On Sep 10, 11:42*am, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

elyob wrote:
I've just started a commute from Surbiton to Farnborough daily and was
surprised to find that it is significantly cheaper to buy daily
tickets than it is to buy a weekly or monthly ....

Here's my weekly tickets ... PITA ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elyob/3905742603/

It's £8.40 a day = £42 for a five day week. Whereas it's £56.90 for a
weekly ... that's £15 more expensive. I'm amazed at that, I mean I'm
hardly likely to go there 7 days a week.

So, my question of the day is, how many days in advance can I buy
daily tickets, can I go to the window and ask for a full months worth
of daily tickets? Also, why can't SWT offer a five day solution?

[uk.railway added]

I think a similar journey query has come up before in uk.railway. The
explanation is that you are going against the peak flow. If you check the
price of an anytime return from Farnborough to Surbiton I think the figures
will be completely different, and the season is a discount on 5 of those
fares. *But a season ticket works in either direction, at any time of day,
so a Surbiton to Farnborough season can be used as a Farnborough to
Surbiton.

Rightly or wrongly I think that's the basic problem, and you'll find the
season is normally a significant discount on 5 up direction journeys at
£15.80, *ie it is normally considered as a 5 day product.

Yes, I recall that coming up on uk.r quite recently.

With regards to buying the tickets in advance, you might find it
easier to buy them online and then collect them from a ticket machine
at the station - both Surbiton and Farnborough Main offer what's
called "TOD" or "Ticket on Departure" these days[1]. I dare say you
might find this easier using a WebTIS based booking engine as opposed
to a Trainline based one - i.e. the one used by NXEC or Southern
Railway amongst others. The booking takes two hours to process, so you
could perhaps book them on Thursday evening for collection on Friday
evening or some such (and regardless of what station you specify, you
can pick the tickets up at any TOD station). A PITA having to do this
ticket shuffle, but nonetheless I'd say it's preferable to having to
pay the more expensive fare.

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[1] List of stations that offer TOD (though I think it's incomplete):
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/statio...inations/tods/