Brilliant work and information, gentlemen. I apologise for my questions but there is a purpose to which I hinted at with my reference to grannies. Never mind aged females, I imagine that a great number of pax are paying well over the odds.
I am ... delighted ... to be able to look at this from a wider viewpoint - in fact one of the moderators might like to split the thread to move us onto a very useful general discussion removed from my particular journey set that triggered it - I'm too close to the action to make an impartial judgement as to whether such a split should be done.
As a supplier (as gamekeeper rather than poacher, if you like) I have been really given the once-over by people testing our systems for providing equal or better services for the disabled with the outcome being a lot of extra work for us and our suppliers, resulting in "thank you - we had no intention of booking - just checking you out", and as such I am very reluctant indeed to be the poacher. So thank you (and BNM) for pushing me to call Network Rail; they came out (unfortunatley) telling me that my best option was over 400 pounds, specifically telling me that the 243 option wouldn't work ("yes, you need 2 tickets") which was incorrect. I can't say I blame the chap on the phone for his error, but it does point to a damaged and disreputable system which is supposed to be the voice of authority. We can read the rules here better than they can!!!
You mention "grannies". Not so much on the railways, but there are times I'm disgusted by some business operators. My stepson, strong American accent, is given an out-of-date big old 50p coin in his change by an ice cream vendor who should know better. And Lisa and I have long learned which of us is likely to be offered the best price in what circumstances. But there is a problem on the railways for their staff too - I recall a post asking why a conductor didn't offer split tickets as a kindness to folks who were clearly in need of such kindness, and he (or his colleague) replied that by offering a split, the intended recipients of the kindness would have thought they were being scammed - "how can 2 tickets possibly be cheaper than one"?
I was trying to remember if there is already some obligation on rail companies to find the best price, or just not to actually mislead.
As I understand it, their ticket office staff are obliged to sell the lowest price ticket for what the customer states he wants - something like that. So they do not have to offer splits, and indeed I have come across numerous incidents of institutionalised lying ... as recent as earlier this month, I asked for "the cheapest ticket or combination of tickets on the train at XX:XX to take me to ZZZ" and I was offered a 76 pound fare. I refused that, and bought a ticket from where I was to YYY (peak) then a superoffpeak from there to ZZZ at 40.40 in total. "I didn't think of that" says the ticket clerk. Yeah ... right ... it's a very well know split, mate!, but a good way to defuse what could (had I been someone else) have been rather nasty.
On line vendors and ticket machines are under no such obligation. In a town near here, the
TVM▸ has [had - not checked for a few months] Peak and Offpeak to London, and travelcards for the same times and a couple of others on the front "London" screen. Even late in the day when all remaining London trains are super off peak. There is a button "look at other alternative fares" which finds the superoffpeak for those in the know.
However, what is time and time again exposed here is a pretty rotten situation of social exclusion. If you are not aware, or not very bright, etc, you will also probably be less well off, and thus you will literally pay for that 'shortcoming' by paying more than the well-off person.
To some extent I agree with you, but then there are all sorts of fare concessions for the 15 and unders, the over 60s, the forces, the disabled, overseas visitors ... each and all of whom take up exactly the same space (sometimes more), make as much noise and mess (sometimes more), and take as much staff resource (sometimes more) - perhaps this is a very crude way of providing an alternative to have to work the system for those who are in groups which you, swrural, are suggesting may be more likely to be socially excluded.
For all the intellectual fun of the challenge, I would much prefer a nice, easy system to pay as I go, knowing roughly what the fare would be if I just turned up and travelled under a system that I could trust to charge - lets's see - around 300 pounds for this week rather than the nearly 700 that I would have ended up paying for exactly the same journeys if I hand't thought it through.
One could be cynical and suggest that the franchisees are eminently commercially-oriented: they know that many of their train services are already crammed and they can therefore charge as much as they like (within the RPI▸ plus whatever limits, obviously).
Not obvious. Rover tickets up by 9% next week. And look back at the Westbury to London travel card rise from last November through to this January ... the RPI figure is purely regulated fares and is the basket average even for them.
There HAVE been some good corrections - Swindon to Salisbury on direct trains down from 56 pounds to just under half of that. Alas, we forget the "downs" and remember the ups. But then I used the Westbury to London ticket, and I never need to go through from Swindon to Salisbury as I live halfway between, and I would have split anyway and still paid less than the new fare!
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