headshot119
Established Member
Depends how many people are actually using the offer I suppose. And whether those people will still travel by train if they can't use the train at peak time.
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Virgin Trains railcard offer ended
- Thread starter csilke
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Depends how many people are actually using the offer I suppose. And whether those people will still travel by train if they can't use the train at peak time.
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RailUK Forums
Seems to me that Virgin are now taking the financial aspect of their franchise more seriously nowadays. Four recent observations: 1. Tightening up on which trains tickets purchased with a railcard can be used 2. More ticket-checking blockades (about time!) 3. Use of NCP to enforce parking at Virgin stations rather than relying on local staff 4. Reduction of station booking office opening times. Recently I saw a Virgin poster informing the public that ticket office opening hours were being reduced "in order to offer a better peak-time service to our customers"!!!
Not impossible - they could be opening more windows in the core hours with the same number of staff.
Bertie the bus
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Companies love people like you. Their PR departments can come out with any old nonsense and you'll swallow it.
No, it's just spin. They want to cut down on queues during peak times but don't want to spend any more on wages. Simplest way to do that is use the same number of staff, but shorten the opening hours. Unless you know of a load of Virgin booking office staff being made redundant?
And it's not lying - they have improved the peak-time experience.
Haywain
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Wouldn't surprise me if it was VTEC complaining
Not sure why you would think VTEC would complain, but I don't think they did. If any TOC had reason to complain it would be London Midland or Chiltern who now have most to gain, but they could have complained years ago. It is possible VTWC saw this as being consistent with VTEC, but much more likely that this is simply about money. They only need to keep half of the (railcard holding) customers on the same trains to make significantly more money.
It's serious bad news for the charity I work for. Most of the travelling staff are oldies and many of our journeys are to Brum, Manchester and Liverpool from London. The Manchester Anytime return is heart-stoppingly expensive. I already advise my colleagues on most routes to never buy Anytime returns- just to buy Anytime singles out of London, if they have to travel in the peak, and then to buy whatever single is appropriate on the way back.
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We may be looking at what BA has to offer for Manchester flights!
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We may be looking at what BA has to offer for Manchester flights!
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Rail Ranger
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It could well make Saturday trains busier, because that will be the only day that railcard holders will be able to have a reasonable day in London for a reasonable walk-on fare.
For my wife and me, living within reach of Airedale as well as Preston, EC Advances at Peak times are far cheaper than WC, even allowing for the extra car mileage (we've never yet had meetings in London the same day....) - and allowing for the fact that the 0758 Preston has cheap First Advances...
On the history aspect, VT used to have a Charitycard offering a similar discount, but that was IIRC replaced by some sort of discount on Advances only.
On the history aspect, VT used to have a Charitycard offering a similar discount, but that was IIRC replaced by some sort of discount on Advances only.
Some CrossCountry RPIs get very cross indeed if anyone mentions this to them. I heard one of them having a rant about it to a slightly nonplussed VT TM recently. "All these kids going on 'well Virgin don't mind me getting an early train with this' over and over again, well if you don't like it go and travel with Virgin then!". If I'm honest, I suspect a significant percentage of this and similar confusion results from people who actually still genuinely believe XC services are part of the Virgin franchise.
Moving on, I think this might be a good move. Why should an entirely arbitrary group of railcard holders get this privilege? If VT are going to persist with their lovely policy of charging hundreds of pounds for empty so-called 'peak' time trains and then selling a large number of cheap tickets on evening 'post-peak' trains which are already full, they will just get what's coming to them. Perhaps more reasonable anytime fares are the solution? But oh... would they consider that
People normally have a go at me when I try to point out how much the railway seems to hate its customers sometimes. Well...
Demand curve basics. If they haven't mastered it by now...
Has anyone seen the effect of the newish Super Off-Peak London <> West Midlands tickets? First Super Off-Peak from Euston is the 2023, I used it Friday night some weeks past it was a 5 car train... Obviously not everyone got on it.
Manchester - London, with railcard
Off-Peak Return £53.85
Anytime Return £217.15
More than 4x
Now that is quite some price elasticity of demand no!?
Seriously, to the average passenger who needs a Manchester to London ticket arriving before almost midday, they are being quoted £329 return. That's really not doing any reputational damage? How many people are being offered an Anytime Single at (still, shocking £164.50) and an Off-Peak Single (£80.60) back? In what universe is anything offered by the Virgin Trains standard class experience worth this kind of money?
Just the same as the majority of passengers do currently?
Moving on, I think this might be a good move. Why should an entirely arbitrary group of railcard holders get this privilege? If VT are going to persist with their lovely policy of charging hundreds of pounds for empty so-called 'peak' time trains and then selling a large number of cheap tickets on evening 'post-peak' trains which are already full, they will just get what's coming to them. Perhaps more reasonable anytime fares are the solution? But oh... would they consider that
People normally have a go at me when I try to point out how much the railway seems to hate its customers sometimes. Well...
Demand curve basics. If they haven't mastered it by now...
Has anyone seen the effect of the newish Super Off-Peak London <> West Midlands tickets? First Super Off-Peak from Euston is the 2023, I used it Friday night some weeks past it was a 5 car train... Obviously not everyone got on it.
Manchester - London, with railcard
Off-Peak Return £53.85
Anytime Return £217.15
More than 4x
Now that is quite some price elasticity of demand no!?
Seriously, to the average passenger who needs a Manchester to London ticket arriving before almost midday, they are being quoted £329 return. That's really not doing any reputational damage? How many people are being offered an Anytime Single at (still, shocking £164.50) and an Off-Peak Single (£80.60) back? In what universe is anything offered by the Virgin Trains standard class experience worth this kind of money?
Just the same as the majority of passengers do currently?
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I must admit, if it were me, I'd be tempted to through every single VTWC priced ticket out of the window and start again from scratch because there has to be a better way of doing things than this.
I suspect that VT don't really care if people buy the Anytime ticket or not. They want people to buy Advance tickets which they can theoretically come up with an optimal price for - However, I will leave it up to the reader to judge whether or not VT are pricing their Advance tickets anywhere near optimally or not...
thebigcheese
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Ahh that's quite interesting, thanks. I'm sure they'll be a few loopholes that will get the Anytime price down
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Possibly from having to continuously fend off "But you are allowed to do that on Virgin aren't you?" and the bad publicity that finding out you're not and being charged an Anytime fare would possibly bring on. That said, I think it being the DfT is more likely.
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Really? I quite like the Off Peak Returns, which for historical reasons[1] are priced a bit lower than the other IC routes for a given distance.
[1] When the SuperSaver was abolished, the Saver was reduced in price, without increasing restrictions, to the average of the two prices. It's since the only increased at the regulated rate, so has ended up a bit lower than most other IC TOCs.
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Given that VT do the SVH "half return" tickets, and given that most people on a day trip know their outward train time pretty accurately but might want to return flexibly, I suspect that as long as decently-priced Advances make an appearance the impact will be minimal.
I imagine many people would just define optimally as whether they consider the prices they see for a given day or service as reasonable or not, without any thought to whether it's optimal in terms of revenue generated for the TOC.
If VTWC know their onions, they'll be well aware of that, and they will be aware of the fact that more people know about split ticketing these days, and the fact that there are websites that will help passengers find good splits.
I'm sure this will have been factored into their decision, and I'm more convinced than ever that the decision has been taken on commercial grounds.
On Saturdays in particular they also have those semi-advance travelcards which appear to be quite popular.
Very true, but the two are linked together. To state the obvious, if people don't buy a ticket because they don't think the price is reasonable then the TOC loses out revenue wise.
I am not going to give away how Virgin and other TOCs could dramatically improve their pricing, as I am not being paid to do so! However having just looked at their Manchester to London prices there is so much more they can do to generate additional revenue (and this would include reducing prices on many trains).
iwearahalo2
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Railcards are and were designed as leisure products, but we all know they are used for work purposes, these changes will make it difficult for staff initially but it will make it fairer for all.
swt_passenger
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But aren't they still an example of using the name of an existing product in a different way, that's specific to VWC?
How does that achieve simplification?
...and where are the details found?
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thebigcheese
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Well I was on the 08.23 service from Euston to Birmingham New Street yesterday travelling with a SVR and not only was there about 10 people in my carriage but my ticket wasn't even checked.
kieron
Established Member
One thing to remember about this announcement is that it still isn't going to have any effect on what people can do for a couple of weeks. That gives Virgin time to make another announcement of what they'll do next to make railcard users feel special.
This may only be a bigger discount than normal on some advance tickets, but leaving a bit of a gap means the reaction to that announcement won't be entirely drowned out by disappointed anytime ticket users.
This may only be a bigger discount than normal on some advance tickets, but leaving a bit of a gap means the reaction to that announcement won't be entirely drowned out by disappointed anytime ticket users.
Kite159
Veteran Member
Was your ticket checked before you were allowed to board at Euston?
As I can't remember the last time I boarded a virgin at Euston without the ticket check by the human gateline
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Hellfire
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Interesting because when First was announced as having won the WCML franchise, a decision subsequently overturned as we all know, they made it clear they were going to continue this easement as part of the bid offer.
Real shame it is going
Keith Jarrett
Member
Well, that'll be the end of me buying railcarded Euston to Glasgow savers for my Scottish trips. Chances are that I will go up East Coast and if the through advances are exorbitant, there's usually a good range of splits available.
I can sort of understand Virgin's logic in relation to grabbing commuters etc heading for London in the morning peak but a blanket withdrawal of the facility will be just shooting themselves in the foot. And if they were really concerned about the waged commuters taking advantage, they might just ban 16-25 railcards before say 09:00 and continue to allow others as now.
I can sort of understand Virgin's logic in relation to grabbing commuters etc heading for London in the morning peak but a blanket withdrawal of the facility will be just shooting themselves in the foot. And if they were really concerned about the waged commuters taking advantage, they might just ban 16-25 railcards before say 09:00 and continue to allow others as now.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Did they? I thought it was that they "had no plans to withdraw it"; I suspect such plans would have come about quite soon after the start, though.
Ticket's usually say when they were printed don't they?
They do but that isn't necessarily the date they were purchased!
Hellfire
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