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Did Northern guard sell me a more expensive ticket than required?

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johntea

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Was travelling Castleford to Manchester yesterday and returning today but have a MCard to cover me to Huddersfield

So bought a ticket from the guard asking for an off peak open return

Apparently the only fare that he could do from his machine was a Anytime Short Return at £21.30 but having looked later in the day there seems to be a much cheaper £15.10 ticket...
 
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Intermodal

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A cheaper ticket (the £15.10 SVR) is clearly available but the question would more likely be whether you were entitled to it. When did you purchase the ticket? Was it on the train from Castleford to Leeds? Was it on the train from Leeds to Manchester? If it was on the second train at what point did you ask for it?
 

johntea

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Castleford to Huddersfield train so I would have assumed the full range of tickets should have been available (I don’t know if perhaps the guard got confused as they mentioned ‘this ticket will let you travel on TPE as well as Northern’)
 

Intermodal

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Since the TVM would not have been able to sell the ticket you required the guard on board the service would've been your first opportunity to purchase the ticket so there is no question all tickets should have been offered. I would advise that you write to Northern's Customer Experience Centre explaining the circumstances fully and request a refund of the difference between the two fares.

STARMobile which Northern guards use can sometimes hide some available fares based on the system's assessment of their validity for the train the guard is currently working. It is possible that happened in this case. This can be manually overridden by the guard by ticking a box labelled "Show all fares". Alternatively the guard was wrongly assessing that you had no entitlement to the cheaper ticket but was still willing to sell you an Anytime Short Return.
 

yorkie

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Was travelling Castleford to Manchester yesterday and returning today but have a MCard to cover me to Huddersfield

So bought a ticket from the guard asking for an off peak open return

Apparently the only fare that he could do from his machine was a Anytime Short Return at £21.30 but having looked later in the day there seems to be a much cheaper £15.10 ticket...
Unless I have missed something, if your Zones include Huddersfield you are covered up to Marsden, so the appropriate fare would be the £13.70 SVR.

Anyway yes you were overcharged, which is not as uncommon as it should be when it comes to Northern ticket sales. Based on the evidence I've seen of multiple occurrences of overcharging, there are insufficient safeguards in place to avoid this occurring, and the company appears to be in breach of consumer law.
 

paul1609

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The ones near me don't. Or if they do, it's extremely well hidden. I'm about as far from the OP as you can get though whilst remaining on the Northern network.
Im on one of my league 1 Pilgramages to Accrington on Saturday, I'll have a look!
 

_toommm_

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For the future, you can use an MCard ticket up to the boundary (which I believe is Marsden), and as the ticket is classed as a season ticket, the train does not have to stop at Marsden, merely be booked to pass through the station. This is covered by the National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT), Condition 14.2:

14.2. If you are using a Season Ticket, daily Zonal Ticket, or another area based Ticket such as a concessionary pass, ranger or rover in conjunction with another Ticket and the last station at which one Ticket is valid and the first station that the other Ticket is valid are the same, then the train does not need to call at that station for your combination to be valid.

The NRCoT can be found here:
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/National Rail Conditions of Travel.pdf

I used to do this a lot, albeit using the Manchester version of the MCard (the CountyCard), and returns/seasons from Greenfield to Leeds. I've only ever had one guard on TransPennine question the split, but they were really nice about it to be fair, and they were genuinely interested to learn that it had changed.
 

johntea

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Thanks, I will write to Northern then and a useful tip for the MCard, wonder when 14.2 was put in as I'm sure that never used to be the case!
 

_toommm_

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Thanks, I will write to Northern then and a useful tip for the MCard, wonder when 14.2 was put in as I'm sure that never used to be the case!

If I remember correctly, it was then the Conditions of Carriage was changed to be the Conditions of Travel. That was before I had an interest in this kind of stuff though so I'm unsure as to when exactly it changed.
 
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