• Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Why are Child Flat Fare tickets such a nightmare to buy?

G

greaterangrier

Member
Joined
30 Oct 2019
Messages
166
Location
GEML
There's an angry customer on a certain social media platform who says the £2 accompanied child flat fare ticket has disappeared.

To my surprise, he wasn't completely wrong.

Take two possible Greater Anglia journeys, with one adult and one child:
1) Stowmarket to Hythe (Essex)
and
2) Clacton on Sea to London Liverpool Street, with a Travelcard.

I tried these journeys on three different websites: LNER, Trainsplit and Greater Anglia and got 5 different prices.
Journey 1:
LNER: £25.40 (£23.40+£2) Off Peak Day Return
Trainsplit: £35.10 (£23.40+£11.70) Off Peak Day Return
Greater Anglia: £35.10 (£23.40 + £11.70) Off Peak Day Return
And interesting behaviour: Greater Anglia offers the £2 flat fare only if the adult has a Network Railcard applied. Otherwise, full price.

Journey 2:
LNER: £55.90* (£53.90 + £2) Off Peak Day Return
Trainsplit: £75.60 (£50.40 + £25.20) Super Off Peak Day Return
Greater Anglia: £67.40 (£65.40 + £2) Off Peak Family Travelcard


*Chosen as this is the most sensible - would use Oyster.


How come there are so many different prices available? Why (only for some journeys) is a flat fare only allowed with a railcard for Greater Anglia? Why doesn't Trainsplit offer any of these £2 flat fares?

Everyone should be retailing the same fares. What's wrong here?

My hunch suggests there is garbage data somewhere, but that wouldn't explain such a discrepancy with every website.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly

Verified Rep - BR Fares
Joined
16 Apr 2010
Messages
4,175
Location
Reading
greaterangrier said:
My hunch suggests there is garbage data somewhere, but that wouldn't explain such a discrepancy with every website.
Click to expand...
It maybe does, if you consider that these fares are implemented in such a badly bodged way that ignores all the existing mechanisms that exist in the fares database to combine multiple passengers onto one fare. There is no mechanism in the fares data to implement the concept that the price of one ticket (or indeed whether it can be soid) depends on other fares in the same basket or booking. Everyone who wants to try to implement this bodges it in a different way.

The fares database has very flexible mechanisms for combining multiple passengers on one ticket that are very much underused. The correct way to do it would have been to have a new separate ticket type with a passenger count of 1 adult and a variable number of children, say 1-4. The price would be fixed - the mechanism does not allow the price to vary depending on the number of children covered, but I don't think that would be a big deal since the child price is such a minimal contributor to the overall price of the ticket - you could just set it at a fiver, proportionally reduced for very cheap tickets. Then all you would need to say to booking websites that couldn't sell the ticket would be "implement the RDG standards document (RSPS5045) properly" instead of "add a special bodge for each ticket that TOCs have bodged".

Scotrail used to do this with their "Kids go Free" ticket (ticket types FDA and FDB if I remember correctly) but annoyingly deleted them.
 
Last edited:
B

Bill57p9

Member
Joined
1 Dec 2019
Messages
661
Location
Ayrshire
I have posted elsewhere that the ScotRail “Kids for a Quid” flat fare is not available online and has been quietly dropped from TVMs.
I have noticed whenever travelling with my son recently that the ScotRail kids for a quid ticket is always an off peak open return, i.e. return within a month, regardless of whether I am on a day or month return. Presumably this is down to the way the fare is set up in the database.

What I find objectionable to these scenarios is that the online ticket sales and TVMs do not mention the cheaper option, or even that a cheaper option may be available. It surely couldn’t be that difficult to put some sort of disclaimer in, however I suppose that would be bad for business.

I did tackle ScotRail about why Kids for a Quid is not available online and no longer on TVMs and they told me because people were abusing it so they wanted to have a human check them. They went very quiet when I subsequently queried why Railcard discounts were still available from both sources…
 
redreni

redreni

Established Member
Joined
24 Sep 2010
Messages
1,537
Location
Slade Green
The TOC sites have a particular responsibility, here, don't they?

NRCoT Part A:
Click to expand...
The key responsibilities of Train Companies (‘we’) are:

[...]

  • We will make available clear information about the range of Tickets to help you make a well-informed choice about the most appropriate and best value Ticket for your journey.
Click to expand...
Is Greater Anglia doing that?
 
J

James H

Established Member
Joined
25 Jun 2014
Messages
1,296
I bought £2 Greater Anglia child day return fares last weekend via LNER which weren't offered on Uber

I suspect strictly speaking LNER shouldn't have offered the £2 fare for the combination of passengers I was buying for.

But there is certainly variation as to how these things are interpreted.
 
A

Adam Williams

Established Member
Joined
2 Jan 2018
Messages
2,548
Location
Warks
Paul Kelly said:
It maybe does, if you consider that these fares are implemented in such a badly bodged way that ignores all the existing mechanisms that exist in the fares database to combine multiple passengers onto one fare. There is no mechanism in the fares data to implement the concept that the price of one ticket (or indeed whether it can be soid) depends on other fares in the same basket or booking. Everyone who wants to try to implement this bodges it in a different way.
Click to expand...
All the data for them in the Retail Control System (RCS) is wrong as well, so people implement various bodges there as well (e.g. inheriting fulfilment methods from the adult's ticket type).

A complete mess, really.
 
I

infobleep

Veteran Member
Joined
27 Feb 2011
Messages
13,429
Does this occur because staff don't know what they are doing due to lack of training, don't have the time to implement it properly, don't have enough staff, have poor managers or a combination of any or all of those. Not forgetting anything I've missed.
 
M

Mainline421

Member
Joined
7 May 2013
Messages
676
Location
Aberystwyth
Bill57p9 said:
What I find objectionable to these scenarios is that the online ticket sales and TVMs do not mention the cheaper option, or even that a cheaper option may be available. It surely couldn’t be that difficult to put some sort of disclaimer in, however I suppose that would be bad for business.
Click to expand...
For TVMs, Scotrail are a signatory to the price guarantee so they should definitely should be made clear to a passenger purchasing there https://www.orr.gov.uk/monitoring-regulation/rail/passengers/tickets-and-fares/ticket-machines
 
transportphoto

transportphoto

Established Member
Associate Staff
Jobs & Careers
Quizmaster
Joined
21 Jan 2010
Messages
5,132
I should expect the most obvious explanation (not rationalising it) is that the £2 fares are a separate ticket type (TKR) compared to the CDR which is selected for the adults.

Even ticket offices need to manually select it as a separate fare into the basket.
 
K

kkong

Member
Joined
8 Sep 2008
Messages
789
Mainline421 said:
For TVMs, Scotrail are a signatory to the price guarantee so they should definitely should be made clear to a passenger purchasing there https://www.orr.gov.uk/monitoring-regulation/rail/passengers/tickets-and-fares/ticket-machines
Click to expand...

I doubt that Kids for a Quid fares are covered by this price guarantee, considering that it explicitly states:

When our Price Promise does not apply
  • To ticket types other than Anytime, Off-Peak or Season, such as Advance Purchase Tickets

Terms and conditions
  • The ScotRail Price Promise only applies to Seasons, Anytime and Off-Peak fares set by ScotRail
Click to expand...
 
Watershed

Watershed

Veteran Member
Associate Staff
Senior Fares Advisor
Joined
26 Sep 2020
Messages
13,987
Location
UK
Mainline421 said:
One that says "Off-Peak Return" or equivalent in the ticket type section.
Click to expand...
"Or equivalent" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there!

Would you consider Evening Out tickets to be Off-Peak? How about Sunday Out tickets, or Weekenders?

If you go based on the existence of an associated restriction code, how do you deal with Off-Peak Returns that don't have a restriction code? Or Anytime Returns that do?

Fortunately most of the above aren't available across the ScotRail network - so it's more a theoretical question than a practical one, but it goes to show that there isn't a hard and fast definition of an Off-Peak ticket.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Top