Drip pricing - ORR writes to third party ticket sellers

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From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

The rail regulator has written to seven online third-party train ticket sellers to express concern that they are not being upfront about booking fees.

The Office of Road and Rail (ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about)) said some retailers "are not as transparent as they need to be" over their fees.

It added that it wanted to make sure "that drip pricing does not undermine consumer confidence".

The Department for Business and Trade has done a consultation into price transparency, including drip pricing.

The phrase drip pricing refers to the practice where a consumer is shown an initial price for a product or service, but then extra fees are added before the final cost is revealed.

It goes on ..

[ORR] analysed the ticketing websites and apps of 19 third-party sellers.

The ORR found 12 of the companies charged booking fees, and seven of these did not include their fees in the upfront price.

The regulator said booking fees ranged from 45p (per ticket) to £6.45 (per transaction) and finder's fees were between 10-15% of the saving made on a split ticket.

The 12 sites found to charge booking and/or finder's fees were: MyTrainTicket, Omio, Rail Europe, Railboard, Raileasy, Sojo, Split my fare, Train Hugger, Trainline, Trainpal, Trainsplit and TrainTickets.com. However, the ORR is not naming the seven companies it has written to.

Personally I usually book with GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) / sometimes Transport for Wales for products like SailRail.  In the event of needing tickets that are hard to find online I will use a ticket office - most commonly Chippenham because it's the outlet that's most likely to actually be open ... on rare occasions when all else fails I will trouble a bemused train manager with an unusual request.