Advance offered on Raileasy but not EMR

[TheManOnThe172]

I have been trying to book St Pancras (STP) to Matlock (MAT) - Single with Disabled Adult railcard for the 2002 from St Pancras on Tuesday 11 July.

At the time of writing:

• Raileasy offer an Advance at £15.50
• Trainline offers a split of Advance to Derby at £15.50 plus single Derby-Matlock at £5.00, so £20.50
• East Midlands Railway and Redspottedhanky both offer nothing better than a Superoffpeak Single at £48.55

I had spoken to Customer Services at EMR yesterday, and suggested there might be something wrong. Unless Matlock passengers are seen as particularly wealthy and/or profligate, it seemed odd that most days that EMR were showing zero advance availability apart from the 0605 from St Pancras each day, while there was plentiful supply to Derby. Meanwhile there was similar availability from Matlock as from Derby (and at the same prices) for Advances in the other direction to St Pancras.

The agent was adamant that I must be seeing an all-Advances-sold-out picture, but did eventually undertake to log my suggestion that there was something wrong.

A couple of hours later, I am sure that I found advances available on the EMR site in both directions, from Matlock, for 11 July and succeeding days, and presumed that my report had prompted a correction. But today, the picture is as before - for all of the days I have tested over the next couple of weeks, EMR have no Advances to offer from St Pancras to Matlock apart from the 0605 each morning.

Can anyone with a spare moment see whether they can reproduce the same problem? If so, is it a manifestation of a familiar problem, or something new? And is there any way of tipping off someone who might do something to fix it?

 

[skyhigh]

If RailEasy offers the fare you want, why not buy it from them?

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Clearly, I can do that. But I rather thought that if there were a systematic problem, it would be a good idea to get it fixed.

 

[Grumpy Git]

I may be wrong, but EMR seem to be releasing advance fares very late (or very few or both) recently?

 

[rg177]

Railsmartr will also sell the £15.50 fare - so this seems to be narrowing down to an EMR problem.

 

[Adam Williams]

So, the fare is https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=STP&dest=MAT&grpo=1072&rte=472&tkt=2DS&rlc=DIS


Fare origin is LONDON TERMINALS (1072), destination is MATLOCK to (1581).

Itinerary is: board STP (St Pancras) at 2002, then board 2137 from DBY (Derby) to arrive at MAT (Matlock) for 2209.

RSIDs are: EM117500, EM533800

There is availability on the first service for ticket type 2DS, but not the latter service. Indeed, it doesn't even exist in RARS:

Error: E00202 No inventory found with Retail Service ID EM5338 on 11/07/2023

I am not convinced the fare should be being sold under these conditions. The second timetabled service is "Reservations available from Derby". Given it is an Advance, surely a reservation must be made on every timetabled EMR leg?

If I actually try and buy it; traintickets.com displays it but prevents me from adding it into the basket:





On raileasy.co.uk, I am actually mis-sold and fulfilled a ToD booking without a reservation on the second leg:



My view is that Railsmartr are mis-selling here, too (i.e. not just Atomised)



The restriction code is quite clear that seat reservations are mandatory. Railsmartr appears to misleadingly imply a counted place reservation has been secured, which I have verified would have been impossible given how EM5338 has been configured in RARS.

---

TrainSplit does it properly and does not sell the Advance fare given the absence of availability on the second leg.

Trainline is correct to split and not to try and sell the Advance past Derby.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Is the Matlock train normally reservable?

 

[Adam Williams]

Is the Matlock train normally reservable?

Timetable data says it is.

The answer in terms of what's actually set-up in RARS would suggest it's not set-up to dish out reservations for all of the dates/times I've tried so far (for this ticket type, or a walk-up). It's unclear if EMR have done this intentionally. Retailers have next-to-no visibility of S3P though, so *shrug*. TOCs are just left to do whatever they want, as far as I can tell, and it's a black box for other industry participants.

Note also that the route is not an "& connections" route. The route IDMS text is "Only valid on booked East Midlands Railway services" / "Specified East Midlands Railway only".

 

[Wallsendmag]

So thats fine as long as the service is shown on the ticket.

 

[Adam Williams]

So thats fine as long as the service is shown on the ticket.

Any service in the itinerary can appear on an E-Ticket though - doesn't need reservations to be in place (counted place or otherwise).

So whenever a TOC forgets to set-up a service in RARS as reservable (which happens quite often towards the end of the booking horizon with some TOCs), it's carte blanche to sell multi-leg advances involving travel on it, even if the service is supposed to be reservable and the ticket is described as "only valid on booked services"?

Which spec in Assist says that? :P

I note that LNER's booking site is not selling this fare. Are we to assume SilverRail have got this wrong, from what you are saying?

 

[Wallsendmag]

I was refering to the & Connections/EMR only routing part not the reservation.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Thanks for guidance.

I have now experimented with trying to make reservations on Derby-Matlock trains (and vv) using the GWR bookings system. After choosing a train and ticket type, the problem trains offer a choice of Reserve a Seat and Reserve a Bike Space. If you opt for Reserve a Seat, then it invariably says "Seat reservation(s) have not been possible for your chosen service."

Other trains offer only "Reserve a Bike Space" - and these ones generally have Advance availability.

From the replies above, I am presuming that EMR have erroneously listed most of the services in the Derby-Matlock direction (all except the first two services of the day?) as needing reservations, but have then failed to specify any number of places available. I have never encountered proper seat reservations from Matlock in the last 30 years - but can't be sure that they didn't impose "counted places" reservations for some of the Covid period.

Has anyone any suggestions on how I try to get this fixed? If I contact EMR Customer Services, I am patiently told that Advance tickets are subject to availability, and all the allocation must have sold out. And my MP has no useful leverage with EMR - on another issue she did no more than forward my letters to EMR, and their letters to me.

 

[Adam Williams]

Has anyone any suggestions on how I try to get this fixed? If I contact EMR Customer Services, I am patiently told that Advance tickets are subject to availability

It needs to go to someone competent who can understand the problem, rather than frontline customer support. Ideally, someone who works in the industry would raise it by emailing EMR's reservation/RARS contact.

 

[alistairlees]

Adam is correct here - the Nottingham to Matlock service is reservable only from Derby to Matlock, and this should cause an Advance fare to not be offered for the itinerary the OP wants, as the Nottingham to Matlock service is not set up in RARS2 (the reservation system).

The change of reservation status (from "null" to "possible") at Derby is not being recognised, causing the issue. It's fairly unusual for reservation status to change midway through a journey - are there other examples?

This can be fixed, of course.

 

[Watershed]

The change of reservation status (from "null" to "possible") at Derby is not being recognised, causing the issue. It's fairly unusual for reservation status to change midway through a journey - are there other examples?

There are certainly trains (particularly TfW and GWR ones) which change between "reservations possible" and "reservations recommended" en-route. Not come across any that are only partially reservable though.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Is there any publicly visible data on how a train is set for reservations?

I am still trying to get the problem with Derby-Matlock services resolved (no Advances London-Matlock, plenty available Matlock-London), and it is clearly a reservations issue. But I can't persuade EMR that they have a problem.

RTT gives something of a clue, with Nottingham-Matlock trains wrongly described as "Seating: first & standard between Nottingham and Derby, standard only from Derby" but correctly described in the other direction as "Standard class only seating".

I can interrogate the reservations status of services by attempting to make bookings using the GWR site, but it is slow, and the results are somewhat obscure (problem trains offer the option of a seat reservation, but then the system says "Seat reservation(s) have not been possible for your chosen service.")

Is there any public database that will show reservation status for a train in a format that I can screenshot to try and illustrate the problem?

 

[Adam Williams]

Is there any publicly visible data on how a train is set for reservations?

No. There's nothing accessible to retailers either.