Great Western Coffee Shop

Here's an interesting thought, now that singles are half the price of returns ...

Make friends with your fellow passengers and share a GroupSave with them

It's 22.50 Super Off Peak Chippenham to Paddington.  Arrive early for your train, and ask other passengers if they too are travelling to Paddington and need to buy a ticket.   Buying in groups of four, you can reduce the price to 11.25 each.

This wasn't a great idea when returns were just a pound less than singles, as you had to travel together which meant you had to find people who could guarantee to travel back at the same time.  But now you're only tied on the way up  ;)

Can't buy Groupsave on singles!

Well ... I just checked again ... 4 people, lunchtime tomorrow, Chippenham to London on Groupsave 4 and the FGW ticket selling site said "45 pounds" ... recent change, site error, or have I misread something?

maybe a website version of the yp avantix anomaly?

Not sure, a group of lads were denied a Trowbridge to Bristol Groupsave Single when I was travelling from Southampton! And the Conductor is well known for being hot on her tickets!

Await confirmation from staff!

From the FGW website (http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Content.aspx?id=43):


So, GroupSave singles are an option, apparently.  ;)

Incorrect..you can buy groupsave singles.

Was the ticket office open. If it was then they needed to buy before they got on the train.

Yes groupsave singles are OK.  Until FGW realise how cheap they are then they will put the price up  ;D

Well it was the 1910 Soton to Cardiff, so I doubt Trowbridge office was open at quarter past 8! She wasn't worried about selling them CDRs so was obviously an error on her part.

I always thought that Groupsave had to be purchased from an open ticket office and now it seems on the web.

You couldn't (but I haven't checked lately) buy them from the ticket machine at Taplow. Put in 4 passengers and you get four times the fare. Which I thought was a bit dubious.

Not sure whther you could purchase 4 5p permits to travel and then buy on the train or at destination if manned.

Groupsave are only valid on OP tickets so probably not valid on the SDS fare, but yes they are valid on SVS/SSS/CDS fares.

You are about 90% correct.  However as always the devil is in the detail.  For some short distance journeys there is no CDS/CDR return option.  In that case and only that case then Group Save is allowed with the SDS/SDR return

I have split this thread off from "saving you money" as it was getting to be a case of the tail wagging the dog.

The remaining thread looks like a good one to move from the private area of "Frequent Posters" into the public readable area of the forum, but I'm aware that people have posted here secure in the knowledge that it won't be readable by Jo Bloggs.   The remaining thread also look splittable into two - one being "groupsave on singles" and the other being "ticket type abbreviations and acronyms".

I'm leaving it here for 24 hours ... and if anyone gets back to me within that time to say 'please don't go public with this', then I won't.   Otherwise I'll move to "fares fair" or similar.

Where has this topic come from?  It was spun off a thread in our "Frequent Posters" area - that's an area where only logged in member who have posted more than a dozen or so messgase can read and post. We felt it was a good, useful discussion both on Groupsave and on ticket coding, so after giving everyone who had contributed a chance to say "that was not for public consumption" ... and hearing not even a squeak ...it's been moved. Save money and enjoy!



Edit note: Just to take this a stage further, I have now split off the discussion on the 'ticket type acronyms', to http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=5548.0

C.  ;)

not strictly true, you may find that in such circumstances GPS is valid on the SDR but not the SDS.

Nope you are wrong.  Just checked valid for SDS when no CDS exisits in the situation I described.

Correct, however if there are any off peak restrictions on the route then the restrictions for group save (i.e. off peak only) over rule those for the ticket type.