GWR Gift Voucher

[whole diary]

[GWR 158]

What tickets can you buy using these?

Can you use gift vouchers to buy cabins on the Night Rivera?

[grahame]

What tickets can you buy using these?

Can you use gift vouchers to buy cabins on the Night Rivera?

I'm not even sure I know what "Gift Voucher" product you're asking about - can you help by providing a link?  Nothing seemingly relevant turned up when I did a search or description - nearest is a a 2017 reference on another forum to them (they didn't know much about them either) and a £10 GWR Gift Voucher where GWR stands for Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway not Great Western Railway!

[GWR 158]

Thanks for the reply. I'll send you a link.
https://tickets.gwr.com/gw/en/landing/purchasegiftvoucher

[stuving]

That appears to be on a specific part of the site, together with booking engines for season tickets, rovers and rangers, and the "accessible mixing desk". Presumably these are older features that could not be supported by the new booking engine. There's a risk in such cases that things get left there by mistake when they should have been deleted.

There's a website (https://gcb.today) that I think is a third-part platform supporting other people's vouchers (or rather e-vouchers). I lists the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) ones with a link to the gwr.com page for them, but that only leads to a "We're sorry, this page doesn't exist" (404). So if there's no page on the main GWR site that tells you what they do and links to the booking page, I'd assume they don't exist any more and the booking page should have been removed.

However, as they were part of the e-ticket system, they may still work for users of that. It's not something that's ever been easy to find out on their site. But best to ask GWR before making any assumptions.

[Clan Line]

Something I would be careful of. I have some GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) eVouchers as a result of ticket cancellations. These are "multi-use" - I have used part of one voucher and my available balance has been reduced by the amount I have spent. There also appear to be "single-use" vouchers, I know not what these are ! These appear to be like car parking ticket machines...."no change given". I am aware that some High Street gift vouchers say this - the GWR ones may be the same.

[PrestburyRoad]

Personally I avoid gift vouchers because of the risk that the sponsor will go bust and the voucher become worthless.

I recognise the idea that for some people of my parents' generation giving a voucher can seem more polite than giving the same amount of cash - "Please enjoy yourself spending [£20] in such-and-such shop" rather than "You're worth £20".  Conversely there's the risk that the recipient may not actually like the particular at shop, or they may forget the voucher and it expires.  No such problems with cash.