Great Western Coffee Shop

At many FGW stations a small cup of tea is charged at ^1.49. Does any one agree that this is extortionate?

Wetherspoon's charge 99p for a small coffee and if you buy five you get the sixth free.

 Recently at a cafe outside Brighton station I bought a large cup of tea for only 50p.

The price of a cup of tea from station outlets has nothing to do with First Great Western.

And if you believe ^1.49 to be extortionate then don't pay it.

Alternatively get yourself a BiTE Card and enjoy 20% off at a wide range of food and drink outlets at rail stations and some bus/coach stations.

http://www.bitecard.co.uk/default.asp

Or buy one of these (http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3402667/c_1/1|category_root|Sports+and+leisure|14419152/Trail/searchtext%3EFLASKS.htm).  ;)

I do agree that ^1.49 for a cup of boiling water and a tea bag is excessive, but no-one is forcing you to pay it.

It is still cheaper than Costa, who charge around ^1.65 for a cup of tea.

Wetherspoons now charge 49p for coffee so I assume tea will be a similar price.

expencive refreshments...on railways..... well i have never heard such a thing!!

if at pad just take a walk outside there are plenty of reasonable priced places, cross the road by Hilton Hotel turn right 2min walk to Raffles...as recommended by most fgw staff

At EXD in the Lemon Tree and associated establishments, if you purchase a number of hot drinks you get one free with their loyalty card.

Welcome to the forum, Fanara.

I'm going to give you a slightly different "take" on this one. Only a very small proportion of the cost of providing a nice cup of tea is the ingredients.  Other costs relate to staffing, and to the cost of premises ... and if you're in a low volume setup, these will be significantly higher per unit than in a high volume one.

So ... on train, let's take the Stroud Valley diagram as an example.   Each unit is on a 4 hour "cycle" ... 1 hr and 15 minutes from Swindon to Cheltenham, 15 minutes gap, 1 hour and 15 minutes back to Swindon, 1 hour 15 minutes in the bay.   People won't want to buy a drink in the last 15 minutes before they arrive ... and you end up with huge costs.   Surprise, surprise - there is no catering on Stroud Valley.  Even on the London -> Bristol 125 service, you've got a 40 minute layover in Bristol, a layover in London ...

On station, you may have heavy traffic, but you've probably got some fairly heavy payments to make for the right to trade there, and the extra money has to be generated.   It's not necessarily a bad thing as it  helps keep train fares down to a reasonable level ( ;) ).   And on some stations - Warminster in our area comes to my mind - you can end up with some quite long gaps where there are no trains so few customers.

there is however no reason for the high price of the on platform vending machines!

Welcome aboard Fanara. I for one agree with you - ^1.49 is extortionate for hot water and a bag of coloured sawdust, but rest assured some student of the subject of marketing will have done their homework and worked out that that's what people will usually pay for the convience. Some of course will bring a flask and make their own; the vast majority won't though, not least for fear of being erroneusly mistaken for one of that despised breed, the lesser spotted Gricer.

Where I think the train operating companies do have some responsibility is in consideration of the fact that once inside the barriers at certain stations (Salisbury, Exeter, Reading spring to mind immediately), passengers are virtually a captive audience. They are at that point the TOC's customers, and it is in their best interest to ensure that they are treated fairly - including not being charged an extortionate amount for a cup of tea.

I fully realise people are perfectly entitled to faff around with waving their ticket at disinterested barrier staff and explain they intend to break their journey and then re-enter a few moments later simultaneously clutching all of their baggage (which as we are constantly reminded should never be left unattended), the ticket which in all probability won't work in the barrier even if it had going out and which they need to show the still disinterested barrier staff if he or she is still around; and a scalding cup of tea which happens to be 27p cheaper just outside the station in the cabbies' caff. But again, the vast majority won't bother. They'll just pay through the nose and go away grumbling about rip-off Britain and how rubbish it is travelling by train and how next time they'll take the car instead.

In the days of the 'first' Great Western and in the early days of British Railways, station refreshment charges were on a par with those outside. It's ridiculous to say that FGW is not responsible for these extortionate charges. They should require the refreshment room operators to charge a reasonable price for basic refreshments, ie tea and sanwiches. Tea from a machine at my local hospital is only 60 pence and I regard anything more than that as robbery.
Stations and airports have just been piling it on over the last few years. It's got to stop.

I don't think it's possible for FGW to make any insistence on station retailers and their prices. Along with the retailers FGW are merely tenants of the stations - the landlords are Network Rail.

So I think the opposite applies. It's ridiculous to say that FGW is responsible for these extortionate prices.

As I said before, no one is forcing you to pay these 'extortionate' prices. As for it being robbery, I'd check the dictionary on that one.

There is an interesting list of comparison prices in this article: http://www.walletpop.co.uk/2010/06/29/tea-for-how-much-are-you-being-ripped-off/  :)

When was the last time you tried buying a cup of tea in any high-street cafe along the lines of Starbucks/Costa Coffee etc etc? In most of those I'll wager you'd find yourself paying well north of GBP1.49 for a cup of tea. And it probably won't taste like it's been freshly squeezed from a ferret, unlike the swill the most vending machines spew out.

Quite frankly, I really do think that there are bigger issues on the railways than the price of tea. If you find it so offensive that these prices are bring charged, you can exercise your choice as a consumer and not buy it. Or invest in a thermos which given the supposedly extortionate pricing should pay for itself inside, what, 10 - 20 cups...? And it hasn't "got to stop", nor will it. Sorry, but you're going to be sorely disappointed if you believe it will.

Just to show that complaints about station refreshment facilities are nothing new (not price, but quality in this instance) here's a letter written by some engineering bloke in 1842:

When I want a cup of tea "outside" I don't patronise Starbucks and similar eastablishments. I patronise a cafe that sells tea at what I consider to be a reasonable price. Rail travellers are trapped inside the system until they get to the end of their journey. As to exercising my right not to buy over-priced refreshments, this is difficult when the service falls to pieces and there are long delays. Before privatisation BR issued refreshment vouchers to passengers delayed by one hour or over due to the railway's fault. It is now two hours, "to bring us in line with the airlines". When are the railways going to stop trying to ape airlines? There is no reasonable comparison that can be made between train and plane. Thermos flasks are heavy and I don't need extra weight in my hand luggage.
These companies might be privatised but they are supposed to be providing a public service.

Would you be able to give a source for that quotation, since it's factually incorrect?

From FGW's passenger's charter:

Edited to add...

I'm sorry...? There was I thinking that I use both trains and planes to travel around, but I must have been mistaken. There are plenty of reasonable comparisons between trains and planes, as well as between stations and airports. Once you're through security at an airport then trust me, you will get royally screwed since you can't physically leave the secure area other than on your plane. At least at a station if you're (a) that desparately thirsty and (b) care enough about saving 80p you have the option to leave the premises and seek out one of these mythical small independent city centre cafes that hardly exist anymore where you can get a full English breakfast including bottomless tea for 3/6.

From my point of view what it comes down to is this: given the choice of spending time dragging my luggage around on a potentially fruitless search for an alternative tea vendor in the hope that I might save considerably less than a pound, or simply buying it at the station and being able to spend my time sitting down and relaxing a bit, I'll go for the latter option every single time. It is indeed all about convenience, and yes market forces dictate that you will end up paying a little more for that convenience. Of course it would be nice if you could buy a cup of tea that was both cheap and convenient. But that's not how the world works.

I really don't have much patience for the sense of entitlement that people seem to have, with the subtext "I want everything exactly so it suits me and doesn't cost me any money". It's rather like the attitude whereby people complain about how extortionate train fares are because it will cost them a realistic price to travel from Cornwall to the far North of Scotland, rather than the GBP 20.00 they seem to think they're entitled to pay.

The contract you enter into with TOCs when buying a ticket to travel is to get you from point A to point B. Nothing more. There is nothing laid down in law regarding refreshments. Your original point was regarding the 'extortionate' prices charged by station retailers for a cup of tea and you seem to have drifted from that point. If you are in the unfortunate circumstance where you find yourself on a heavily delayed service then the offer of free refreshments is a goodwill gesture. It's got nothing to do with what BR offered versus the 'privatised' operators. In reality you'll find the current TOCs are actually quite good at offering free refreshments if you find yourself stuck on a delayed service.

As an example, today I spoke with a friend who was 'stuck' on a CrossCountry service that had hit a person on the line. They were heavily delayed whilst the authorities dealt with the situation. He (my friend) had nothing but praise for the on-board team who not only kept everyone appraised of the situation, but also offered free food and drink from the trolley. The Train Manager also offered his company mobile phone for passenger use.

yaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnn................... I really couldn't be a*sed to add anything to this thread as it is pathetic, but I doubt you will find many places where you will pay less than 1.50 for a cuppa anywhere, but basicly, if all you can do is moan about paying the going rate for a cup of tea then you really need to get out more!