The "share of saving" approach probably works ok for general users, because they are just pleased that they've been offered something cheaper than elsewhere and have no desire to fiddle about manually.
I'm guessing though that most folk coming from these forums will see it differently because they have a better idea of what's going on behind the scenes. When it's just a pound or two I'm happy to pay that in exchange for the website sorting it all for me. But when there's a big saving and it's charging £10 or £15 I doubt I'm the only one who sometimes decides to do it manually. It doesn't feel like an entirely "fair" method of charging because the amount of work the system needs to do in the background isn't really related the level of saving it finds.
Yep there will always be a market for people to input each ticket as a manual search; people do that with TOC sites and so the option will always be there. We do still get some income when this is done (less so if TOD is selected, as that eats into our margins; even worse if it's collected at a ticket office!)
Although in general the larger savings are bigger fares, and in many cases it is because there are far more splits over a longer distance, so more computation used.
The only solution would be charging less of those bigs fees but everyone else more.
Surely if as you claim everyone knows what’s going on, these people who are using TrainSplit then doing it manually should be working out their splits themselves, rather than using someone else’s work and not paying the price they ask?
The amount of hours that goes into finding the absolute cheapest splits would be mind-boggling; I think for sure there are a not insignificant number of people who are well aware of the concept, and how to search for each ticket individually, but would not have the time to manually work out the optimal split themselves.
If people use our site to find the cheapest split, then manually add each ticket and book it as one transaction on our site, then there are certain benefits that won't happen (e.g. a through itinerary, the possibility of enhanced support if things go wrong, etc) but both the forum and the retailer (Raileasy) and their suppliers (FastJP provide the journey planning & fares) do still get renumerated.
This isn't underhand, but it would be underhand and immoral for people to use that information to get the tickets elsewhere, e.g. a ticket office, TOC site etc.
It should be noted the forum site is run by Trainsplit, and therefore the splits identified, share of the saving, and obviously most importantly price will be exactly the same from your perspective. The only difference is that a proportion of the share of the saving goes towards the running of the forum.
That's right, yes
It all depends on the commission.
If a couple of quid, I don't mind paying the extra to support the services provided.
However, when the commission starts to go above £5, I may look at doing the job myself at the local ticket office.
If someone uses our information to buy the tickets from a ticket office, that is unhderhand. We can't stop you but it's immoral in my opinion.
However if they add each ticket to their basket on our site, and avoid the share of saving fee that way, that's absolutely fine. We do not charge a booking fee, so it would be the same price as if bought individually from a ticket office.
Do these split sites also earn commission on the tickets they sell?
If, for example, I bought a ticket through one of them that offered no split saving, do they still get a commission from the ticket they've sold me?
Yes there is still commission even if there is no splitting involved; the commission is reduced for TOD bookings, though, so e-tickets are preferable. But we don't charge TOD fees either, unlike TOCs such as XC; the retailer (Raileasy/Trainsplit) absorbs that cost, in some cases making a loss to do so.
