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VTWC being naughty again

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Deafdoggie

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One colour became the Saver and the other the SuperSaver I think?

They just had white and blue days. Fridays being the most expensive (blue?) but other random days could also be, say around peak holidays etc.
The press had a field day of course “everyday is a blue day travelling by train” etc.
And, of course, the public were non the wiser what day it was.
 

Wallsendmag

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I think what killed it off was that you could use the return half on some trains and not the outward half. it began to get too complicated. How simple those days were.
 

Gareth Marston

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I still see customers who think its more expensive to travel on Fridays - no doubt a hangover from those days. I also see customers who think they have to specify what trains they travel on on local journeys, that there entitled to discount by buying in advance (usually 2 days and they want flexible tickets), tickets on the internet are cheaper, make up their own definitions of peak and off peak on journeys where there are no restrictions and my favorites are the ones who have looked up the price of something on the internet the night before or a couple of days before and expect the one way AP price they've seen to be available for the day return trip they want to buy on the day........
 

neilmc

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I think adverts for ticket sellers imply that the way to get cheaper train tickets is to book online, as opposed to booking in advance, which of course you can do at a station.
 

Clip

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I think adverts for ticket sellers imply that the way to get cheaper train tickets is to book online, as opposed to booking in advance, which of course you can do at a station.

Unless they are TOC specific online special fares ;)
 

ForTheLoveOf

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The worst ones are those that imply you can save money by using Sheepline, which of course is under no circumstances actually possible compared with booking direct with the relevant TOC.
If the relevant TOC doesn't use TrainLine as their backend, then it has occured in the past that tickets have been cheaper via The TrainLine than the TOC's system. This is mainly a function of the routeing and itinerary algorithm behind The TrainLine recognising that changing at different stations, which some booking engines may consider 'equivalent', might actually impact the price or availability of through Advances.

For example, for some journeys there are multiple stations at which the trains you want to change between call at - e.g. if travelling Liverpool-Bristol using a WMT Liverpool-Birmingham service and a XC Manchester-Bristol service, you can change at any of Stafford, Wolverhampton or Birmingham and end up on the same trains, just starting/finishing at different points.

Some booking engines consider itineraries changing at each of these stations exactly the same, as the journey time and number of changes will usually be the same, and so they will by default have you change at the station marked as the largest in the data.

However, The TrainLine, as well as other smart booking systems, will try each change point to see if this enables Advances to become available at all where previously only walk-ups are available, or if it enables cheaper Advances to become available. Sometimes there is a difference, depending on the 'tier' of Advance permitted on the train in question.

However, if the TOC uses The TrainLine then the price of the tickets themselves will of course be the same on either website - it will only be the cost of ticket pickup and/or booking fees that varies. And in any case, this kind of scenario is very rare indeed and the price difference is not usually significant.
 
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Clip

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The worst ones are those that imply you can save money by using Sheepline, which of course is under no circumstances actually possible compared with booking direct with the relevant TOC.

Are you saying that you can't save money on walk up tickets using Trainline?
 
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Joe Paxton

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New name for Advance tickets...

Indigo - has 'go' in the name, could be a distinct brand (though possibly a bit naff?).

Mercury or Hermes - deities of travel (Hermes is already used by the parcel company, Mercury was used by a telco but the brand has been defunct for 21 years now).

Voyager - though it's the name of a type of train already.

Saver might have been a good name, were it not coined by BR back in the 80's and used up until the 'simplification' of 2008.
 

ForTheLoveOf

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The cause of this problem is that they didn’t change all the 8A SVRs to Anytimes at simplification as they should have done.
That may be one cause, but the proliferation of a huge number of very similar or identical different restriction codes absolutely hasn't helped. Really one thing that needs to come out of fares reform is removing duplicate restriction codes - such as the multi-TOC B-series which is virtually carbon copied by the TPE-specific the I-series, and for example 2V which copies B1 and so on.

There should be a much reduced series of these kinds of restriction codes and they should be renamed to something more obvious, even if this means the replacement of the current two-character system. Basic "not before X" ones could simply be replaced with a short text (on the now ever more common new-style tickets) stating "not valid before X" rather than referring you to a link. More complex restriction codes should also be simplified - in particular GWR is a bad offender in this area, with their restriction codes containing reams of station-specific times. They could simply say something like "not valid to arrive into main stations X, Y and Z before W" and then print that on the ticket.

But ultimately I think that is probably only one change which is not going to make average people instantly understand the meaning of "Off-Peak" very much better than they do now. Hopefully it might reduce the instances of staff incorrectly rejecting tickets.
 

Bletchleyite

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There is a single-line summary for each restriction which would probably fit on the new style layout (it's what TVMs show). But that said, some of them are downright misleading, such as 9I which shows the times from Euston and implies there is an evening peak restriction from MKC, which there isn't.
 

ForTheLoveOf

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There is a single-line summary for each restriction which would probably fit on the new style layout (it's what TVMs show). But that said, some of them are downright misleading, such as 9I which shows the times from Euston and implies there is an evening peak restriction from MKC, which there isn't.
Quite simply 9I/2C should not be used for tickets to/from stations like MKC. It's misleading and there is no justification for it, given how easy it seems to create new restriction codes. I'm sure there would be one they could even reuse if they liked
 
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