Cross Country - Manchester to Southampton

I was just wondering if someone can shred some light on something that on the face of it doesn't make any sense, but looking at it from a cynical viewpoint it might.

Before I give the details of the booking I would just like to say I booked via East Coast's website, as I would do normally to take advantage of the rewards points.

On Sunday 9th November we are travelling from Manchester Piccadilly to Southampton Central and for weeks I had been looking at sites for an idea of the price of the journey, £52.80 being the cheapest for both of us with our two together railcard. So on Friday I noticed that East Coasts booking engine was showing up to 9th November for their own trains, so I thought I would have a look at the price for the journey. Lo and behold it was priced at £41.90 for the 09:27 service, cheaper than anything I had noticed the in previous weeks. So I thought I would look at Cross Country's website and for some odd reason you couldn't book an advance ticket with them for a train they run, but you could from East Coast.

I booked on East Coast for the £41.90 price, but today out of curiosity I thought I would look at how much Cross Country are charging now you can book up until the 9th November and the price is now back to £52.80

So am I being cynical thinking that Cross Country release services that can't be booked on their website or via National Rail, just so they can show the illusive price on homepage in the knowledge that not many people will actually book it while they can say that the tickets were available at that price?

It's pretty common for the tickets being offered by one booking site to differ from those on another, or to only be available if you set a pile of options to obscure values (although it is more unusual for two engines to offer different price tiers for the same operator's Advance tickets). Cross Country probably aren't even aware of this happening.

It's not 100% clear to me, but are you saying that CrossCountry had opened some of their trains to advance bookings, but their website didn't allow bookings (on any train or operator) that far in advance yet?

If so, it looks to me like the issue is that you'd already snapped up the quota at the cheaper price tiers (booking through the East Coast site), so by the time the CrossCountry site allowed bookings on that date there wasn't any quota available at that price any more.

It's funny though, that CrossCountry don't keep the date their website will allow bookings until in sync with when they open reservations (and hence advance fare availability) for their trains. But I would probably mark it up to incompetence rather than conspiracy.

Indigo2 said:

It's not 100% clear to me, but are you saying that CrossCountry had opened some of their trains to advance bookings, but their website didn't allow bookings (on any train or operator) that far in advance yet?
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That's what seems to have happened. Last night on East Coast the 9:27 and the one after were still showing at £41.90, yet today now you can book on the Cross Country website the price is £52.80 for both trains, the £41.90 price I booked is something I have not come across before when looking at this route on for Sunday travel.