London Banter - View Single Post - Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off

Arthur Figgis · April 26th 14, 08:18 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 26/04/2014 11:37, wrote:

Surely it's time that train operators were required to offer passengers the
cheapest fares, allowing for options like this and have done with it?

Because only tight-fisted anoraks would do (say) Cambridge - London via
Ipswich, splitting tickets at every halt, arriving a fortnight on
Tuesday but saving 5p on the direct train which is just about to depart.
But somebody somewhere would no doubt complain if the ticket clerk
didn't do the calculations at 7.30am on a Monday.

Selling the cheapest A-Z ticket is a lot easier than than crunching
through every intermediate option vis B, C, D etc.

Why
should only those good at gaming the system benefit?

So we get some benefit from our anorakdom?

It's overcharging by
stealth which shouldn't be allowed.

I think people should be very careful what they wish for - eg would we
happy to lose "any reasonable" route in its fossilised "any permitted"
form in favour of tightly nailed-downing routings, which might be likely
to follow any crackdown on the ability to save by splitting tickets?
Would we want the industry to lose the ability to fiddle around with
fares to try to grow specific markets?

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK