Great Western Coffee Shop

I booked 2 single journeys from Bristol TM to Paignton two months ago, and was charged ^17.55 each way with a disabled railcard. I now find the self same trains for this Sunday dep 1615 , and return from Paignton on Friday 23rd at 1007 priced at ^7.75 each way!!.

Can anyone explain what's going on please ? Is this, so unusual ??

There appear to be 33 different advance fares from Bristol Temple Meads to Paignton ...

I would speculate that 2 months ago you chose a more popular Sunday / Friday, or you booked much closer to the date ... or are they starting to strengthen trains for summer and have more seats to fill?

Advance tickets are sold on a yield management system. There will be a set number of tickets at each advance ticket price.
When they sell out at each level the price goes up to the next category.

The only guarantee FGW wiuld make me was that they'd never issue cheaper advance fares that those released at start of booking - i.e the cheapest fares that will be available on any service will always be released at the start date of booking for that service.

However, they did say that the allocation of seats at each price can be amended downwards at any time to reduce or remove that particular level. Usually if something popular happens on the date of the service within the 12 week booking period. Unlikely, but it can happen

If I am reading this correctly, the OP is saying he bought advance tickets two months ago for a train this weekend but now advance tickets for this train are cheaper even though it is only days away.

If that is what is being said, I can confirm it has happened to me before.  Apparently the train I had booked on was not selling as well as expected so prices were lowered.  Supply and demand in effect.

Different train operator but I have recently experienced this with FGW

I'd be interested in hearing the details as I said, FGW have categorically stated that they do not do this.

http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Train-times-and-tickets/Ticket-Types/Leisure-tickets

oooh, they've changed their policy....ought to have told the Panels....I'll take that up

I can understand the reasoning, but it does make buying a ticket for a train journey even more of a lottery.

The case I mentioned was a train in July 2012, so it was certainly in place then.

It has happened recently on some South Wales to PAD services in first class - initial release of advance tickets were priced close or equal to the walk up fare, but subsequently they have released some cheaper fares - they seem to have been playing about a lot with advance ticket allocations as some previously cheap trains have shot up in price and vice versa

Or Customer Panel members could just as easily have looked on the website to see what FGW were saying, rather than continuing to assume the policy remained unchanged and advising categorically thus.

And how often do you read the FGW website end-to-end? :-)

When there is a specific matter I'm commenting on I do some research before posting. Rather like grahame did earlier in this thread, with the link and quote from the FGW website.

Making an assumption by relying on received wisdom can leave one with egg on one's face. For those who are representing passengers' interests in an official capacity I'd suggest it's even more important to ensure their public pronouncements are accurate before making them.

There's a saying about the the word 'assume'...

Many companies use this flexible system of setting prices that can go up and then down. They usually start with a lowish price and if the demand fills the quota at the low price the price goes up into the next price category , and so on until all tickets are sold. However as it gets closer to the date of the event or journey and lots of tcikest remain unsold, the price goes down to try and make late sales to bargain hunters. This appiies not just to railways but especially to airlines and also thatrical perfornces. lastminute.com exploits this system.

Airlines are an excellent example.  Some flights I've been looking at daily have been ^65, ^75, ^85, ^95, ^105 and today back back down to ^85.  Funny considering it said "only 2 seats left at this fare" yesterday at ^105 ... those two people making a booking actually triggered a price reduction!

Back to the railway, I know NXEC were lowering prices several years before handing back their franchise.  They initially denied it when I contacted them, claiming I must have looked at a different train ::)

It seems to me that this is another case of the railways trying a pricing model from a very different mode, namely the airlines. It's fine for an airline to price in this way as they usually only have one or two flights a day to each destination. Not like FGW with 2 trains an hour to Bristol and Virgin with 3 to Manchester. Also airlines don't usually stop as many times as FGW does between London and Bristol which gives rise to "hot seating" Eg London - Reading, Reading - Swindon, Swindon - Bristol. I recently got a seat reservation from Paddington to Slough admittedly on a journey starting in Worksop.

It's a classic case of  a realy messy many to many relationship which is a programmers worst nightmare! Too many trains with too  many seats and too many stops giving too many journey combinations. This makes it much harder to model than one plane one destination and a fixed number of seats.