also wonder whether the majority would welcome a system where all the bargain fares had been snapped up a year in advance.

Now as swrural had pointed out, for people looking to secure cheaper train fares in connection with air travel arrangements (where I would expect there is a higher proportion of travellers who book more than three months in advance), this does inconvenience them, in that they can't guarantee securing them at the time they book the flight. I'm not sure this is a large enough subset of customers to warrant rebuilding the whole system.

My own personal view is that I'm not keen on advance tickets for flight arrangements, as the lack of guarantee of a prompt arrival back gives a considerable uncertainty as to what time to book the ticket for, and the risk of a loss of the tickets. It's not so bad on FGW where single fares are more reasonably priced, but elsewhere single fares are roughly the same as an off peak return, so buying two advances does run a risk of ending up paying more than a flexible return. I've just given that advice to a family member travelling from Cheshire to Gatwick - two advances (six weeks before travelling ) were about ^30 (with snr railcard), but the off peak return of around ^50 was  purchased, as that was also the single fare back in the event of any delay.

Thanks John R.  My point about booking a holiday abroad is that people sit down in late Autumn with the brochures (actually mostly online nowadays) and say 'where shall we go then?'.  They will be thinking normally about any time between May and September, next year, depending on nay children and their ages.

We are not talking about a small number so engaged.  It's half the population and many of those could be planning more than one trip.  Richly pensioned baby boomers like my household planned several last December, starting in May and the last in October 2013.  So we would have needed an advance ticket some 10 months out.

When you go online, if you are predisposed to booking only package tours, then the method of reaching the airport will be normally left to you.  This is one area where TOCs could do more to 'get a foot in the door' so to speak.

Taking also the individualist traveller (it was them I had in mind initially), again it is the airline web site that will first be accessed.  There I would expect a 'middle of transaction' routine (like the hotel offer, car hire, etc, already are) to pop up with an advance offer for train travel from the postcode already submitted as part of the booking process.

I won't go any further than this, but the reason, advanced to me for the three month restriction, that NR could not guarantee the service any further out is demonstrably fatuous.  They can't even guarantee a service three hours out, let alone three months.  This is a nonsense and with the lack of interface mentioned above, is thus missing out on a big chunk of business.

As explained, it must be that when most services are rammed already and no money for new and more trains, a non-commercial attitude will prevail.  That doesn't make it right though.  To that extent, I would go along with Beardy and his bid for more enterprise.

Don't disagree with many of your comments and I like the idea of a pop up box leading you to a site to book the rail travel. It also surprises me that FGW do not promote the very good value Gatwick Flyaway ticket (assuming it still exists), which for a family of four is excellent value.

I'm interested how you get around the problem of booking an advance ticket for the return? As I see it you either have to allow a very liberal margin, which means that you may end up sitting around waiting for your booked service (which would be rather tedious after possibly a long journey), or alternatively run the risk of needing to buy a new ticket, which would probably end up costing more than a flexible fare. I'd probably rather pay a bit more at outset than face either of those scenarios, but that's a personal opinion.
   

You are required to be a psychic, John, and know how early or late your flight will be  ;D

In all seriousness, the fair rule for advanced tickets should be that you present yourself at your initial point of public transport departure at least "X" minutes before the scheduled departure time, that you allow at least minimum connection / transfer times at each point, and that if any one of those fails then the train operator of your "booked only" service will honour your reservation.  That means buses, trams, airline flights arriving at a UK airport and ferries are covered - perhaps with 15 minutes bus-to-train or tram-to-train, 45 minutes ferry-to-train and 60 minutes aircraft-to-train being the metric.

I can see such a change gaining rather that loosing the railways custom, and certainly cutting down on bad experiences if (for example) the First bus that connects with the First train gets held up due to an accident on the A350.  Once you've had a bad experience, it can put you off for year.

Fine in theory, but policing such a system would be impossible, which would mean that in practice you could turn up and claim the bus that was taking you to the station was late, so you're entitled to travel on a later train. Who could possibly check, so the whole concept of "booked train only" would completely fall apart. 

I tend to subscribe to the view that people have a choice. They can buy a flexible ticket, or, they can buy a cheaper ticket that has restrictions attached to it. If they choose the latter than they should understand the consequences if they don't fulfil their side of the contract. After all, (and bearing in mind the comparison earlier in the thread) if you miss your Easyjet flight, you won't (as far as I know) be put on the next flight without some additional payment being required, even assuming there is another flight the same day.

As an example, last September I was at the Paralympics, and as my son wasn't well, we left early. On arrival at Paddington I checked that my Games advance ticket wouldn't be valid on an earlier train than booked (there was flexibility over later trains, which was very reasonable and sensible given the nature of the event), and when told it wasn't I bought another for us. No complaint about how unfair it was. I knew the rules and paid up.
 

a) I love it ... another case of penalising the honest because of the scope potentially offered to the dishonest. How depressing

b) Many (most ?) buses are operated by the same companies that run the trains, and many (most ?) have trackers on board.  It's not beyond bounds to provide live tracking ... or a history trail for the last couple of hours. I would agree, though, if you suggested that it might be hard to get this implemented in the current seller's market.   But that's a story for another thread ...


Totally agree ... but where it's another arm of the same company that's prevented them fulfilling their side of the contract ...

That is of no interest to the customer whatsoever (see my 'last post on this subject on the other thread).