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Cross Country increasing Weekend First upgrade prices?

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voyagerdude220

voyagerdude220

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Hi all,

I've just been looking into the cost of a Weekend First Class upgrade from Derby to Birmingham (as part of a longer journey) and seen it would be £7.50 next weekend.

Had it been today, it would have been £5.

Upon checking another journey- Birmingham to Bristol appears to be going up as well- from £10 to £12.50.

https://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/tickets/weekend-upgrade

Cross Country website isn't listing any details of price increases.
 
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ForTheLoveOf

ForTheLoveOf

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SwindonBert said:
Do they show the price as GWR do on the zone map?
Click to expand...
No. I suppose you could try and hack one together using the data available through resources like BR Fares, but I don't have the feeling there is quite the same organised system over a network as large and multi-centric as CrossCountry's.
 
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boyaloud

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Don’t forget cross country is now on seat frog which may be cheaper and is available every day.
 
WesternLancer

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gwrtimetable19 said:
No. I suppose you could try and hack one together using the data available through resources like BR Fares, but I don't have the feeling there is quite the same organised system over a network as large and multi-centric as CrossCountry's.
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Yes, I' ve not been able to ever find a table of the XC w/e 1st prices - only got them listed on BR fares as required. They seem a bit unpredictable to me in terms of prices and distances, with some at £5 (now I expect £7.50) that seemed to me to be distances that I expected to pay more for.
 
ForTheLoveOf

ForTheLoveOf

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WesternLancer said:
Yes, I' ve not been able to ever find a table of the XC w/e 1st prices - only got them listed on BR fares as required. They seem a bit unpredictable to me in terms of prices and distances, with some at £5 (now I expect £7.50) that seemed to me to be distances that I expected to pay more for.
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If you get the advertised catering and are making a longer journey then it's often very good value. The maximum used to be about £25 I think. If you were doing Newcastle to Bristol (which is probably the longest sort of journey a typical traveller would do) that's really not bad for 4 or 5 hours of First Class. The upgrade is also particularly noticeable on CrossCountry due to how crowded Standard is most of the time.

However I have rarely seen First so busy that people can't get a seat so I don't think this is an increase of necessity, rather of increasing revenue in an area which is primarily discretionary spending.

What irks me more than a little is when the TM comes through raking in the Weekend First upgrades, only to later announce there's no catering (even though it's scheduled). This is a disappointingly frequent occurrence. Where this happens, those TMs who give good customer service will at least offer some drinks. Those interested in just taking in the commission will walk through the whole train to see how many people they can ching.
 
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alastair

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boyaloud said:
Don’t forget cross country is now on seat frog which may be cheaper and is available every day.
Click to expand...

Seatfrog worked extremely well for a member of my family who got a first class upgrade on the 10.44 from York all the way to Plymouth this morning for just £7.
 
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AY1975

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It would appear that there are six different tiers of Weekend First upgrade prices on XC: £7.50, £10, £12.50, £15, £20 and £25. Does anyone know what the old prices for each of these were? Obviously £7.50 used to be £5 and £12.50 used to be £10.

As a general rule of thumb the price increases with the distance, but one exception to this is Birmingham-Penzance which is only £20 whereas Birmingham-Plymouth is £25.
 
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AY1975

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ForTheLoveOf said:
No. I suppose you could try and hack one together using the data available through resources like BR Fares, but I don't have the feeling there is quite the same organised system over a network as large and multi-centric as CrossCountry's.
Click to expand...

Or look up various theoretical journeys at weekends, select the cheapest walk-on fare and see what upgrade price the XC website offers you.
 
WesternLancer

WesternLancer

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AY1975 said:
It would appear that there are six different tiers of Weekend First upgrade prices on XC: £7.50, £10, £12.50, £15, £20 and £25. Does anyone know what the old prices for each of these were? Obviously £7.50 used to be £5 and £12.50 used to be £10.

As a general rule of thumb the price increases with the distance, but one exception to this is Birmingham-Penzance which is only £20 whereas Birmingham-Plymouth is £25.
Click to expand...
BR fares gives them on a given flow so an old copy of the fares database would have them in I assume (the previous rates of w/e 1st I mean). eg I dodn't know if £15 upgrade now used to be £10 for example.
 
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