Dear all

I've had conflicting advice on this, and have not been able to turn up
the definitive rule:

I have a Freedom Pass, my wife an Over-60 card and we both have Senior
Railcards/

At, say, 1030hrs, we can go the booking office at Woolwich Arsenal and
buy tickets from Z6 boundary to National Rail destinations which are
available on Southeastern's ticketing system (works as far as
Bournemouth, Portsmouth etc, not just SE destinations). The train
concerned does not have to stop at the boundary station.

However, boundary fares are only available at stations – not online –
thus allowing the ticket office staff to check that we have valid
passes from WWA to the boundary.

So to book an advance fare online I consult the Freedom Pass map to
identify the last station inside the boundary and use that as my
Departure station and book an advance or super advance ticket from
there.

I have been doing this regularly for a couple of years to make
significant savings – eg East Croydon to Portsmouth Harboud for just
£3.30 – and the only comment from a gripper seeing my FPass, Railcard
and discounted ticket has been a cheeful "Good morning, Sir, I'm
pleased to see you know how to get the cheapest ticket".

However, I recommended this technique to a friend, who was mortified to
be told on a SWT service (within the rules, ie 11.xx departure from
WAT) that his Surbiton – Southampton ticket was invalid for WAT-SOU
since the train did not stop at SUR. The gripper told him sternly
"You're a pensioner, and you have obviously been given bad advice by an
unathourised person, so in this case I won't issue a PF, but you will
need to pay the correct fare on future journeys" [with an unspoken, but
obvious "…or else" at the end].

Q! Are we – and the Southern conductor – within thr rules, or was the
SWT interpretation correct?

Q2 Assuming we are correct, what are the "magic words" which we could
quote to avoid a PF?

TIA folks – and BTW I will post in the next few days a detailed
response doc re cashless bus ticketing.

Ken