London Banter - View Single Post

[email protected] · February 19th 16, 04:59 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (Mizter T) wrote:

*Subject:* Best Web Sites For Rail Fare Bargains
*From:* Mizter T
*Date:* Fri, 19 Feb 2016 17:05:16 +0000

On 19/02/2016 11:17, Robin9 wrote:
I don't travel much by rail these days except in London.
I'm completely out of touch with buying train tickets to
places like Birmingham and Bristol. In my day it was all
pretty simple; you just turned up and bought your ticket.
There was the very occasional special offer: a friend and I
went from Euston to Glasgow Central on an early train for
£5.00 day return! That was more than forty years ago! (We
wanted to visit St. Mungo's Cathedral)

There are web sites providing train fare offers but which are
the best ones? Am I correct in assuming that some will offer
less than ideal rates because they receive a commission from
train companies? Do they all work this angle?

No, you're not correct.

All sites essentially offer the same selection of tickets, but the
booking sites of some train companies offer (small) discounts on
Advance fares (for travel on specified trains), so long as the
journey (or most of it) is on their own trains. Virgin Trains East
Coast and East Midlands Trains do this.

Some train companies also have temporary offers where flexible
tickets for travel on their trains might be reduced.

(The following two paragraphs are probably more info than you need...
so skip to the final paragraph!)

However there are a few ongoing ticket offerings which are only
available from the train company's own booking site - e.g. Virgin
Trains West Coast half-fares (when bought as part of a return
journey); or Virgin Trains East Coast Super Off-Peak Single web-only
fare (what a mouthful!), which must be bought at least a day in
advance. Neither of these ticket offerings have any sort of
explanation on their websites!

There were also GTR school holiday time Web-only Super Off-Peak (or whatever
the actual name was) tickets from Cambridge to London terminals last summer.
Not purchasable any other way. As they have wrecked their ticket-buying web
site and abandoned the excellent Webtis site they inherited from Southern
GOK how this might work next summer.

There are also "Megatrain" tickets, which are only offered on a
limited number of South West Trains, East Midlands Trains and Virgin
Trains West Coast journeys (though apparently not on the latter until
the Lamington Viaduct is fixed). They are only available via the
http://www.megatrain.com website.

Lamington is due to re-open Monday.

(The final paragraph follows!...)

The best approach is to buy your tickets from the booking site of the
train company that you'll be travelling on for all or the majority of
your journey. Do *not* buy from the Trainline or RedSpottedHanky or
other sites that impose booking and credit card fees - there is no
need to pay a booking fee (by doing so are just helping them fund
their all-pervasive advertising!).

Indeed so. That is a more fully spelt out of version of what I said.

--
Colin Rosenstiel