[x-posted to uk.railway]

On Jun 27, 11:54*pm, wrote:

(Mizter T) wrote:
Thanks to MatSav on uk.railway for the heads up, this rather good
offer has come to my attention - I thought it deserved a thread of its
own, so I hope he doesn't mind me starting this one (which is x-posted
to both uk.transport.london and uk.r).

National Rail are running a promotion for Oyster card and Freedom Pass
holders for days out from London - with substantially discounted Off-
Peak Day Return fares, and in some cases Off-Peak period Return fares,
to a pretty wide range of destinations as far away as Bristol,
Cardiff, Norwich and Crewe (the last on LM trains only). The offer
runs for a month from Sat 26 June (tomorrow) until Sun 25 July.
http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/oyster

The return fares are priced at the following levels: £5, £10, £15 or
£20. The journey is supposed to start from a London terminus station.

[snip]

What is most puzzling about this offer is that all the TOCs local to
London seem to be involved except just one - South Eastern. Why?

Good point, although Southeastern destinations are not entirely absent
- Ashford, Hastings, St Leonards Warrior Square, then all the stations
from Ore to Appledore which are served by Southern but reached from
London via Southeastern and a change at Hastings or Ashford. (Oddly
Ham Street isn't in the list.)

UIVMM Southeastern was allowed an above inflation rise in their fares
this year (poss. a multi-year arrangement - I'm hazy on the details) -
this is unlike other TOCs, so maybe they somehow can't afford to take
part in the promotion.

Perhaps the more obvious explanation is that existence of
Southeastern's Highspeed service (via HS1) complicates matters somehow
- it can be used to reach many destinations (directly or indirectly)
on the Southeastern network, and for whatever reason SE are perhaps
unwilling to include the SE HS service in this promotion, perhaps for
fear of cannibalising 'normal' revenue or some such.

That said I'd very much think that SE could do with promoting their
Highspeed service to potential contra-peak flow leisure passengers
originating from London. So I'm minded to think that there's perhaps
some accounting reason why SE aren't really participating in this
offer... or maybe they've got something special of their own up their
sleeve for later on in the summer?

Who knows. (Not me, that's for sure!)