• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Gatwick ticket machines

Status
Not open for further replies.

55003

Member
Joined
6 Feb 2011
Messages
133
Location
West Kent
Who sets the policy of which ticket options appear on page one of the ticket machines at Gatwick?
My daughter recently travelled from Gatwick to Tonbridge and page one of the selection only includes options of travelling via London . The shorter and cheaper option of travelling via Redhill appears on the next page which I would wager 99% of the travelling public would not know existed. The difference in fare was £10. The cynic in me would say that the operator is doing this deliberately to extort money from the unwary and foreign visitor.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

55003

Member
Joined
6 Feb 2011
Messages
133
Location
West Kent
Nobody will buy the cheap tickets if they are not obvious. Also the selection of open returns from Gatwick is much less than in the opposite direction.I believe that the display of available tickets is not showing the cheapest first which is to the advantage of the operator and not the traveller.
 
Last edited:

paul1609

Established Member
Joined
28 Jan 2006
Messages
7,189
Location
Wittersham Kent
No idea.

FWIW I think it would be better if that screen displayed common destinations rather than common tickets. That way you would always go to the list showing cheapest first.

Its probably not practical for all stations for instance 95% of Leisure customers at Ashford want an off peak travelcard routed plus highspeed its obvious that that should be the primary ticket.
The cheaper Superoffpeak to Charing Cross is on about page 3 but is only bought by about 3 % of customers having that as the primary ticket would cause lots of them to mistakenly buy that ticket.
 

Class442Fan

Member
Joined
25 Feb 2016
Messages
6
They are managed by SHERE. The display structure is based on route, then price. So in this instance, because an Any Permitted ticket would allow her to travel on the cheaper route as well as the London route, that shows up first. If it was the other way around, you would end up with more people travelling on the wrong routes because they have simply selected the first/cheapest ticket for their journey. The TOC's reasoning is 'it's better to have too much, than not enough'. This issue is not unique to that route, it's actually quite common practice, based on the above principle.

Hope that helps.
 

Haywain

Veteran Member
Joined
3 Feb 2013
Messages
14,877
They are managed by SHERE.
Are you sure about that? It would seem an odd arrangement for Worldline (formerly ATOS, formerly Shere) to manage ticket vending machines supplied by a direct competitor.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top