National Rail lists ticket for almost £1m

rebmcr · 26 Apr 2017

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/...orley/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

On the heels of an IT error leading to Great Western Rail advertising a first-class journey from Taunton to Trowbridge for £10,000 comes an exponentially more expensive offer from National Rail.

Our thanks to Reg reader Andrew for sending this screenshot in, dug up from his personal chuckle archives, advertising the "cheapest" fare for a journey from Cambridge to Horley back on the 15 January 2011 at the tidy price of £999,998.

...

It seems overly coincidental that this was almost exactly £1m -- I wonder why that figure was available to subtract 2 from in the first place?

RailUK Forums

maniacmartin · 26 Apr 2017

If you've ever looked at the proprietary database backing the NFM CDs, you'll realise that there is no Null value possible in the price field. This means that a price must be listed for fares that are not intended to be sold, such as complimentary tickets, free staff tickets, rewards tickets, bundled promotional tickets etc etc.

To get around this, various special prices have been used instead to represent a Null value, with retail and information systems expected to suppress these fares as appropriate (whether based on price or ticket type code I don't know). The ones I previously knew of are:
£999.00
£999.99
£0.01
-£0.01
£0.05
£0.10

It seems one of these special tickets leaked through onto the search results of NRE

Mag_seven · 26 Apr 2017

Makes you wonder if there are any less noticeable incorrect fares in the database?

WelshBluebird · 26 Apr 2017

maniacmartin said:
If you've ever looked at the proprietary database backing the NFM CDs, you'll realise that there is no Null value possible in the price field. This means that a price must be listed for fares that are not intended to be sold, such as complimentary tickets, free staff tickets, rewards tickets, bundled promotional tickets etc etc.

To get around this, various special prices have been used instead to represent a Null value, with retail and information systems expected to suppress these fares as appropriate (whether based on price or ticket type code I don't know). The ones I previously knew of are:
£999.00
£999.99
£0.01
-£0.01
£0.05
£0.10

It seems one of these special tickets leaked through onto the search results of NRE

Why can't the value just be set to 0? :?
Or can the issuing systems not deal with a zero priced fare? In which case how to zero fare excesses work?

Simon11 · 26 Apr 2017

The ticket shouldn't have been shown in the live system in the first place.

If you set it at £0, if there was any error, everyone would be cashing in and train companies would lose money.

D365 · 26 Apr 2017

Simon11 said:
If you set it at £0, if there was any error, everyone would be cashing in and train companies would lose money.

Would they be obliged to honour the ticket purchases?

NSEFAN · 26 Apr 2017

I can't see how they could legally refuse, the price of a ticket doesn't determine it's validity.

WelshBluebird · 26 Apr 2017

NSEFAN said:
I can't see how they could legally refuse, the price of a ticket doesn't determine it's validity.

In terms of retail, it certainly isn't unheard of for a retailer to list a product at an incorrect price, people catch on and buy the product, then the retailer notices and cancels any orders at the cheaper price. Obviously cancelling would be the tricky bit here, certainly any tickets not collected could just be cancelled but not sure of ones that had been collected.

Simon11 said:
The ticket shouldn't have been shown in the live system in the first place.

If you set it at £0, if there was any error, everyone would be cashing in and train companies would lose money.

Then if they shouldn't be live anyway, wouldn't there be a condition of the ticket being that you can't buy them normally so they wouldn't be valid?

yorkie · 26 Apr 2017

WelshBluebird said:
In terms of retail, it certainly isn't unheard of for a retailer to list a product at an incorrect price, people catch on and buy the product, then the retailer notices and cancels any orders at the cheaper price. Obviously cancelling would be the tricky bit here, certainly any tickets not collected could just be cancelled but not sure of ones that had been collected.

I don't think a ticket for travel is comparable to a tangible product for purchase in this regard, and the rail industry doesn't operate in this way.

WelshBluebird said:
Then if they shouldn't be live anyway, wouldn't there be a condition of the ticket being that you can't buy them normally so they wouldn't be valid?

No, that's not how ticketing works.

Validity is determined by the origin, destination, fare type (& restriction code/reservations where appropriate), dates and Routeing information printed on the ticket.

There is no condition stating that a ticket that wouldn't "normally" be available is not valid.

Many of the fares that have incorrectly priced have been fares that are normally issued anyway, but just at a cheaper price. In some cases e.g. many of the £1 fares from Tweedbank/Galashiels, they were the only type of ticket available. So it would be a serious breach of the Ticketing Settlement Agreement if a train company refused to sell them.

Some Scotail staff attempted to do this last year, and were thus breaching the TSA and therefore committing a franchise breach. Scotail were reminded of their franchise obligations and the malpractice stopped.

tspaul26 · 26 Apr 2017

NSEFAN said:
I can't see how they could legally refuse, the price of a ticket doesn't determine it's validity.

If the customer has not provided any payment, then the contract is void for lack of consideration.

tspaul26 · 26 Apr 2017

WelshBluebird said:
In terms of retail, it certainly isn't unheard of for a retailer to list a product at an incorrect price, people catch on and buy the product, then the retailer notices and cancels any orders at the cheaper price. Obviously cancelling would be the tricky bit here, certainly any tickets not collected could just be cancelled but not sure of ones that had been collected.

Retailers can normally do this because of the specific drafting of their standard terms and conditions whereby the customer offers to buy at the incorrect price, but the seller does not have to accept the customer's offer at that price*.

I know of nothing in the NRCOT that would permit TOCs to engage in similar behaviour, although whether the passenger can legally enforce the purported contract is doubtful given the lack of consideration.

*This is separate to the question of trading standards and misleading commercial practices, but if it is a genuine error (and a fare priced at nothing should immediately ring alarm bells) then there would probably be no breach in this regard either.

NSEFAN · 26 Apr 2017

tspaul26 said:
If the customer has not provided any payment, then the contract is void for lack of consideration.

I suppose that could be the case where a ticket is listed as exactly £0, but surely not where the fare is non-zero?

route:oxford · 26 Apr 2017

tspaul26 said:
If the customer has not provided any payment, then the contract is void for lack of consideration.

A zero-price ticket is unlikely to be able to be sold by itself, the online checkout mechanism will fail at an attempt to undertake a nil sale. The usual workaround is to buy another ticket with a low price and add it to the basket.

Then you have to decide if the sale forms a single contract with multiple tickets for a nominal consideration or multiple contracts. I suspect the former as when I go to a retailer and buy one, get one free the nil consideration for the second product doesn't void the contract.

bb21 · 26 Apr 2017

route:oxford said:
A zero-price ticket is unlikely to be able to be sold by itself, the online checkout mechanism will fail at an attempt to undertake a nil sale. The usual workaround is to buy another ticket with a low price and add it to the basket.

Not sure about a single zero-fare ticket by itself, although it certainly has happened before where a ticket of value was offset by a discount voucher and the resultant transaction price being zero. The transaction(s) went through and the ticket(s) issued successfully.

daikilo · 26 Apr 2017

bb21 said:
Not sure about a single zero-fare ticket by itself, although it certainly has happened before where a ticket of value was offset by a discount voucher and the resultant transaction price being zero. The transaction(s) went through and the ticket(s) issued successfully.

Purchasing a valid fare with a valid discount voucher would be a valid sale, purchasing one for a zero fare would in theory not be as any commodity has a positive value, so for e.g. a published 1p would be. This is why on line websites need to do massive checks to ensure rogue values do not exist. And "oh, it was a mistake" is not usually accepted as a valid excuse.

orpine · 26 Apr 2017

I had this a few years ago, but it was a first-class ticket upgrade if memory serves.

I'm left wondering what the free meal plan on the journey was.

Sleepy · 27 Apr 2017

The rail industry has a severe complex about "zero fares" I know some TOC have Spanish Inquisition when ticket offices issue them. I used to quite happily dish them out for over distance or change of route excess if needed on Advantix (Even changed a Not London to cross London during severe service disruption so they could use tube, bet Virgin West Coast loved that !

) Never once did Management question it...

Tetchytyke · 27 Apr 2017

daikilo said:
This is why on line websites need to do massive checks to ensure rogue values do not exist. And "oh, it was a mistake" is not usually accepted as a valid excuse.

If a price is an obvious error, a retailer does not have to honour it, even if the transaction has completed. They may choose to, because it's less hassle or less damaging to their reputation, but they can refund the money and deem the contract as void due to obvious error.

Railways tend to honour erroneous prices, such as when EMT put a decimal point in the wrong place and sold Kent-Yorkshire returns for £8.90 instead of £89.00. But they don't have to and, in other industries (e.g. aviation) clear pricing errors will be voided.

National Rail lists ticket for almost £1m

rebmcr

Established Member

RailUK Forums

maniacmartin

Established Member

Mag_seven

Forum Staff

WelshBluebird

Established Member

Simon11

Established Member

D365

Veteran Member

NSEFAN

Established Member

WelshBluebird

Established Member

yorkie

Forum Staff

tspaul26

Established Member

tspaul26

Established Member

NSEFAN

Established Member

route:oxford

Established Member

bb21

Emeritus Moderator

daikilo

Established Member

orpine

Member

Sleepy

Established Member

Tetchytyke

Veteran Member