Bristol Chester 10 Jun
dep before 12pm
Trainsplit best price £30.90
I managed to get it for £28.60 doing it on my own.
What was the itinerary for this and what tickets did you find?
Not a huge saving on this one, but it's just an example that took me just a couple of minutes.
But are you saying the average passenger is best off doing their own research rather than use an accredited split ticketing site?
Would it typically only take a couple of minutes to find the cheapest combination by manual searching?
ps A couple of years ago I did Bristol- Newcastle with a price about 20 quid cheaper than trainsplit.
I'd be interested to hear the details, but I would also point out that Trainsplit did not offer splits at places like Burton, Tamworth, Chesterfield etc for this journey 2 years ago, and now it does.
Early versions of Trainsplit were a lot more limited.
Yes, and sometimes trying out unusual routes that the ticketing engines don't even consider.
I once found that the cheapest route to get from TM to York on the day I wanted to travel was, incredibly, via Ipswich!!
From TM? Bristol Temple Meads? I don't think Trainsplit could be expected to find tickets via Ipswich, nor would many people want to take such a huge deviation.
Don't say it just took a couple of minutes to find the cheapest route was via Ipswich?!
The Newcastle one was by going via London when GWR had an offer on BRI-PAD. Trainsplit didn't even consider via London.
Another good reason for booking direct through a TOC, sometimes these special offers are only available direct.
But is it really sensible to book each segment of the journey from a different retailer?
Taking your example, if you book BRI-PAD on GWR and then KGX-NCL on LNER, this potentially adds extra hassle if one of the trains is cancelled or re-timed (see other threads where this has happened).
It's also more of a faff to either collect multiple booking references or have multiple PDF e-tickets from separate locations.
It may make Delay Repay claims more difficult (again see other threads for examples of this).
How often do TOCs retail special offer tickets that only the relevant TOC sells on its own trains from its own website? Not very often, I'd say. I'd also argue the practice is anti-competetive but that's a whole new topic!
Does the average passenger really want to buy tickets from multiple retailers, and do multiple searches for each segment? Presumably you'd be looking up Bristol to Swindon/Didcot/Reading, then each of those to London on GWR, and likewise London to various stations and various stations to Newcastle on LNER, and some intermediate journeys to ensure you've not missed a more complex split?
How long does all that take, and for the average person, is it not just better to let one website take care of all of that, have one booking reference (or in the case of e-tickets one PDF) and a clear through itinerary as evidence of the contract for the full journey?
Also bear in mind if you book direct with GWR you cannot use a seat selector and if you do your own splits, obtaining the same seat throughout could be very time consuming.