10% Discount for NUS Extra Cardholders on XC Advance Tickets

[WillPS]

Just a quick note - if you're a college or university student you can get an extra 10% off all CrossCountry Advance ticket purchases on CrossCountry Trains' website. Combined with Railcard discount, this will reduce your ticket price by up to 40.4%. Possibly a nice bit of a discount for frequent travellers which might make the card worth its £10 price tag by itself.

To order, hit up nusextra.com and follow the links to buy. The card will be delivered to your college or university's student union, who will either forward it in the post to you or expect you to collect it from them directly. The profit generated from card sales is split between your students union and the NUS.

 

[monkey]

^^ah useful. I use xc quite a bit, might be worth getting, as that extra card is usually useless otherwise...

 

[Mojo]

This kind of thing seems to be more common - Megabus are also offering a discount. I wish they would accept any kind of student card as some people can't get NUS cards as their Universities aren't affiliated with the NUS.

 

[monkey]

^^yeah like dundee su I believe. its wierd that, I assumed all uni's unions were affilliated - turns out not. I'd b interested in their reasoning for not being affiliated though...

 

[glynn80]

^^yeah like dundee su I believe. its wierd that, I assumed all uni's unions were affilliated - turns out not. I'd b interested in their reasoning for not being affiliated though...

It's only the real universities that are affiliated.

 

[Mojo]

It's only the real universities that are affiliated.

My University, Aston isn't and I know Glasgow University also isn't affiliated following referendums of students. A search on Google says that Dundee University isn't affiliated either. All those three places are Universities!

And I wouldn't say that it's only "real Universities" that are affiliated, I used to go to a Sixth Form College which was affiliated to the NUS and I could get an NUS extra card.

 

[glynn80]

My University, Aston isn't and I know Glasgow University also isn't affiliated following referendums of students. A search on Google says that Dundee University isn't affiliated either. All those three places are Universities!

And I wouldn't say that it's only "real Universities" that are affiliated, I used to go to a Sixth Form College which was affiliated to the NUS and I could get an NUS extra card.

I wasn't being serious, I was just messing...

 

[monkey]

^^yeah I go to leeds college of art, which is an art college not a university, and that is affilliated...

 

[jamesontheroad]

It's irrelevant whether your university is affiliated or not. NUS affiliation does not bring any discounts; you have to pay for the NUS Extra card even if you're a student at an affiliated institution. It's a con, but and a fair reason why some university referenda have seen students voting to leave the NUS.

 

[Mojo]

It's irrelevant whether your university is affiliated or not.

It's not really - as you can't get a NUS Extra card (and thus discounts on XC fares/Megabus/whoever else) if your Uni isn't affiliated which is why it's been mentioned.

 

[tony_mac]

Perhaps it's a bit off-topic - but they tell you that you need to split advance tickets if it's partly on another operator. There is absolutely no warning that this may cause any problems, in the event of delays, rather than buying a single through-ticket.

• The 10% discount is available for CrossCountry Advance tickets only which are exclusively for use on CrossCountry trains.
• The Cross Country Advance tickets will only be valid on the CrossCountry network – the tickets will not be accepted by other train operators.
• If part of your journey is with another operator then you must buy a ticket for that part of the route.

 

[jopsuk]

The discount is NUS-only as the NUS will have negotiated the offer. It is one of the downsides to being outside the NUS that lone Student Associations/Unions don't have the same bargaining power.

Having said that, I did vote to try and stop Edinburgh affiliating a few years ago. Unsuccessfully.

 

[monkey]

...nus does seem by and large useless - still not sure what it exactly does? it doesn't seem to have much influence either. I did go to an nus conference once, its just a big massive pointless bureaucratic organisaition, with pointless politics (they have these block votes cos of "student labour", "student conservatives", "student lib dems" and bizarrely "organised" independents lol)....

 

[WillPS]

Well, this is one of the good examples of things that the NUS does - negotiate national discounts for its members. The idea is that students want a voice in a similar manor to trade unions.... except it does seem pretty dormant on this front. To be fair though, that does kind of represent 95% of students in my opinion - don't actually care as long as they dont need to do any actual work. I am a student (albeit a working one) in case anyone wonders.

But yeah, has nothing to do with "real universities". I'm pretty sure one of the big London universities was unaffiliated for a while, and I know Sheffield University have stopped printing NUS on their cards so they can withdraw at any time.

 

[CompactDstrxion]

I wish my SA, Edinburgh, was not associated with the NUS as they appear to be fanatically left-wing and in bed with Labour, trying to claim 0% interest on student loans is a good thing in times of deflation, considering student loans were sold as linked to inflation.

But I will probably take advantage of this when travelling Edinburgh-Wakefield Westgate.

 

[jopsuk]

The campaign for Edinburgh to affiliate was very much led by Labour students looking for political advancement...