Great Western Coffee Shop

Quick reminders please ...

1. Wanting to buy Groupsave at a station where the ticket office is closed but there is a TVM (Westbury). Can I do it?

2. Wanting to buy a ticket for an 07:53 departure where a ticket office opens at 07:50, at a station in a penalty fare zone. TVM in booking office which is locked overnight.   Advise for travellers who rarely use trains?

Regarding point 2 I was told by a train manager once that I was ok in similar circumstances because the time between the office opening and the departure of the train was less than the minimum connection time for the station (ie usually five minutes).

Regarding point 1, the TVM can't sell GroupSave*.  The NRCoC have this to sayPersonally, I'd be looking to seek out the TM/conductor before boarding to double check they are okay selling a discounted ticket on the train, explaining that GroupSave isn't available to buy at the station.

* = Or should this read "it could be possible for the TVM to be set to sell GroupSave, but it hasn't been programmed into the machine"?

I thought it says somewhere that Group Save tickets  can only be bought from manned ticket offices.

If as the Indendant on Sunday says (see another post) that the hours that ticket offices are manned will have to be reduced then dilemmas such as Grahame postulates will become common place.

I suppose it's one way of stopping people travelling by train and/or raising revenue by making it immpossible to get a ticket and then issung penalty fares to anyone that dares to board a train without a ticket.

Oh **ck.  So it says that - officially -  I can't get on at Melksham (for example) and buy on the train, but rather have to make a prior journey to somewhere like Chippenham to do so?  I don't think that advise can be right - I'm sure they're available mail order too, for example, from the FGW site ...


Hmmm ... so would I, Brucey ... but this is miserably offputting advise to have to put into literature / publicity for people who are very rare train users and we're trying to tempt onto a service ...

I agree.  The only real option is to press the TOCs to sell GroupSave from their TVMs.  It wouldn't be difficult:
If no. of passengers = 3 or 4, then
Prompt "All passengers travelling together throughout the entire journey" Yes/No
If Yes, apply GPS3 or GPS4 discount
If No, offer appropriate railcard discounts as usual

A bit more effort could enable the TVM to work out the best option when there are more than four passengers.  Alas, probably a nice little earner when people don't know about GroupSave discounts but still buy 3/4/more tickets from a TVM.

Groupsave can be purchased online at FGW website - the Groupsave 3 or 4 is an option under 'Railcards'

Collect at TVM or have them mailed.

Still not much use for turn up and go passengers at Melksham.

For stations where there is a TVM but no open ticket office then my advice would be to board and pay onboard. Yes, I know NRCoC says that you should at least pay for part of your journey from the TVM, but how do you decide what to purchase when there is a group of you? It's possible that 3 or 4 singles (plus additional children) to the next station will be more expensive than the total GroupSave fare for your group's journey. I can't see a guard refunding the difference and then issuing you with your GroupSave tickets. Even if what you've paid into the TVM is less than your group's total fare, I'd imagine the guard would have a nightmare trying to work out what he/she should do on their Avantix. It's far easier for a guard to just sell the correct tickets in this circumstance and it would have to a be a pretty hard hearted guard to deny you the right to buy your GroupSave.

In the extremely unlikely event that you encounter an over zealous RPI then you (as a group) have the right to pay the correct fare for your journey and if the RPI is not happy with that then all you should accept is an Unpaid Fare Notice or Penalty Fare Notice. No need to pay any more at the time other than the correct fare (as a group) for the journey. A hassle to appeal the UPFN or PFN but I believe it extremely unlikely that you would ever get one in this circumstance. If you do then shame on the railways.

grahame, how you advise this to those who are rare users of the train is beyond me. Welcome to the wonderful world of rail ticketing.  ::)

BTW, there is nothing on the GroupSave website or NRE that states that GroupSave can only be purchased from a ticket office. Avantix machines are set up to sell GroupSave and I've witnessed on-train staff pro-actively offer the discount to groups of people. Indeed, in the recent past I, and a couple of friends have purchased GroupSave onboard.

Not much use at Trowbridge either ... significant passenger flow there - 652,000 journeys per year ... if the ticket office is shut!

I would endorse what bignosemac says about on-train staff selling Groupsave tickets, indeed advising passengers it is the cheapest way to make their journey when a group of people have asked for individual tickets - have seen it done by FGW staff and on other TOCs' services.

I was in a similar situation at Frome last weekend. Me and my friend took 06:37 from Frome to take a train to London Waterloo (Changing at Westbury and Salisbury).

The ticket we wanted was Frome to ZONE 1, 2 & 3 (Which costs an extra ^4.00 on a return ticket). which should have been ^29.05 (With railcard discount, each). We couldn't buy the ticket at Frome because the ticket office was closed. We spoke to the guard when the train arrived and asked if we could buy on the train (Something I always do at Frome).

When we boarded the guard came round and looked up the tickets we wanted, but they weren't in his Avantix :o ::) We were offered the Frome to London Waterloo ticket at ^25.10 instead. So we suggested that we get our tickets at Westbury. He said the Ticket Office would be closed and we should buy the tickets from him (Which to be fair, it was). We paid up but were sold 2 tickets that we didn't actually want >:( To make things worse, my friends Barclays Card failed to work in the Chip and Pin machine.

So we ended up having to fork out an additional ^16 for Underground Tickets to London Euston! ::) >:(

** Edited to amend to correct fares and to tidy up appalling maths skills! **

Should you do this journey again then the destination is ZONE U123* LONDN or location code 0791. Either of those should then work on a guard's Avantix. If you cannot get a guard to issue this then it should still be possible to purchase an over-distance excess at Salisbury, if you are changing and have time, or on arrival at Waterloo.

According to NFM 08 the SVR Frome - Zone U123* Londn is ^29.05 with a railcard.

Oh, and how did you end up paying ^12 for two people to get the tube to Euston (I assume from Waterloo)?

Sorry BNM... I haven't been with it these past few days... ::)

I don't know how I came to ^12.00 :o That should have been ^16.00 (2x Singles on Saturday, 2x Singles on Sunday @ ^4.00 Each)

Sorry as well, I didn't make that overly clear. We travelled up on Saturday and returned Sunday. We then paid ^25.10 for a Super Off Peak Return to Waterloo with Railcard, but with Zones U123 Added on, it would have been ^29.05 as you said. I will amend the post accordingly to tidy that up.

Thanks for the location code ;) I will bear that in mind as it looks like I will be making more trips to the big smoke in future ;)