Examples please - both of higher fares being charged and of it being deliberate.
The one in this thread for a start.
But if you take Peteroborough to London on Thameslink, Bournemouth to London on South Western Railway and Cambridge to London on Greater Anglia and Wellingborough to London. Thameslink's fares were introduced years ago, the others have all followed in more recent times. Some of the differences in fares are astronomical. Wellingborough to London arriving at 1105 on a weekday costs £70.50 return, the trains after that arriving in the early afternoon are £48.50 return. At the weekend, all of these trains cost £27 return. I could keep on giving more examples but there's a premium on time. It's plain that it's deliberate given many of these fares are recently introduced at competitive levels, undercutting the prices charged on so-called working days, presumably because they are scared of losses from corporate customers, many of whom will travel with Off Peak tickets now because of their employer's expenses policy.
Of course, some companies have gone down the road of Saturday restrictions on Super Off Peak, including WMT (their tickets
aren't cheaper at weekends though - ironically they recently chose to withdraw their cheaper ticket which was valid Monday - Thursday only) and SWR (although not on all tickets, confusingly).
So there's not always a need to stimulate demand.
This is precisely the point though. It's less important to them how busy trains are, relatively, on weekends, which was
your claim. It's more important to them what they think the elasticity of the people paying the bills is. It isn't the first time I've said it and I doubt it will be the last.
This just proves it's price differentiation, not demand based.
Exactly. The same thing applies to Advance ticket sales.
Hi all,
