At the end of last week, I needed to book some tickets from Cambridge to Tenby for the bank holiday weekend at the end of May, specifically with outward travel on May 23rd.
I checked the tickets available, and found a number of advance tickets available at £46.70 for different times of the day. It took a few days of debating to decide which time we wanted to travel at, during which time I regularly checked the prices to make sure they weren't going up. Eventually I booked some tickets at this price two days ago, on Tuesday of this week.
I've now gone to double-check the times of the journey, and found that advance tickets for the journeys that previously cost £47.20 can now be bought for £37.20 (06:45 departure) or £26.70 (08:50 and 10:45 departures). Since I've booked on the 10:45 service, I've ended up paying about 75% more than I would have done if I'd waited another couple of days!
Having searched this site, the standard answer to advance fares getting lower is that people were holding the cheaper tickets in their baskets, but then didn't buy them. But I find it hard to believe that was happening for a period of almost a week across three different journeys! This isn't the first time I've been surprised by advance tickets getting cheaper after I've bought mine, but it is the first time I've been actively monitoring the more expensive price for days before buying. So what is going on here? It really does feel to me as if the train companies are releasing cheaper advance tickets for sale after they've put the more expensive ones on sale.
I assume there's no way of telling when this is going to happen? And I assume there's nothing I can now do to get the cheaper priced advances instead?
I checked the tickets available, and found a number of advance tickets available at £46.70 for different times of the day. It took a few days of debating to decide which time we wanted to travel at, during which time I regularly checked the prices to make sure they weren't going up. Eventually I booked some tickets at this price two days ago, on Tuesday of this week.
I've now gone to double-check the times of the journey, and found that advance tickets for the journeys that previously cost £47.20 can now be bought for £37.20 (06:45 departure) or £26.70 (08:50 and 10:45 departures). Since I've booked on the 10:45 service, I've ended up paying about 75% more than I would have done if I'd waited another couple of days!
Having searched this site, the standard answer to advance fares getting lower is that people were holding the cheaper tickets in their baskets, but then didn't buy them. But I find it hard to believe that was happening for a period of almost a week across three different journeys! This isn't the first time I've been surprised by advance tickets getting cheaper after I've bought mine, but it is the first time I've been actively monitoring the more expensive price for days before buying. So what is going on here? It really does feel to me as if the train companies are releasing cheaper advance tickets for sale after they've put the more expensive ones on sale.
I assume there's no way of telling when this is going to happen? And I assume there's nothing I can now do to get the cheaper priced advances instead?
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