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Instances where rovers are cheaper than singles/returns

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Mathieu

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I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a rover ticket that encorporates your start and end destinations rather than buy a return ticket, or even in some cases a single ticket. The most extreme example I’ve seen of this so far is Barrhill to Ardlui, £16.70 for a single or £13.10 for a Daytripper Rover ticket and this also allows you to return and have access to all of Strathclyde by rail, bus and boat. Are there any more examples of this?
 
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Jurg

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I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a rover ticket that encorporates your start and end destinations rather than buy a return ticket, or even in some cases a single ticket. The most extreme example I’ve seen of this so far is Barrhill to Ardlui, £16.70 for a single or £13.10 for a Daytripper Rover ticket and this also allows you to return and have access to all of Strathclyde by rail, bus and boat. Are there any more examples of this?
Plenty on the West Midlands Day Ranger. Cheapest (Off-Peak) return Northampton to Gobowen is £55.50 compared to £27.30 for the Ranger. It would be interesting to see what the ticket office would sell an unsuspecting passenger, obviously assuming they intend to return the same day.
 

Hadders

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The ticket office should sell what the customer asks for.

A clued up clerk might offer the Day Ranger if it was suitable but you can't expect the clerk to know the price of every rover or ranger and whether it will be cheaper than a normal ticket.
 

Fawkes Cat

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It's fairly routine in the Merseytravel area for it to be cheaper to get a Saveaway rather than a return: without checking figures I am pretty certain that it's the case for both Chester and Southport to Liverpool (and so obviously for Chester to Southport) and going back maybe 12 or 15 years to when I lived in Waterloo, an area C Saveaway tended to be cheaper than a return ticket to town for around half the year, as railway fares went up in January but Merseytravel fares some time in the summer.
 

pdeaves

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The all line rover is said to be cheaper than some Cornwall-far north fares. Someone more knowledgable will be able to quote £ and whether or not that is still (or ever was) true.
 

Mathieu

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Caldercruix to Milliken Park is another journey that's cheaper, single is £8.10 (£9.70 return). Can be done with a Roundabout ticket for £7.40.
 

Mathieu

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Also the first post was actually an advance single at £16.70 for Barrhill to Ardlui, a return would cost a whopping £43.80!!! Can be done with a Daytripper costing £13.10 saving you over £30!
 

matt

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Plenty on the West Midlands Day Ranger. Cheapest (Off-Peak) return Northampton to Gobowen is £55.50 compared to £27.30 for the Ranger. It would be interesting to see what the ticket office would sell an unsuspecting passenger, obviously assuming they intend to return the same day.

Rugby to Crewe is another one that the West Midlands Day Ranger undercuts.
 

Mathieu

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The all line rover is said to be cheaper than some Cornwall-far north fares. Someone more knowledgable will be able to quote £ and whether or not that is still (or ever was) true.
May have been the case in the past but now a Penzance-Thurso return is cheaper than a 7 Day ALR. Not by much though.
 

Puffing Devil

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Plenty of fares at the edge of the TfGM Wayfarer map make it cheaper than the usual Single or Off-Peak return; even better value that if you qualify for a concessionary fare or split to destinations beyond the boundary.
 

greyman42

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A north east round robin would be cheaper than a return from York to Carlisle but there is a restriction on early peak travel.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Plenty of examples of Day Rangers undercutting point to point off-peak fares, and often with fewer time restrictions, as Rangers are now all valid after 0900 with no afternoon restrictions.
They also often come with more flexible routeing between any two points on the validity map.
 

SteveM70

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The ticket office should sell what the customer asks for.

I think it depends on what you mean by “what the customer asks for” - the journey or the ticket type? The ticket office (and the systems that underpin it) should offer the best value ticket that meets the customer’s needs.

It shouldn’t be for the customer to know the intricacies of the fare structures, peak and off peak, what rover tickets may or not be available etc etc. It’s this approach that alienates “non railway savvy passengers” when they discover they’ve been ripped off.

A customer saying “I’d like a ticket from x to y, going now and returning later today” should automatically be offered the cheapest appropriate ticket
 

Mathieu

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I think it depends on what you mean by “what the customer asks for” - the journey or the ticket type? The ticket office (and the systems that underpin it) should offer the best value ticket that meets the customer’s needs.

It shouldn’t be for the customer to know the intricacies of the fare structures, peak and off peak, what rover tickets may or not be available etc etc. It’s this approach that alienates “non railway savvy passengers” when they discover they’ve been ripped off.

A customer saying “I’d like a ticket from x to y, going now and returning later today” should automatically be offered the cheapest appropriate ticket
Put ScotRail to the test. Good to see they are on the ball https://twitter.com/scotrail/status/1213560406012301312?s=21
 

richw

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Pretty sure I heard it’s been withdrawn but previously I regularly used the Devon evening ranger to get from Axminster to Plymouth as it was cheaper than a single!
 

VT 390

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Great Malvern to Crewe is another one the West Midlands Day ranger beats by quite a bit as the off peak return is about £55 compared to £28 for the ranger.
 

paddy1

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Mlton Keynes Central to Cleethorpes (not via London). Off peak return £99.40. Can use a 3 days in 7 East Midlands Flexi Rover for £91.20. Enables you to return up to 7 days within date of outward travel, or to make up to 3 seperate day return trips within that 7 day period (but obviously no good if you want to stay over 7 days, for which you would need the off peak return). The 3 in 7 also allows more flexible routing options than what the off peak return does.
 
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RJ

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The ticket office should sell what the customer asks for.

A clued up clerk might offer the Day Ranger if it was suitable but you can't expect the clerk to know the price of every rover or ranger and whether it will be cheaper than a normal ticket.

Common sense does apply when interpreting a customer's request.

Where I work sometimes, a Travelcard is cheaper than a return to London Terminals or a Zone 1 LU/DLR station so people requesting a ticket for these journeys get a Travelcard by default. A few people insist they just want a return and I offer them the option of paying the extra - they usually decline which suggests that people don't want to pay more than necessary.

Sometimes requests have to be declined - I get a few people asking specifically for child flat fare Travelcards which they aren't eligible to buy.

I expect a good ticket would ask appropriate questions to determine what the best product is to sell and issue a rover/ranger if it covers the whole journey and is cheaper than a single/return.
 

AndrewE

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The ticket office should sell what the customer asks for.
A clued up clerk might offer the Day Ranger if it was suitable but you can't expect the clerk to know the price of every rover or ranger and whether it will be cheaper than a normal ticket.
I thought that one of the rules at privatisation was that booking offices were required to sell people the most economical ticket for their journey... which requires properly / fully trained staff and no incentives which encourage them to break the law.
It also depends on having booking office staff in place too... maybe that's another reason why we see so many machines and so few staff: people buy an expensive ticket from a machine: "It was their choice!"
 

Howardh

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Mlton Keynes Central to Cleethorpes (not via London). Off peak return £99.40. Can use a 3 days in 7 East Midlands Flexi Rover for £91.20. Enables you to return up to 7 days within date of outward travel, or to make up to 3 seperate day return trips within that 7 day period (but obviously no good if you want to stay over 7 days, for which you would need the off peak return). The 3 in 7 also allows more flexible routing options than what the off peak return does.
How blinking much??? That's eye watering! Hope there are decent advances for that journey.
 

Haywain

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How blinking much??? That's eye watering! Hope there are decent advances for that journey.
Priced by CrossCountry, who don't offer Advances. The only Advances are priced by LNER.
 
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The ticket office (and the systems that underpin it) should offer the best value ticket that meets the customer’s needs.

Exactly - with some modification to the data, many of these Rangers and Rovers, certainly the one-day ones, could be represented as normal fares and would then come out automatically as the cheapest in on-line sales or at a station. Some flexibility might be lost (where Routeing Guide doesn't need to be applied, but would be as for a single/return) but they could still remain as stand-alone fares to sell on their own.
 

some bloke

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Buxton - Burton, off-peak returning the same day, two adults and three children: £170.45
Anytime returns, if Mon-Fri 9-9.30am: £233.45

Derbyshire Wayfarer Group (valid via New Mills Newtown and New Mills Central): £24


Edit: Changed origin station from New Mills Newtown to Buxton after input from @Llandudno below.
 
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Llandudno

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New Mills Newtown - Burton off-peak returning the same day, two adults and three children: £170.45
Anytime returns, if Mon-Fri 9-9.30am: £233.45

Derbyshire Wayfarer Group: £24
Sorry to be pedantic, but needs to be New Mills Central.
Derbyshire Wayfarer can’t be used from Newtown as you need to travel via Stockport to get to Burton.

You could catch the train from Newtown to Buxton then the bus to bridge the gap between Buxton and Matlock though using a Derbyshire Wayfarer.
 

some bloke

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Sorry to be pedantic, but needs to be New Mills Central.
Derbyshire Wayfarer can’t be used from Newtown as you need to travel via Stockport to get to Burton.

You could catch the train from Newtown to Buxton then the bus to bridge the gap between Buxton and Matlock though using a Derbyshire Wayfarer.
I see what you mean - if you were going from Newtown by foot to Central then by rail to Burton and not aware of the Wayfarer, you could get "cheaper" tickets from Central - at £147.35 or £201.25 full price.

The fares to Burton from other stations on the Newtown line (eg Whaley Bridge, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Buxton) are the same price as from Newtown. So we can use them instead in the example (noting that people can't go via Stockport on the Wayfarer).
 
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Silver Cobra

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The all line rover is said to be cheaper than some Cornwall-far north fares. Someone more knowledgable will be able to quote £ and whether or not that is still (or ever was) true.

I've just randomly looked up Penzance to Thurso, which works out as the following:

Standard Anytime Return: £534
1st Anytime Return: £852

Standard 7-day ALR: £540
1st 7-day ALR: £818

The standard class ALR is only £6 more expensive than the respective return, while the 1st class ALR is £34 cheaper.
 

bb21

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There is literally going to be thousands of such occurrences, so can I ask that unless what you are putting forward offers something interesting and unique, eg. massive differentials, special products such as the All Line Rover, etc, or likely to be of use to lots of people, eg. London Travelcards, please do not just post any random individual examples as that just clogs up the thread and is probably going to be of little use to anyone.
 

221129

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Pretty sure I heard it’s been withdrawn but previously I regularly used the Devon evening ranger to get from Axminster to Plymouth as it was cheaper than a single!
It was cheaper than a return from Tiverton to Exeter!
 
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