Joe Paxton
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Because you want to buy Priv-rate fares, I assume?
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Share of saving fees charged by split ticket providers
- Thread starter Deafdoggie
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Because you want to buy Priv-rate fares, I assume?
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R
RailUK Forums
221129
Established Member
Exactly
Not sure how you managed to find an itinerary on Trainsplit only with EMT .... but if you meant the direct EMT(R) from Ely, then putting in a via point of Nottingham on a "traditional" booking engine will sift everything else out.
I'm not a freeloader but sometimes I find trainsplit does odd things, such as changing the view on the return makes the option I wanted to use on the outward disappear.
I think this is because I was looking at flexible tickets, and therefore it was offering me returns which by necessity have the same split points out and return, and GA seem to have cunningly crafted the GEML timetable to make such ticket combinations tricky to make work for a typical business day.
A way of fixing this would be to allow fixed time tickets one way and flexible the other (as railways does). I know I need to be in London for a set time, I don't necessarily know when I'm coming back.
After spending some time faffing last night I just decided it would be easier to resort to my plan B of a regional train to Cambridge and then to Kings X on an anomalous ridiculously cheap (but perfectly valid) advance fare to somewhere else. I dislike this as it's usually not possible to work for much of the journey and the connection and Cambridge can be very tight, but when I'm saving 60 quid i can put up with that. Though standing all the way back to Cambridge wasn't brilliant.
I think this is because I was looking at flexible tickets, and therefore it was offering me returns which by necessity have the same split points out and return, and GA seem to have cunningly crafted the GEML timetable to make such ticket combinations tricky to make work for a typical business day.
A way of fixing this would be to allow fixed time tickets one way and flexible the other (as railways does). I know I need to be in London for a set time, I don't necessarily know when I'm coming back.
After spending some time faffing last night I just decided it would be easier to resort to my plan B of a regional train to Cambridge and then to Kings X on an anomalous ridiculously cheap (but perfectly valid) advance fare to somewhere else. I dislike this as it's usually not possible to work for much of the journey and the connection and Cambridge can be very tight, but when I'm saving 60 quid i can put up with that. Though standing all the way back to Cambridge wasn't brilliant.
Royston Vasey
Established Member
Sorry EMR and yes the Ely-Sheffield portiondoeect is what I meant despite being slower.
However I should have said l also wanted to return via Leicester and I didn't have the option to vary the Via point between outbound and return apart from on Trainsplit. Other booking engines either routed me back via Nottingham, or forced me to change at Leicester outbound as well
SickyNicky
Verified Rep - FastJP
How would this work in practice, using split tickets? Without an itinerary how can we calculate (a) the best split points and (b) the type of tickets to offer? I'd love to offer returns without itineraries, but for Joe Public this might be a step too far.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Agreed, I think that would be overcomplicated and more trouble than it would be worth.
What might be worth doing though is just having a checkbox "Do not consider Advance tickets" and leaving it at that for people to draw their own conclusion as to what that means and what its implications for them would be.
SickyNicky
Verified Rep - FastJP
Already there. Just click on the "Flexible" box in the price grid.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Sorry. In that case, I wouldn't suggest changing anything else.
In exactly the same way it does now when using the "flexible" option. What I'm suggesting is to allow fixed times for one leg and flexible for the other. I don't think that's a huge change and wouldn't be terribly hard for users to understand. After all, it can already be done on raileasy (and also one way first class).
SickyNicky
Verified Rep - FastJP
Do you mean splitting the tickets outbound (and using advances where possible) but simply offering a through ticket in the other direction? I suppose that's possible.
No, I mean splitting both ways, but with one direction on advances and the other on flexible tickets like a saver half.
Eg yesterday I needed to be in London for about 0930. I could get good split ticket prices from Diss to London on fixed advance tickets. But the returns didn't work for me on advance tickets as I wasn't quite sure what time I'd travel.
Flip to "flexible" tickets. 2 issues, the inbound ticket was now more expensive because I was no longer seeing advances. Secondly, if I moved the departure time for the return later or earlier, some of my inbound options disappeared. This is because booked as a series of flexible return tickets, the split points necessarily have to be identical both in and out bound, and differing stopping patterns limit the combinations that work both ways.
If you book advance tickeys, the split points can be different because they are single tickets. What I'm suggesting is to all advances one way and flexible the other.
This would give 2 benefits:
1. More flexibility where required without sacrificing value for money on the leg where advances would be acceptable. Of course you need to be careful the tickets are actually valid if you stay from the planned itinerary, just as now if booking flexible tickets through trainsplit. But it means I have options other than cut short a meeting or buy a new walk up ticket to get home if the advance no longer works.
2. As the split points are now independent of each other, in the same way as they would if I were booking advances in and out bound, playing around with the departure time for one leg won't make options on the other leg disappear.
SickyNicky
Verified Rep - FastJP
I see. So you'd like an itinerary for the return journey, but flexible tickets in case you want to take a different service. That makes sense. I'm not sure that it would be easy to achieve, but I'll have a think about it.
Yes, that's right. Sorry if I didn't explain myself terribly well.
An interesting coding challenge I'm sure!
@SickyNicky although I have just thought that the saver half's might have to have the same split points as the advances on the other leg?
In which case it wouldn't make a difference. The only option would be single tickets which might destroy any saving and can simply be booked as 2 separate transactions anyway.
As an aside, have you ever thought about searching for anomalous fares, such as to the "wrong" destination but where break of journey is either allowed or not allowed but unenforceable? Typical example of the latter is a cross London transfer. My real destination is the big smoke but booking to somewhere else gets me there cheaper than booking to London. The ticket conditions aren't enforceable as I have to leave NR property to make the transfer, and unless they start following me nobody is going to know I never complete the journey, or start the return journey short.
Or would that be against some.code of conduct?
In which case it wouldn't make a difference. The only option would be single tickets which might destroy any saving and can simply be booked as 2 separate transactions anyway.
As an aside, have you ever thought about searching for anomalous fares, such as to the "wrong" destination but where break of journey is either allowed or not allowed but unenforceable? Typical example of the latter is a cross London transfer. My real destination is the big smoke but booking to somewhere else gets me there cheaper than booking to London. The ticket conditions aren't enforceable as I have to leave NR property to make the transfer, and unless they start following me nobody is going to know I never complete the journey, or start the return journey short.
Or would that be against some.code of conduct?
SickyNicky
Verified Rep - FastJP
I do plots on there too before deciding. I spend ages working out what time to leave on a day. Because only so many times can be shown at once I then forget the details and have to keep going back and fourth.
I don't have a strong memory for such details.
I tend to only book tickets that split on the site and save. If no saving I tend to buy from a ticket machine.
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I have to admit to using Trainsplit and then using the Train Operating Company or companies' sites to book the actual tickets.
The key thing for me is 'any card collect' (putting aside eTickets for now; ACC would be enough) and the same seat allocation throughout.
The added benefits of ACC and same-seat would be more than enough for me to consider the split ticketing fee to be absolutely worth it.
So, it's not the fee (nor a subscription) that hinders me at the moment; it's the practical limitations of specific card collect and random seating.
The key thing for me is 'any card collect' (putting aside eTickets for now; ACC would be enough) and the same seat allocation throughout.
The added benefits of ACC and same-seat would be more than enough for me to consider the split ticketing fee to be absolutely worth it.
So, it's not the fee (nor a subscription) that hinders me at the moment; it's the practical limitations of specific card collect and random seating.
SickyNicky
Verified Rep - FastJP
If we were to offer specific card collection for the first purchase of a logged in user, but then any card collection for subsequent purchases, would that help? It's a fraud management problem, you see.
And watch this space for some improvements on seat reservations. Although there's a limit to the number of reservations that some TOCs allow in a specific seat, so sometimes it's completely impossible to give the same seat when there's a lot of splits on one train.
And watch this space for some improvements on seat reservations. Although there's a limit to the number of reservations that some TOCs allow in a specific seat, so sometimes it's completely impossible to give the same seat when there's a lot of splits on one train.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Do you offer PayPal payment? That's a way to guarantee any-card collection as PayPal won't provide the card details to the TOC for them to require it.
SickyNicky
Verified Rep - FastJP
Do you have any idea how much they charge for that? It's outrageous, and the fraud protection is much worse. However, we're introducing Apple and Google pay into the apps, in due course.
I assume that's what trainline-powered sites do, as certainly my purchases from Virgin and Crosscountry have been set to ACC for some time. And yes, the limit on numbers of reservations is something that's an issue, which I usually address by doing a dummy through booking search to find two adjacent seats that are definitely available throughout, and then cancelling that out of the basket and booking each of those seats for alternate splits to make up the journey. Even on some of the crackers XC splits, that generally covers the journey, and effectively means that you don't need to move as no-one else can book the seat that you start off in for the next and subsequently alternating sectors.
I'm slightly surprised by the negative assessment of fraud protection, as I note that more and more airlines (especially those with large exposures to Sub Continental, African and Asian markets) seem to be embracing PayPal as a means of accepting payment, as card fraud has long been a much larger problem in some of those markets.
Perhaps it's all relative, and there's no incremental benefit in some Western markets, but I had assumed that the risk profiles associated with registered PayPal users with payment histories would be better than those just using a card which may not yet have been reported lost or stolen.
I know that Paypal do charge like the light brigade when they want to, though!
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Puffing Devil
Established Member
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- 2,766
I'm wondering if there's a couple of options that may help:
1) Charge an annual membership with either nil or reduced commission
2) Look at a capped commission. Sometimes the savings can be substantial, which does lead to an eye-watering fee. Would a cap of £5 cover the costs and encourage more bookings?
1) Charge an annual membership with either nil or reduced commission
2) Look at a capped commission. Sometimes the savings can be substantial, which does lead to an eye-watering fee. Would a cap of £5 cover the costs and encourage more bookings?
@FQTV please create a new thread to discuss credit card vs paypal security as that sounds an interesting topic in its own right and it's not directly related to this one.
For a rough idea, see: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...n-operator-retailer-and-ticket-issuer.192738/
The other time I book elsewhere after checking train split is if I need to book people traveling from different locations but all meeting at a set station on route for the majority of each person's trip.
Not every TOC is good deal with this though. In one case I spent 10 minutes on the phone getting my seat reversations changed so myself and three others could sit together. It was out of Kings Cross.
RJ
Established Member
Trains Can Be Cheaper used to do that - really miss that version of the site!
That said, if anyone wants to find those fares, the information is there in the public domain for anyone to find.
I don't advocate use of anomalous fares anyway unless the holder really knows what they're doing - break of journey and starting/stopping short are not well understood by everyone who checks tickets and some say not doing the journey shown on the ticket is fraudulent. It's more hassle than it's worth and you wouldn't want to inflict unnecessary hassle on customers.
I agree you need to be careful. In the specific example I use most frequently, I always make sure the trains I use in and out of London are feasible for the specific advance purchase connections I never actually make.
Obviously if I did something daft like depart London before I'm meant to have arrived then I could expect to be caught. But if I follow the itinerary there is no feasible way for anyone to determine whether I've ended or started short.
RJ
Established Member
I'd encourage being 100% legitimate with ticketing arrangements. For most it's about being on the right side of the law, rather than doing something dodgy because there's a small risk of being caught!
RJ
Established Member
Advance fares are a special case - you are actually obliged to complete the journey as shown on the ticket.
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