Where have all the bargains gone?

[whole diary]

[Robin Summerhill]

I smell another animated discussion here like the railcard extension one 

I don't know who you could possibly be thinking of 

I see this rather differently from a railcard, which is not in itself a pemit to travel. An advance ticket is a permit to travel on  given day at a specified time for a given price between two apecified points.

I fully understand that buying an advance ticket is essentially always going to be ganble, in which the puchaser hopes thay will able to make the journey on the specified date and at the specified time, and I can see the logic behnd a no refund policy; after all its not the railways fault if you miss the train or now have to go to Uncle Freds funeral instead or whatever.

But this is different. At present the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) are running services essentially on contract to the government, As I understbd it (and please correct me if Im wrong) the government gets all the revenue and pays the TOC for providing the service. Therefore, in essence, the money goes to the government and not the TOC.

And it is the government, not the TOCs, who have laid down the rules on what people can or cant do in areas with local COVID restrictions.

I would say therefore that logic lies on the side of those wanting refunds if there is no point in thm making their journeys on that given day because the governments restrictions prevent them from doing what they had in mind to do at their journeys end.

Whether the law could be shown to be on the side of those wanting refunds is of course another atter entirely!

[Celestial]

I'd look at it a different way. In March the pandemic and lockdown came reasonably out of the blue, and nobody could have expected to have been in a situation whereby the government ruled by law that you couldn't travel.  So it was entirely appropriate that you were offered a refund. (Disclosure:  I did get a refund on some advance tickets.)

Now it's different. It's been very clear that the position was much more uncertain, and quite likely to deteriorate. So if you took a gamble with an advance ticket you did it in the knowledge that you might not be able to, or want to, travel.  You took the gamble, lost, but want your money back. (Further Disclosure: I was planning to make a journey recently, didn't purchase an advance ticket precisely for that reason and was prepared to pay more for a walk up ticket. As it happens, the rule of 6 meant I didn't travel. I didn't gamble, and didn't lose any money.)

[Robin Summerhill]

You make some very valid points Celestial, so much that you have made me chamge my mind. Buying a non-refundable advance ticket whilst pandemic restrictions might be quickly applied is just one more risk that needs to be taken into account in deliberations. It is not as though more expensive but refundabkl and less risky tickets are not available.

Which only goes toss how that even when I come down on the side of the customer Im still wrong