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How to easily check ticket validity?

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trebor79

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I have off peak return tickets from Diss to Cardiff. I now need to travel at different times than I had planned.
I know GA have waived the peak restrictions for trains out of Liverpool Street during the school holidays, but I'm less up to speed on the GWR side of things.
I've followed the advice on the national rail website and used the journey planner to deduce that my tickets are valid for the trains I now plan to travel on.
But it's such a clunky and convoluted way of doing things, particularly if my plans change again, which is far from unlikely.
It got me thinking, why isn't there a simple way to find out of a particular ticket is valid on a particular train or particular options of trains?
Surely it's not beyond the industry to build a website where you punch your ticket details in and it returns a list of which services it isn't valid for?
As well as being convenient for passengers, it would avoid a lot of the disputes that crop up when revenue checking staff make errors (and I'm not surprised they do given the complexity and lack of clarity in some cases).
 
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Intermodal

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I wonder how long I can make my location on this f
I'm not sure how it could be any more convenient than entering the time you plan to travel on NRE and being informed whether it is valid or not...

It got me thinking, why isn't there a simple way to find out of a particular ticket is valid on a particular train or particular options of trains?
Click to expand...

This is exactly what NRE does, is it not?

You are asking for a list of trains your ticket isn't valid on? I think most people are more interested in the opposite, which is why NRE provides such a function.

You can always look up the restriction code from BRFares.
 
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trebor79

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Intermodal said:
I'm not sure how it could be any more convenient than entering the time you plan to travel on NRE and being informed whether it is valid or not...
This is exactly what NRE does, is it not?
Click to expand...
Not really, no. What NRE does is show you a list of trains around the times that you enter, and next to each one displays the lowest-priced ticket currently available. Unless that ticket happens to be a Saver Return, it's useless in telling me whether my Saver Return is valid on that service.
Frustratingly, using the journey planner is exactly what the NRE site tells you to do, but it doesn't really help a lot of the time
Intermodal said:
You are asking for a list of trains your ticket isn't valid on? I think most people are more interested in the opposite, which is why NRE provides such a function.
Click to expand...
The NRE site says specifically "Unless something is specifically invalid, then it is valid". So a list of trains for which your ticket isn't valid would seem the most logical way to display things. But I guess you could display either option.
 
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Intermodal said:
I'm not sure how it could be any more convenient than entering the time you plan to travel on NRE and being informed whether it is valid or not...



This is exactly what NRE does, is it not?

You are asking for a list of trains your ticket isn't valid on? I think most people are more interested in the opposite, which is why NRE provides such a function.

You can always look up the restriction code from BRFares.
Click to expand...

This is quite condescending. It helps to be sympathetic to the fact that people think in different ways.

A percentage of customers who want value from their ticket will want to know what exactly what it entitles them to and there is nothing at all wrong with that. It requires some degree of technical knowledge to answer that question correctly so it's perfectly reasonable to ask someone who knows.

Have a look at the restriction code on that and consider if someone who's not a self proclaimed ticketing expert would easily be able to find that information and then comprehend it if they can find it.
 
RJ

RJ

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trebor79 said:
I have off peak return tickets from Diss to Cardiff. I now need to travel at different times than I had planned.
I know GA have waived the peak restrictions for trains out of Liverpool Street during the school holidays, but I'm less up to speed on the GWR side of things.
I've followed the advice on the national rail website and used the journey planner to deduce that my tickets are valid for the trains I now plan to travel on.
But it's such a clunky and convoluted way of doing things, particularly if my plans change again, which is far from unlikely.
It got me thinking, why isn't there a simple way to find out of a particular ticket is valid on a particular train or particular options of trains?
Surely it's not beyond the industry to build a website where you punch your ticket details in and it returns a list of which services it isn't valid for?
As well as being convenient for passengers, it would avoid a lot of the disputes that crop up when revenue checking staff make errors (and I'm not surprised they do given the complexity and lack of clarity in some cases).
Click to expand...

The full details of time restrictions on the ticket are subject to obfuscation - not deliberately, but to keep things simple for the majority who are presumed to know which trains they are catching and completing their journey in one go. NRE is geared up for that but only a small minority will ask the question you are. Which seems simple but actually requires a certain level of knowledge of how the ticket system works to answer.

The time restrictions on the ticket you hold can be found through the following link - https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/1A

There's a lot of information there including the dates of the restriction suspension you alluded to. There are no time restrictions at Paddington in either direction, which is corroborated by your findings and regardless of what staff at Paddington might tell you if you go out late afternoon on a weekday.

The information is all on National Rail Enquires, but you have to go through a rabbit warren of links and swathes of information to have any hope of finding it!
 
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yorkie

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trebor79 said:
I have off peak return tickets from Diss to Cardiff. I now need to travel at different times than I had planned.
I know GA have waived the peak restrictions for trains out of Liverpool Street during the school holidays, but I'm less up to speed on the GWR side of things.
Click to expand...
I can confirm, as @RJ says above, that there are no restrictions between London and Cardiff (in either direction) on this ticket.

(Not all GWR staff are capable of checking the validity of tickets, and some of those make incorrect assumptions, so I do not guarantee a hassle-free journey)
 
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trebor79

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Thanks guys for your help.
The NRE website is doubly useless in that it takes you to the journey planner (when you click on a link called something like "click here to find which services your ticket is valid on"), rather than point you to even the start of the trail of links and information to find the nugget you need.
Well I'll have to state my case if any GWR people say it's not valid. Now, wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple site where passengers or staff could tap in train and ticket details and see if the computer says yes or no...
 
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