Pros and Cons of Various Train Booking Websites / Apps

[megabusser]

Hi all,

I tend to use the forum ticket site (split tickets) or LNER app (easy to use on mobile) for long-distance trains, with the Scotrail app for anything in Scotland (due to, love them or loathe them, m-tickets and, outside the current peak fares trial, Super Off Peak Tickets).

However, I've recently learned that CrossCountry don't charge a fee when changing Advance tickets, so will consider that in the future if a change is likely; today the LNER app was being glitchy when I was trying to buy a ticket to travel in the next hour and I quickly used the Trainline app (never usually use it except to show my Railcard) and it found a split at nearly 50% off the price and with no fee (because it was on the same day, I believe?). I would have used the forum site, but it doesn't work on mobile for me (maybe a glitch for me, or maybe it just isn't designed for small screens at all?).

Anyway, I wondered if there are more tricks to consider when choosing what app/website to use? So far, I've got:

Crosscountry
- Change Advance tickets without £10 fee / simple app
LNER
- LNER perks on LNER tickets / simple app
Scotrail
- Only way (?) to buy Scotrail m-tickets inc Super-Off Peak / simple app
RailUKForums
- Split tickets for a small fee if applicable / easy to use on desktop, but no app and website doesn't work well on mobile (?)
Trainline
- No fee if booking for travel on the same day and split tickets / simple app
- BUT fees apply for bookings on future days, even without splits!

What should be added to the list? Any other perks of other booking sites/apps?

 

[Sonic1234]

Chiltern - no refund fee for walk up tickets if cancelled at least "24 hours" (to quote their terms) before travel (24 hours in this case actually means 23:59 the day before travel)

LNER - frequent 5-10% cashback via banks

 

[Merseysider]

RailUKForums
... website doesn't work well on mobile (?)

can't say I agree with this at all. I've used it several times on my phone and it's been smooth & worked just fine

Avanti has a seat selector for their own trains and is one of the few apps which will reliably sell Standard Premium fares - other apps/websites sometimes offer it on some but not all trains.

TPE: you can get a 50% discount if you are a student/have a 16-25 railcard, when booking directly

 

[James H]

Uber - 10 per cent Uber credit back on all rail tickets at least until the end of February.

You can also buy Uber gift cards at below face value (eg through employers' perks schemes, or Airtime Rewards [4% cashback] to achieve an even greater saving on your rail travel.

While the 10 per cent offer continues, it's a no brainer.

 

[wilbers]

Avanti :

Free return ticket after 9 of more trips 75 miles or longer.

 

[disunity]

Avanti :

Free return ticket after 9 of more trips 75 miles or longer.

*Only for Avanti journeys

 

[mikeg]

I quite like Virgin Red Points on Virgin Trains Ticketing, can be used towards future rail travel or exchanged for a variety of offers, including cheap flights with Virgin and sometimes KLM, Air France etc.

Also rudimentary split ticketing (not as good as Trainsplit) and no booking fee.

 

[bspahh]

Chiltern - no refund fee for walk up tickets if cancelled at least "24 hours" (to quote their terms) before travel (24 hours in this case actually means 23:59 the day before travel)

If you register with www.topcashback.co.uk and from there, search for Chiltern Railways from the link, then you can get 0.85% cashback, along with occasional offers for £2.50 cashback when you spend £5.

I use a different WWW browser for placing orders via www.topcashback.co.uk to the one I use for day to day browsing. I can then let it place cookies whereever it wants. If you use the same browser, then sometimes you can find that the transactions fail to track.

 

[Adam Williams]

Railsmartr
- No refund / amendment fees, though I think you need to email through to support to arrange this each time
- Quite a nicely designed responsive site. No splits (yet) or seat picker (yet)
- No app, as far as I know

TrainSplit
- Website powers RailUK ticketing site. Has a companion Android and iOS app. Some parts of the app more modern / usable than other parts.
- Usually doesn't do promotions, with the exception of sometimes discounting Railcards.

Railboard
- Honourable mention if you're on iOS; nice UI for checking departures. Modern spiritual successor to the National Rail Enquiries app, with built-in ticketing support.

 

[Scousemouse]

TRain line today - major flaw

Books split tickets but onlh gives seat reservation for part of the journey. Aberdeen to edinburgh passengers had splits at leuchers but only reservations as far as leuchers - queue passengers getting on at leuchers with seat reservations.............

I'll let you imagine the fall out

 

[m00036]

If you register with www.topcashback.co.uk and from there, search for Chiltern Railways from the link, then you can get 0.85% cashback, along with occasional offers for £2.50 cashback when you spend £5.

I use a different WWW browser for placing orders via www.topcashback.co.uk to the one I use for day to day browsing. I can then let it place cookies whereever it wants. If you use the same browser, then sometimes you can find that the transactions fail to track.

Northern Rail offers a higher Cashback rate (1.7%) with a better interface. Transport for Wales sometimes offers even more (2.55% yesterday).

 

[fandroid]

I live in SWR territory (beyond contactless) and like the sheer simple convenience of buying Offpeak outboundary Travelcards for loading at home via their app onto their Touch smartcard. No swapping between phone and Oyster or unreliable magstripe. No battery anxiety either.
Others in other smartcard areas might find their local equivalent to be useful too. Otherwise I use the Forum's ticket site, but I have loaded the CrossCountry app for a possible new strategy involving Advance tickets for long journeys.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Hi all,
Trainline
- No fee if booking for travel on the same day and split tickets / simple app
- BUT fees apply for bookings on future days, even without splits!

It's not quite that simple of course! Whilst they don't charge fees on any sameday bookings, if booking in advance and you use the website rather than the app (just as easy to use) there's no fee either for advanced bookings. There are also other scenarios where there are no fees too.

 

[Adam Williams]

if booking in advance and you use the website rather than the app (just as easy to use) there's no fee either for advanced bookings

Nonsense

 

[Deafdoggie]

Nonsense

View attachment 147408

Interesting. They don't charge me a booking fee on the website, maybe its a special perk just for me.

 

[Adam Williams]

Interesting. They don't charge me a booking fee on the website, maybe its a special perk just for me.

Perhaps it's a new marketing strategy to get positive commentary on the forum from dedicated fans

 

[Bletchleyite]

Perhaps it's a new marketing strategy to get positive commentary on the forum from dedicated fans

For me I am always charged one on the website (well, I would be, but I don't use it where a fee is applicable) but only when booking the day before on the app.

Thus I tend to use Trainsplit for advance bookings (mainly because of the seat picker; splits are applicable to relatively few long distance WCML journeys when not using Advances) and Trainline for just grabbing a walk-up on the day. I used to use the LNR app, and switched simply because it only takes one tap to put the e-ticket in my Apple Wallet vs. needing to do it on the email on the LNR app, but have found several other nice features like cancellation notifications and Realtime Trains-like platform predictions without needing to go into RTT.

To be honest, if they added seat selection for all TOCs I'd probably accept the booking fee. It's a genuinely very polished product and small wonder people do choose it, and it does basic splits now too.

 

[Adam Williams]

have found several other nice features like cancellation notifications and Realtime Trains-like platform predictions without needing to go into RTT.

TrainSplit does do this, FWIW

 

[Bletchleyite]

TrainSplit does this, FYI

I don't like the Trainsplit app at all, it's very basic. Each to their own though.

 

[Adam Williams]

I don't like the Trainsplit app at all, it's very basic.

Yeah, can't disagree the agency did a poor job on it UI/usability-wise.

 

[Haywain]

TrainSplit does do this, FWIW

And does it very well. I bought my tickets on the website and just use the app to show the booking details and journey plan, which is done very nicely.

 

[MrJeeves]

And does it very well. I bought my tickets on the website and just use the app to show the booking details and journey plan, which is done very nicely.

And hopefully we'll make it even better soon :P

 

[SandsofEss]

Transport for Wales offers 5 Avios per £1 spent, if you book the the BA Shopping link.

I've found it tracks reliably and pays promptly.

 

[Envoy]

I think I am right in saying that none of the train company sites tell you about splits.

If using those sites that tell you the splits, one has to consider the fee charged.

Let's take as an example Cardiff to Edinburgh one way on Wed Dec 13.
We are going to depart CDF at 9.53 on the TfW train that will take us to Crewe (arr 12.29) We will leave Crewe on the 13.08 Avanti to arrive EDB at 16.18.

ticketsrailforums.co.uk (which is really trainsplit) tells us get Advance Singles & split at CRE. So, CDF > CRE =£35.30 + CRE > EDB = £24.30 = £59.60 + £17.88 fee = £77.48.

thetrainline.com comes up with exactly the same journey and prices but the fee is only £2.39 to give a total of £61.99.

That’s a whopping £15.49 more and they are already getting a commission from the train companies. thetrainline finds the splits and appears to offer the lowest fees. It is also very good for European travel.

traintickets.com I find has the best webpage - easy to use and read. Fee charged is 10% of the amount saved which would be £12.71 on the above Cardiff to Edinburgh journey to give a total of £72.31.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think Trainline doing splits was a "paradigm shift" both for them and for how mainstream splits are. It's no longer sensible to say "don't use Trainline, it's never cheaper" as now it sometimes is even with the fee.

As I said, if they added seat selection I'd use them a lot and consider the fee worth paying.

I do think the Trainsplit fee can sometimes be a bit high if the saving is very large, and should perhaps be capped.

 

[Danfilm007]

Does anyone use Virgin Trains Ticketing? I must admit I find it very good!

 

[miklcct]

I quite like Virgin Red Points on Virgin Trains Ticketing, can be used towards future rail travel or exchanged for a variety of offers, including cheap flights with Virgin and sometimes KLM, Air France etc.

Also rudimentary split ticketing (not as good as Trainsplit) and no booking fee.

It charges a booking fee for all paper ticket bookings, regardless if it is e-ticketable or not. That fee renders the retailer useless on most of my rail travel as cross-London tickets are not e-ticketable.

 

[Adam Williams]

I do think the Trainsplit fee can sometimes be a bit high if the saving is very large, and should perhaps be capped.

It's already capped (both with a percentage based ceiling, and an absolute ceiling). I think some of the people who complain here would push for a lower cap, or a departure from a SoS-based fee at all.

thetrainline.com comes up with exactly the same journey and prices but the fee is only £2.39 to give a total of £61.99.

This works because you've selected a simple case where there's only one split-point. Try that on something like a return from Cardiff to Penzance and you'll soon come up against the limits of Trainline's implementation. The only real way to come out top is to compare about 3 different sites, or work around the fees.

 

[Deafdoggie]

I think I am right in saying that none of the train company sites tell you about splits.

If using those sites that tell you the splits, one has to consider the fee charged.

Let's take as an example Cardiff to Edinburgh one way on Wed Dec 13.
We are going to depart CDF at 9.53 on the TfW train that will take us to Crewe (arr 12.29) We will leave Crewe on the 13.08 Avanti to arrive EDB at 16.18.

ticketsrailforums.co.uk (which is really trainsplit) tells us get Advance Singles & split at CRE. So, CDF > CRE =£35.30 + CRE > EDB = £24.30 = £59.60 + £17.88 fee = £77.48.

thetrainline.com comes up with exactly the same journey and prices but the fee is only £2.39 to give a total of £61.99.

That’s a whopping £15.49 more and they are already getting a commission from the train companies. thetrainline finds the splits and appears to offer the lowest fees. It is also very good for European travel.

traintickets.com I find has the best webpage - easy to use and read. Fee charged is 10% of the amount saved which would be £12.71 on the above Cardiff to Edinburgh journey to give a total of £72.31.

I think Trainline doing splits was a "paradigm shift" both for them and for how mainstream splits are. It's no longer sensible to say "don't use Trainline, it's never cheaper" as now it sometimes is even with the fee.

As I said, if they added seat selection I'd use them a lot and consider the fee worth paying.

I do think the Trainsplit fee can sometimes be a bit high if the saving is very large, and should perhaps be capped.

Take cover. I had the audacity to say Trainline could be cheaper and got shot down.

 

[Mojo]

LNER
- LNER perks on LNER tickets /

Note that you can still claim LNER Perks credit for tickets booked for LNER trains that you have booked elsewhere, you don’t have to have booked through the LNER website or App. You however can only redeem on the LNER App.

Instructions here: https://www.lner.co.uk/support/faq/...arned-credit-if-i-dont-book-direct-with-lner/