Great Western Coffee Shop

On Sunday I will be going to see my grandchildren in Ascott Under Wychwood to "deliver Christmas." As I can no longer trust my eyes to get me that far by road, I shall be going by rail. It's a bit of an irritant that AuW station only has a basic commuter service that would be of no use even when it does run in the weekday peak only (and my lot live within 5 minutes walk of the station which adds insult to injury :( ) so I need to go to Charlbury and get picked up there.

There are no off-peak return tickets available between Chippenham and Charlbury, and an anytime return  with a Senior Railcard would set me back £93.60. An off peak single is available at £28.55, so £57.10 return.

An off peak day return to Oxford will cost me £10.55, and an off peak day return from there to Charlbury is £4.35, a total for the journey of £14.90.

I am used to saving a few quid by playing the railways at their own game with split ticketing, sometimes with luck saving up to a third on the through ticket price. But this differential, £14.90 compared to £57.10 or even £93.60 if a hapless traveller should happen to be specific enough when asking for a ticket between the two points is, in my view, is way way beyond a joke.

Any thoughts from anyone else?

Robin,

The National Rail website is showing a super-offpeak return for Chippenham->Charlbury at £18.40 (with railcard). How did you come to the conclusion that there wasn't an off-peak fare?

(Nevertheless, split-ticketing seems to offer a lower fare, although nowhere near a record-breaker).

There are two sets of fares, to both OXF and CBY, one via RDG (but not via London)  and one avoiding the place. The via RDG fares are a lot more, though there are still off-peak and super off-peak returns for both routeings. The split tickets shown above are explicitly not via RDG, of course.

The NRE journey planner, for some reason, only shows journeys via RDG; this despite the fact they are mostly less than 10 minutes quicker, and in any case it isn't supposed to suppress overtaken journeys unless asked! In this case you have to specify "avoid RDG".

Note that I have found NREJP can behave erratically in choosing to show return tickets or 2xsingles initially, but I think that once you've spotted that you can select return tickets.

It is showing journeys with a change at Didcot for Sunday 23rd; presumably this is because journeys via Reading aren't faster on Sunday?

Today, you can see the cheaper options by using the advanced->avoid station=Reading option. The journeys shown require changes at Didcot and Oxford.

This matter is beginning to concern me, and not for the reason I started the thread. It should also concern National Rail Enquiries.

Following the responses to my original post I went to NRE again this morning and re-entered the details. This time, as noted by Trowres, the options I was given started with the £18.40 off peak return fare. This fare did not appear when I interrogated the site yesterday.

I then looked at the Other Fares options, initially not using the Not Reading filter. There were the following:

£64.70 anytime
£62.05 1cl off peak
£85.15 1cl anytime

None of these options appeared when I looked yesterday.

I then used the advanced filter to stipulate via Reading, and this is what I got:

£35.20 off peak
£78.55 1cl off peak
£93.60 anytime
£131.35 1cl anytime

The existence of that £93.60 off peak fare via Reading will at least prove to anyone who has been womdering that I am in full possission of my marbles and had not initially entered the wrong destination station :) The £35.20 off peak return option did not appear yesterday.

Now. as luck would have it I have been digging around finding cheap fares since there were still steam depots open on the Western Region, but what about ordinary members of the public? If I had been completely clueless about these matters I could now be the proud possessor of a £93.60 anytime return, blissfully unaware that I could have done that journey for £18.40 even without split ticketing.

Without getting too "tabloid" abiut it, this appears to be a disgrace, a scandal, or both. I presume its not a deliberate rip-off, but I'm only because I'm giving NRE the benefit of the doubt at the moment...

I have had similar issues to Robin when trying to find fares on the NRE site. I've recently been looking at fares from Bath Spa to Poole during the period when Westbury is out of use and buses are being used to avoid it, and on some days NRE has shown me standard off peak fares and on others it has only shown me fares going via Reading, which are 3x more expensive. These have been for the same trains, and I've double checked each time to make sure I'm not missing a cheaper fare somewhere. And it isn't the first time I've noticed this with the NRE site when checking the same journey on one day and then the next.

Sadly, your story is not unique and I have no doubt you are in possession of your marbles.


Yes, you might well have been.


The UK's ticketing and fare system is complex and implementing it bug-free in software is not the easiest of tasks. Furthermore, most fare and journey planners are limited in the options they provide / scenarios they match. Coming to my mind (some are answered some of the time).
* "I know exactly when I want to travel out and roughly when I want to travel back"
* "I want to travel out directly (for speed) and back via xxx so I can break my journey there"
* "I want to travel on the lowest cost route even if its slower"
* "I want to travel the quickest route, even if there's no through tickets that way"

My understanding is that a staffed ticket desk is required to offer you the best priced individual ticket for your journey ... but that requirement stops short of being required to offer you split tickets.   A ticket vending machine is not required to offer you a full range of tickets, nor to make the most economic one for a typical journey easily accessible, nor to provide full availability information.  And, yes, that does result on occasions in people paying considerably more than they need to.   I would strongly suspect (but am open to correction) that the same rules that apply to Ticket Vending Machines apply to online ticket purchases ...

It may be "a disgrace", it may be "a scandal", but I suspect it is within the law.  Many of the system's shortcoming are well know, but it's actually very hard to write software to deal with every scenario, and yet be straightforward and quick enough for Joe Public to use.  And the incentive to fix is sadly lacking - it's a question of the service providers doing a lot of software work and upgrades and with a net result of reducing their income; ordinarily, I might say that selling the lower price tickets might encourage more users, but when you still read so many "full and standing" reports on the forum (one posted just a few minutes ago) the business optimisation case is to improve revenue per seat, and not to encourage more passengers at lower prices, displacing people who are paying more.

Looking at what NREJP offers for Sunday, it now offers changes at Didcot and none at Reading unless you twist its arm. But for the journeys I can see, it would be the same trains anyway - just a longer wait at Didcot. I reckon if that had been true when you (Robin) first looked, that's what it would have shown. I think the issue is more likely to be in the timetable data it's been given, since that is updated every night and I doubt the software is.

If I look now at tomorrow (Saturday), which in fact is what I initially did, I don't get offered changes at Didcot. Instead, it says change at Reading onto a train that doesn't stop at Didcot. That's the 10:54 from Reading (to Hereford), arriving at Oxford at 11:20 and Charlbury at 11:40. Avoiding Reading gets you onto the same train, but with a second change at Oxford. So in that case the number of changes is perhaps being used as a deciding factor. Of course it should also use the fare, and make sure it hasn't suppressed the cheapest option if that has more changes.

There have been a number of short-term changes to the tiimetable recently, including some that were changed again the next day. I suspect there may have been some changes that were put in, found out the same day to not work (or no better than the original version) and removed after 24 hours - leaving no visible trace.

I might add that my usual approach is to look at BRFares first, to see what routeings and fares exist, then a journey planner (usually NRE) so see what it offers, and if need be to "persuade" it to find any options it has overlooked. The Routeing Guide is very much a last resort!

Of course the root cause of all this is the fares structure being far to complicated, but then we all know that.

This certainly makes sense, and brings the whole issue (for me) back from conspiracy status to cock up status :) However, and as you rightly point out, the data that I was being given initially was indeed suppressing the cheapest option.

I note what Graham says about the letter of the law in these matters and whether a ticket machine and an online sale facility are covered by the same rules but, whether they are or not, the cheapest fare had been suppressed when I first looked, and that fell foul of them.

I also note and generally agree with what Graham says about there being no financial incentive to sort it out, but this argument doesn't take into account the negative PR that these things can generate. The railway gets enough unjustifiable bad PR already (eg the "bleater" outside the station talking to camera: "Nobody gave us any information!" when they've already been told there's a signal failure/ derailment/ engine failure/ whatever and nobody's going anywhere until its sorted and how long that will be is in measuring a piece of string territory). The railway in general should be putting right those elements of bad PR that are within its power to correct immediately.

Would it be better to get a ticket from Chippenham to Didcot parkway, and one to Charlbury.

No.

Cheaper to split at Oxford. As the OP stated in the first post.

Off-peak day return Chippenham to Didcot is the same price as one to Oxford. Or indeed one to Bicester. But not to Charlbury :)

Never look for logic in fares ...

I Just tried to check prices on gwr.com and found singles to be cheaper, 6.40 from Didcot pw to Charlbury and the same back, I then tried to find a return for you from Chippenham to Didcot pw and the site just kept crashing, This what I always find, This is why on another thread I said I always have to visit the booking office.

As a general rule I only use the NRE site to investigate ticket pricing options, and not to buy the tickets themselves. I will be doing this in this case too, and I only started the thread to publicise a perceived problem. The ticket(s) will be bought from cPM booking office tomorrow or Sunday.

I never looked at the single price from DID to CBY yesterday, but I did find an off peak return at £6.45, only 5 pence more than the single (which is fairly standard practice anyway). But, already knowing that the CPM to DID or OXF price was the same, it proved to be cheaper to split at OXF

Did notice that, but thought that the single ones would be better.

Better in what way?

For fares enquiries only I use http://www.brfares.com/#home

 Doesn't crash, doesn't throw up silly fares like NRE often does, just put in your origin and destination et voila, all fares between those points.

And if you want to check split fares there's no better resource than asking me https://www.trainsplit.com

I looked at the BR fares site last night and initially thought it was a little confusing. Then I looked again this morning and got on better with it, concluding that last night's visit must have been clouded by too much barley water and grape juice - if you get my drift... ;)

By the time of my second visit I had remembered an incident from some years ago when I wanted to book to Stonehouse, and the NRE site didn't give the option of an off-peak return and showed an anytime fare only, I ended up booking to Gloucester on that occasions because it appeared to be cheaper. So when I entered that combination this morning the results showed that there is an off peak fare, but it is actually more expensive than the anytime return!

http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=CPM&dest=SHU&rlc=SRN

I understand that you shouldn't look for logic behind the UK railway fare structure, but this seems to me utterly barmy. How can it happen?

http://www.brfares.com/#fares?orig=CPM&dest=SHU

In that case the Anytime fare is a Day Return. The Off Peak fare is valid for return within one calendar month.

It's actually not that unusual to see such Off Peak Returns being more expensive than Anytime Day Returns.