I renewed my annual season ticket this morning, and was handed one of the mini fold-up paper booklets with all the terms and conditions, map of the area, etc. I was then killing some time on my commute by reading through the whole booklet, and discovered something that I didn't know before. Quoting the first part of condition 7:
I don't recall ever previously seeing the bit about origin and destination of companion tickets being the same, and, having got home tonight and dug out an old copy of the same booklet (which says 'effective from 2nd January 2016'), I can see that the first sentence of my quote above is not included in the older form of condition 7.
This seems to explicitly prohibit the case where I'm making a journey that is an extension to my normal commute, and I'm travelling with somebody who doesn't have a season ticket. For example, my season ticket is Ely to Cambridge. If I want to travel Ely to London with a friend, I obviously need to buy a Cambridge to London ticket for myself. But my friend would need to buy an Ely to London ticket. Therefore we have to buy tickets that do not have the same origin and destination, and so my friend cannot obtain the Gold Card discount.
Another case is when I've travelled to Stansted to meet/say goodbye to a a visitor. I've previously bought two Cambridge to Stansted day returns for myself (one for their day of arrival, and one for their departure date), plus a Stansted to Ely open return for them. Here our origins and destinations are reversed, as well as being an extension to the season ticket.
There are workarounds of course - this rule seems to explicitly force you into split ticketing. In the London case, if my friend travels with separate Ely to Cambridge, and Cambridge to London tickets, then they will always be using tickets that have the same origin and destination as me, and so they are suddenly allowed to obtain the Gold Card discount again. (And, oh look, that particular example happens to be cheaper than buying an Ely to London ticket
, but there must be many cases where this forced splitting is now more expensive, not to mention it being a bit of a faff for many people).
Initially I wasn't sure if I was reading too much into the altered condition, but having read it a few times it seems pretty clear to me. There must be loads of people who do something similar to my Ely to Cambridge to London example all the time - I've certainly been doing it with friends for years without ever batting an eyelid or thinking that it might be against the rules. Is it really now only allowed if you always split tickets for your non-season ticket holding friends? Or am I overthinking it? Does anybody know when this condition was actually changed?
I don't recall ever previously seeing the bit about origin and destination of companion tickets being the same, and, having got home tonight and dug out an old copy of the same booklet (which says 'effective from 2nd January 2016'), I can see that the first sentence of my quote above is not included in the older form of condition 7.
This seems to explicitly prohibit the case where I'm making a journey that is an extension to my normal commute, and I'm travelling with somebody who doesn't have a season ticket. For example, my season ticket is Ely to Cambridge. If I want to travel Ely to London with a friend, I obviously need to buy a Cambridge to London ticket for myself. But my friend would need to buy an Ely to London ticket. Therefore we have to buy tickets that do not have the same origin and destination, and so my friend cannot obtain the Gold Card discount.
Another case is when I've travelled to Stansted to meet/say goodbye to a a visitor. I've previously bought two Cambridge to Stansted day returns for myself (one for their day of arrival, and one for their departure date), plus a Stansted to Ely open return for them. Here our origins and destinations are reversed, as well as being an extension to the season ticket.
There are workarounds of course - this rule seems to explicitly force you into split ticketing. In the London case, if my friend travels with separate Ely to Cambridge, and Cambridge to London tickets, then they will always be using tickets that have the same origin and destination as me, and so they are suddenly allowed to obtain the Gold Card discount again. (And, oh look, that particular example happens to be cheaper than buying an Ely to London ticket
, but there must be many cases where this forced splitting is now more expensive, not to mention it being a bit of a faff for many people).Initially I wasn't sure if I was reading too much into the altered condition, but having read it a few times it seems pretty clear to me. There must be loads of people who do something similar to my Ely to Cambridge to London example all the time - I've certainly been doing it with friends for years without ever batting an eyelid or thinking that it might be against the rules. Is it really now only allowed if you always split tickets for your non-season ticket holding friends? Or am I overthinking it? Does anybody know when this condition was actually changed?
