£10k first class fare Taunton-to-Trowbridge

[whole diary]

[didcotdean]

BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

A train ticket between two towns just 64 miles apart has been offered for £10,000 by a rail operator's website.
The direct Taunton-to-Trowbridge trip was apparently advertised at the price by Great Western Railway (GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)), from 22 May through to 14 July.
It means the journey costs £156-per-mile and passengers cannot travel via Bristol.
A GWR spokesman blamed an IT problem for the expensive fare and has since corrected the error.
"We are aware of an IT glitch which has published fares for a first class journey that does not exist," the firm said.
"Anytime single fares between Taunton and Trowbridge are available from £12.70."

[bobm]

As one of the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) article points out, if you booked the fare through the Trainline you'd also be charged the 75p debit card fee on top!

Looks like it has now been blocked in any event.

[didcotdean]

The article correctly makes little of it apart from a curio.

I can remember seeing one of the non-public 10p fares turning up before - a 5p example of which has been captured here.

[LiskeardRich]

The same fare showed up for st Erth to Paddington. It was only offered on trainline powered sites.

The erroneous fare was off peak 1st class singles. No such ticket exists.

[JayMac]

"Anytime single fares between Taunton and Trowbridge are available from £12.70."

And remember, if you're going on to Melksham, split your fare at Trowbridge!

The story of the £10000 fare has just featured on tonight's (24/04/2017) BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Points West.

[grahame]

The same fare showed up for st Erth to Paddington. It was only offered on trainline powered sites.

The erroneous fare was off peak 1st class singles. No such ticket exists.

And Evesham to Brighton (I think it was) reported on the Association of British Commuters page  ...

[LiskeardRich]

The same fare showed up for st Erth to Paddington. It was only offered on trainline powered sites.

The erroneous fare was off peak 1st class singles. No such ticket exists.

And Evesham to Brighton (I think it was) reported on the Association of British Commuters page  ...

I've just had a play around, and it's showing on every journey I have tried that has a anytime 1st single but no off peak 1st single fare available.

[Noggin]

It's probably what programmers call a "Magic Number" and either originates in the database itself, or has been added by a programmer along the way.

It's typically a value that's large (or small) enough to not be confused with a "normal" value, and used to signal something such as the product being unavailable. The technique comes from the dark ages of computing when computers were very limited in storage and processing power, and is now frowned upon because it relies on the users of the data filtering out those abnormal values.

In this case it's likely that the programmers of the system using the data either didn't read the documentation so they could catch this value, or that no-one ever documented it.   

[stuving]

It's probably what programmers call a "Magic Number" and either originates in the database itself, or has been added by a programmer along the way.

It's typically a value that's large (or small) enough to not be confused with a "normal" value, and used to signal something such as the product being unavailable. The technique comes from the dark ages of computing when computers were very limited in storage and processing power, and is now frowned upon because it relies on the users of the data filtering out those abnormal values.

In this case it's likely that the programmers of the system using the data either didn't read the documentation so they could catch this value, or that no-one ever documented it.   

If you look in the relevant document (Rail Settlement Plan / Fares and Associated Data Feed / Interface Specification) it says fares should be given in pence, and for those defined in the set for a "flow" there is nothing more said. However, for "non-derivable fares" it says each of adult or child fare should be 99999999 pence if it does not exist. Now that would be interpreted as £1,000,000, of course, not £10,000. So maybe someone miscounted the number of 9s, or was lazy typing them, when preparing a data file.

Mind you, it's not obvious why those fares should not be in the flow file. So it is perhaps more likely that the mechanism was used in the flow data file, where it worked provided all users applied the trap to all fares (why wouldn't they?). But no doubt there are all sorts of other less guessable variations on the same basic idea.

The same "8 9s" flag is used in a couple of other places, but neither is relevant to this case. That specification, dated 2014, is the one still on the RDG^‡(resolve) website - so presumably still current.

[Chris from Nailsea]

It's probably what programmers call a "Magic Number" ...

Or it could even be 'Graham's Number'.  See this clip, from QI. 

[ChrisB]

Picked up by the well-known IT e-news site The Register

IT error at Great Western Railway charging £10k for 63-mile journey ticket

If you didn't want to travel from Taunton-to-Trowbridge before, you probably won't now either

Great Western Rail has been advertising the bargain of a lifetime; a first-class journey from Taunton to Trowbridge for £10,000.

We don't know if anybody could hate cider that much, but the extraordinarily priced direct trip was advertised from 22 May to 14 July, leaving potential customers stumping up £156 per mile.

Great Western Rail said an IT problem was responsible for the anomalous fare, and stated that the error has since been corrected. "We are aware of an IT glitch which has published fares for a first class journey that does not exist," cameth the statement.



Typically, single fares between the Somerset town of Taunton and the Wiltshire town of Trowbridge are actually available from £12.70, a certainly more affordable price.

We welcome readers' suggestions for other ways in which Tauntonians could spend £10,000 to escape the small city. ®

The comments pages are worth a gander....well, some are!

[froome]

Just out of interest (and I can't imagine it would have happened) but what would have happened if someone actually bought one of those tickets online? 

[ChrisB]

Probably useable!

The encoding on the mag stripe would have been correct for the journey sold.

But surely no one would ever attempt to buy? Mile for mile, it's dearer than NASA spent getting an Apollo to the moon!

[Tim]

Just out of interest (and I can't imagine it would have happened) but what would have happened if someone actually bought one of those tickets online? 

depends what limit you have on your card and it is possible that spending £10K on a single transaction would trigger a bank's card fraud protection.  I spent about £6k in one card transaction once (buying a car) and the transaction was declined and needed to be approved manual with a call to the bank.

[grahame]

Just out of interest (and I can't imagine it would have happened) but what would have happened if someone actually bought one of those tickets online? 

I expect the credit card company would have refused authorisation as an unusual payment on the account.  If not and it was a joint account or a company account, use of the ticket would have been followed by some huge questions!

[See Tim has a similar view - both posting at the same time!]