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How to excess on NR website?
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John @ home
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An over-distance excess is charged at the full difference in fares. It's only a change of route excess which is charged at half the difference if the more expensive route is used on one leg of the journey only. There is no benefit in buying a Darlington - Leeds ticket and attempting to obtain an excess fare to start from Durham.
I think all Durham - Leeds trains call at Darlington. If that is so, a saving of £5.00 may be obtained by buying a £6.50 Durham - Darlington Anytime Day Single and a £47.70 Darlington - Leeds Anytime Return instead of a £59.20 Durham - Leeds Anytime Return.
If travelling First Class, the saving is £11.80.
I think all Durham - Leeds trains call at Darlington. If that is so, a saving of £5.00 may be obtained by buying a £6.50 Durham - Darlington Anytime Day Single and a £47.70 Darlington - Leeds Anytime Return instead of a £59.20 Durham - Leeds Anytime Return.
If travelling First Class, the saving is £11.80.
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Interesting. I once bought a Durham-Darlington return, excessed to start from Newcastle and it worked out considerably cheaper than the full Newcastle- Darlington return price, with the added benefit of not having to explain to gate staff why I was alighting at Durham
The only way to do that would be to visit a ticket office, ask a guard or possibly phone them?
But can an over distance excess be done from a different station in only 1 direction? You should be able to excess to a return before you start your journey but we don't want to excess in both directions here.
If you can it would be the cost of a single for the part not covered by your return or half the difference between the return you hold and the appropriate return for the new origin, whichever is the cheaper of the two. Obviously this should be done before travel where possible, but as I say I don't know if it can be done like this.
As demonstrated above by my earlier experience, yes it can.
In 2011 I think, I rarely have a need to do over distance excesses which is why I can never remember.
John @ home
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Yes. For these circumstances, it appears that the change from
to
took place on 5 September 2010.
It has been reported on this forum that the change has not been implemented in a consistent manner.
John @ home is correct about an over-distance excess now being the full difference, and not half, for one leg of the journey.
Also, I was speaking to some forum members about non-stop Darlington services, and the only one is the 1E01 Flying Scotsman service. Since this also doesn't stop at Durham either, you will have no issue there
Also, I was speaking to some forum members about non-stop Darlington services, and the only one is the 1E01 Flying Scotsman service. Since this also doesn't stop at Durham either, you will have no issue there
John @ home
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hairyhandedfool
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There were some rather large savings to be had on single fares using the old system.
There are still situations where it's beneficial to do an over-distance excess rather than buy the ticket you want to start off with.
Recently, I needed to do a Nuneaton-Liverpool-Leicester day trip, travelling out early morning. This is off-peak on a NUN-LIV return, but peak on a LEI-LIV return.
I was therefore able to travel out on an off-peak NUN-LIV and then excess it to just an off-peak LEI-LIV for the evening return journey.
Recently, I needed to do a Nuneaton-Liverpool-Leicester day trip, travelling out early morning. This is off-peak on a NUN-LIV return, but peak on a LEI-LIV return.
I was therefore able to travel out on an off-peak NUN-LIV and then excess it to just an off-peak LEI-LIV for the evening return journey.
To stop people doing naughty things in order to get tickets for less than the railway thought they should cost.
Prime example: Passenger wishes to travel London Terminals to Glasgow Cen/Qst at a time when off-peak tickets are valid, and requires a single fare. This would normally cost £125.70.
Passenger instead purchases a return from Wembley Central to London Terminals for £11, throws away the outbound half, and asks for the return half to be excessed over-distance to travel to Glasgow instead. Under the half-difference system, the excess is £57.85, so the passenger has paid £68.85 instead of £125.70. Therefore, the rule was changed to charge the full difference. Some ticket issuing systems do not have an awareness of this rule change, and rely on the operator manually overriding it.
NB: this example is purely illustrative, and there are various other ways of varying difficulty of getting a ticket to Glasgow for less than £125.70.
Quite. Been discussed before. There are plans for that to actually happen, but we'll see... Definitely a debate for a different thread when more information becomes available. In the mean time, FGW, HT & GC (Super) Off Peak Singles are barely much more than half the return fare and EC Super Off Peak Singles are half if bought online no later than 2359 the day before. The rest will have to step into line eventually, if the plans come to fruition.But if a single was to actually cost half of a return....
But that's a topic that's been gone into quite enough already.
As for excess fares, it's a lottery, you are doing well if you can find a booking office prepared to issue them these days!
MarlowDonkey
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Back in the days when it was still British Railways, wasn't the base fare what would now be termed the Anytime Single with the Anytime Return twice that? When it became British Rail, before that even, there were all sorts of Returns priced at not much more than the single, namely Day Returns, Off peak Day Returns, Weekend Returns etc. Weekend Returns coupled with the general acceleration of trains in the Inter-City era made long distance weekends away far more feasible and affordable.
At one time, ticket prices were determined by mileage. With split ticketing, you get a part return to the concept in that the effective fare from A to D for a train stopping at the intermediate stations is the A to B fare plus the B to C fare plus the C to D fare. Something I've noticed with advance fares is that the cheapest price on a choice of longer distance trains between major destinations is often on the one that stops nearly everywhere.
Usually the Anytime Return is indeed twice the Anytime Single. That's not generally the case with Off Peak tickets at present.
Rather a risky generalisation given the immense number of fares.
There are several, all priced by FGW, e.g., Newquay - Pewsey, Not Via Reading, which is £39.50 SVS, £79 SVR, St Austell -Swindon £40.50 SVS, £81.50 SVR (ok slightly more than double).
However in most cases SVS cost close to 100% of the cost of a SVR, even with FGW.
Average discounts (where 50% is 'fair', average of ratios (not price weighted) across all flows (not unique ticket types)) are:
Hull Trains: 29%
FGW: 11%
Greater Anglia: 7%
Others: all <5%
Same thing with SSR/SSS, Hull gives 20% avg discount, FGW, 12%, others under 5%.
For great majority tickets the single and return cost almost the same.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
It's probably worth pointing out that in general the pricing of SSS/SVS and SSR/SVR at similar levels is less iniquitous than pricing SDS/CDS and CDR at similar levels, since it is more likely that you can use the return portion of an SSR/SVR than a CDR (i.e. one-month validity vs. one-day).
bb21
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Unfortunately many SVS/SSS fares were introduced to correct the anomaly that a return (usually SVR or SSR) cost less than a single (usually SOS being the only single fare available, eg. in the context of medium-to-long distance journeys), and the way they were introduced was to be priced marginally cheaper than the corresponding return fare, which offered various discounts on the Standard Open Return fare, so passengers who were previously sold return fares for a single journey are now sold a single fare, while ensuring that the changes are pretty-much revenue-neutral.
There were apparently other theories.
A bit cheeky if you ask me.
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