Batley to Doncaster via Mirfield (Grand Central): No fare available?

[61653 HTAFC]

Just been checking times and fares for the above journey for tomorrow morning (Sat 11 Feb) on National Rail, the only journey options with a fare given is via Leeds (£20.10), the Mirfield is given as a journey option but with no fare.

Is this not considered a "permitted route", or is it just a case of no lower fare available? Would the £20.10 fare be valid via this route?

And yes, I'm aware all services from Batley are replaced by buses.

 

[CompactDstrxion]

As far as I can tell:

• Batley to Doncaster via Mirfield is a permitted route following the steps in the routeing guide.
• The fare route is marked 'Any Permitted' not 'Via Leeds' so you can take any route permitted by the routeing guide.
• Online retailers only seem to be selling fares routed 'Grand Central Only' on those trains. The 'Any Permitted' fares are not offered even when it's a direct train for the journey e.g. Mirfield to Doncaster or Wakefield Kirkgate to Pontefract Monkhill.
• The Grand Central train is marked 'reservations compulsory' in the electronic timetable. I wonder if that is confusing the systems. However, the train tomorrow morning does not seem to be fully reserved.

I think it might take someone with access to electronic routeing data to work out what is going wrong in the journey planners. But I believe the 'Any Permitted' £20.10 fare is valid for this route via Mirfield.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

As far as I can tell:

• Batley to Doncaster via Mirfield is a permitted route following the steps in the routeing guide.
• The fare route is marked 'Any Permitted' not 'Via Leeds' so you can take any route permitted by the routeing guide.
• Online retailers only seem to be selling fares routed 'Grand Central Only' on those trains. The 'Any Permitted' fares are not offered even when it's a direct train for the journey e.g. Mirfield to Doncaster or Wakefield Kirkgate to Pontefract Monkhill.
• The Grand Central train is marked 'reservations compulsory' in the electronic timetable. I wonder if that is confusing the systems. However, the train tomorrow morning does not seem to be fully reserved.

I think it might take someone with access to electronic routeing data to work out what is going wrong in the journey planners. But I believe the 'Any Permitted' £20.10 fare is valid for this route via Mirfield.

Thanks- I'll give it a try if I'm ready in time!

 

[ASharpe]

There is something odd about how the compulsory reservations affect some Grand Central services.

@Paul Kelly looked at a similar example for me a while back.

Edit to add:
For my example it only breaks return itinerary requests. If you look for a single it just wants to charge you for a return. But this doesn't work at all.

 

[Watershed]

Yes, travelling via Mirfield is a permitted route. In fact, it's the shortest route (well, as long as you go via Kirkgate and then Westgate) and thus - according to the Routeing Guide - most passengers wish to travel this way!

The reason why you can't get itineraries to be offered on Grand Central services is that GC are marking their trains as 'reservations compulsory' in the timetable data, and then claim (in response to reservation availability requests by booking engines) that there is 'no availability' when you search for an Any Permitted through ticket. This means that booking engines are not allowed to offer you any tickets in conjunction with the GC service.

I would say that GC are acting in a questionable manner here. Their trains aren't actually reservation compulsory so their flag in the timetable data is arguably false, and if you search for a Grand Central ticket (such as the GC-only fare from Mirfield to Doncaster) the same train magically has seats available - so it's clear that they're artificially limiting reservation availability to force booking engines to solely sell GC-only tickets on their services.

I wonder what the other TOCs (or, indeed, the DfT) hold of GC's actions here, given that they receive a share of interavailable tickets through ORCATS - despite preventing people from selecting these in conjunction with GC services on journey planners.

 

[mikeg]

I too agree there's something odd going on with the reservations on GC. I was booking a day return from sherburn in elmet to Thirsk and whilst if I selected a journey from York to Thirsk I could get reservations on GC if I selected it starting at SIE or Selby it would show unavailable. This would appear to be an anticompetitive ORCATS raid by stealth.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

All academic anyway, as the GC service is cancelled!

 

[yorkie]

This is an anticompetitive action by GC. I would encourage people to complain about this.

 

[Haywain]

I too agree there's something odd going on with the reservations on GC. I was booking a day return from sherburn in elmet to Thirsk and whilst if I selected a journey from York to Thirsk I could get reservations on GC if I selected it starting at SIE or Selby it would show unavailable. This would appear to be an anticompetitive ORCATS raid by stealth.

So they only let you on if you buy a GC only ticket? That's really not playing by the rules.

 

[Watershed]

So they only let you on if you buy a GC only ticket? That's really not playing by the rules.

You can only select the GC service in the journey planner if you are buying a GC-only ticket, yes.

That means that anyone making a return journey involving one leg on GC and the other on another operator is overcharged, whilst GC are receiving ORCATS revenue despite their services ostensibly being invalid on interavailable tickets.

 

[Haywain]

You can only select the GC service in the journey planner if you are buying a GC-only ticket, yes.

That means that anyone making a return journey involving one leg on GC and the other on another operator is overcharged, whilst GC are receiving ORCATS revenue despite their services ostensibly being invalid on interavailable tickets.

I think there are some TOCs who'll be interested in this.

 

[TUC]

The GC approach is causing wider issues. I searched for tickets from Halifax to Brighton for Tuesday 21 February. The most straightforward journey is use GC from Halifax to Kings Cross and then St. Pancras to Brighton. Tickets for both the 0710 and 0810 journeys are showing as not available. I frankly refuse to believe that both trains are sold out at this stage and, even if they were, I am still perfectly entitled to buy an open ticket.

 

[Watershed]

The GC approach is causing wider issues. I searched for tickets from Halifax to Brighton for Tuesday 21 February. The most straightforward journey is use GC from Halifax to Kings Cross and then St. Pancras to Brighton. Tickets for both the 0710 and 0810 journeys are showing as not available. I frankly refuse to believe that both trains are sold out at this stage and, even if they were, I am still perfectly entitled to buy an open ticket.

They aren't sold out; they are giving different availability responses based on ticket type. Either deliberately or by accident, GC are thus forcing you to split and buy a GC only ticket for their portion of the itinerary, if you want to obtain a seat reservation on their service.

 

[TUC]

They aren't sold out; they are giving different availability responses based on ticket type. Either deliberately or by accident, GC are thus forcing you to split and buy a GC only ticket for their portion of the itinerary, if you want to obtain a seat reservation on their service.

And forcing a purchase of a specific ticket type is anti-competitive.

 

[yorkie]

The GC approach is causing wider issues. I searched for tickets from Halifax to Brighton for Tuesday 21 February. The most straightforward journey is use GC from Halifax to Kings Cross and then St. Pancras to Brighton. Tickets for both the 0710 and 0810 journeys are showing as not available. I frankly refuse to believe that both trains are sold out at this stage and, even if they were, I am still perfectly entitled to buy an open ticket.

Please contact Grand Central about this and let us know their response. I have also contacted them.

 

[mikeg]

Please contact Grand Central about this and let us know their response. I have also contacted them.

So I took the plunge and contacted them via my usually dormant twitter account. What was your response? Mine was silence How to escalate this when they ignore it?

I see GC are now also ignoring tweets from this very forum. That's really bad service Just been into Thirsk ticket office to people watch before my train and someone said about being unable to purchase a ticket for their desired service online . So quite clearly not going unnoticed by the normals even if they don't understand the reason why. Lucky the ticket office was open otherwise the horrible journey planner tvm wouldn't have sold them a ticket either. I was thinking of boarding said GC service to make them work for their ORCATS revenue but for some reason held back for the tpe service.

In more relevant news I'm going to draft a letter of complaint to GC so I can get a case reference. Would it be worth contacting DafT and TPE or LNER as they're taking their revenue without working properly for it too?

 

[TUC]

So I took the plunge and contacted them via my usually dormant twitter account. What was your response? Mine was silence How to escalate this when they ignore it?

I contacted them via Twitter and the response was to advise that they were unsure as they do not sell tickets and said 'maybe the Sales team can advise', giving their phone number. I did not have confidence that this query would be readily understood in a verbal explanation and so I have contacted Customer Services via their webpage. I'll update when I receive a response.

 

[yorkie]

So I took the plunge and contacted them via my usually dormant twitter account. What was your response? Mine was silence How to escalate this when they ignore it?

They ignored me; I have just retweeted and replied to your latest tweet, but still no response.

In more relevant news I'm going to draft a letter of complaint to GC so I can get a case reference. Would it be worth contacting DafT and TPE or LNER as they're taking their revenue without working properly for it too?

It's worth a try; I don't think the DfT are bothered though. You could also try the ORR and Transport Focus.

There isn't an organisation with the clout, willpower and knowledge to do anything about this sort of thing. GC know full well they can get away with it.

 

[TUC]

I contacted them via Twitter and the response was to advise that they were unsure as they do not sell tickets and said 'maybe the Sales team can advise', giving their phone number. I did not have confidence that this query would be readily understood in a verbal explanation and so I have contacted Customer Services via their webpage. I'll update when I receive a response.

I just received a bland, fairly meaningless response from Grand Central:

' Thankyou for contacting Grand Central.

I would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention and rest assured I have passed your comments onto the relevant personnel with the aim of tailoring any future developments to the needs of our customers which is reflected through your feedback. I have passed your comments onto our website team, as to be honest, I'm not sure why the system wouldn't show our services it may be an issue with the internal rail systems.

We always welcome feedback from our customers whether it regards a negative experience that highlights areas in need of improvement or just reassurance in aspects where we are doing well. As such I would like to reiterate my gratitude for your previous correspondence.

Should you have any other queries or have any other feedback that you wish to share with us regarding the services that we provide across our network, then please do not hesitate to contact us again.'

 

[yorkie]

They are incompetent; next steps could be:

• Contact Transport Focus (perhaps contacting Anthony Smith directly?)
• Contact your MP
• Contact the ORR

Unfortunately I think GC will get away with it as I doubt there are any organisations that have the knowledge, desire and actual powers to do anything about it.

 

[CompactDstrxion]

A family member of mine has now been overcharged because

• GC is wrongly blocking retailers from booking normal rail fares on their train
• GC has failed to set a 'Grand Central Only' fare between two stations where their train calls

The online ticket retailer they used has therefore been forced to automatically sell them 'Grand Central Only' split tickets at a higher cost than the normal through fare when travelling on this service. I have drafted a complaint to Grand Central for them to use.

 

[Haywain]

A family member of mine has now been overcharged because

• GC is wrongly blocking retailers from booking normal rail fares on their train
• GC has failed to set a 'Grand Central Only' fare between two stations where their train calls

The online ticket retailer they used has therefore been forced to automatically sell them 'Grand Central Only' split tickets at a higher cost than the normal through fare when travelling on this service. I have drafted a complaint to Grand Central for them to use.

What is the journey? And who is the retailer "being forced" to sell split tickets?

 

[Watershed]

What is the journey? And who is the retailer "being forced" to sell split tickets?

I don't think the journey details make a particular difference. From the investigation I've done, it looks like GC have set their reservations up such that they return "zero availability" when you search for any ticket type that isn't a GC-only one. Similarly to how VTEC (or was it still EC at the time?) refused reservations on certain trains with certain Off-Peak tickets, but allowed them for Anytime tickets - except this time it's more serious, because they've also marked their trains as reservations compulsory in the data.

One presumes that the retailer is only offering split tickets because through tickets appear to be sold out.

I suppose it's possible that this is an error on GC's part, but it looks very much like a deliberate ploy in order to maximise their revenue.

 

[TUC]

I don't think the journey details make a particular difference. From the investigation I've done, it looks like GC have set their reservations up such that they return "zero availability" when you search for any ticket type that isn't a GC-only one. Similarly to how VTEC (or was it still EC at the time?) refused reservations on certain trains with certain Off-Peak tickets, but allowed them for Anytime tickets - except this time it's more serious, because they've also marked their trains as reservations compulsory in the data.

One presumes that the retailer is only offering split tickets because through tickets appear to be sold out.

I suppose it's possible that this is an error on GC's part, but it looks very much like a deliberate ploy in order to maximise their revenue.

That is exactly the problem. It's difficult to see this as anything but anti competitive, legally challengeable behaviour on GC's part.

 

[CompactDstrxion]

What is the journey? And who is the retailer "being forced" to sell split tickets?

The journey was Low Moor to Wakefield Kirkgate. The retailer has automatically split the tickets at Halifax since there are GC-only fares for that split but not for the through journey. So GC was telling the retailer the journey could be booked with the split fares but not the through fare I'm not going to name the retailer as this is obviously not their fault.

 

[mikeg]

Have you complained to grand central about this? Also it may be worth taking this up with the ticket retailer as an "I know this isn't strictly your fault but..." in order to see if they can put pressure on GC.

 

[TUC]

The journey was Low Moor to Wakefield Kirkgate. The retailer has automatically split the tickets at Halifax since there are GC-only fares for that split but not for the through journey. So GC was telling the retailer the journey could be booked with the split fares but not the through fare I'm not going to name the retailer as this is obviously not their fault.

That's a slightly different issue isn't it? The main complaint above is about GC not showing tickets as available when it isn't a GC-only fare that has bern selected. In terms of your issue, that seems to be the opposite-a lack of a GC-only fare. However, there's no duty for a TOC to offer their own fares for any particular flow is there?

 

[Haywain]

The journey was Low Moor to Wakefield Kirkgate. The retailer has automatically split the tickets at Halifax since there are GC-only fares for that split but not for the through journey. So GC was telling the retailer the journey could be booked with the split fares but not the through fare I'm not going to name the retailer as this is obviously not their fault.

It looks like the overcharging will be at a pretty significant level, percentage wise, too. This is Grand Central profiting doubly from not allowing interavailable tickets to be booked where they run the only direct services. It's very poor and I'd be inclined to look into who might be interested outside of the industry - such as MPs and the West Yorkshire PTE (or whatever they call them these days).

 

[CompactDstrxion]

Have you complained to grand central about this? Also it may be worth taking this up with the ticket retailer as an "I know this isn't strictly your fault but..." in order to see if they can put pressure on GC.

The passengers are complaining with my assistance, good point that it may be worth going through the retailer in parallel.

That's a slightly different issue isn't it? The main complaint above is about GC not showing tickets as available when it isn't a GC-only fare that has bern selected. In terms of your issue, that seems to be the opposite-a lack of a GC-only fare. However, there's no duty for a TOC to offer their own fares for any particular flow is there?

No it's the same underlying problem, GC preventing retailers from booking normal fares on their trains. This retailer has only been able to sell a split fare because there is no GC-only through fare AND they are blocked by GC from booking the normal through fare.

 

[Haywain]

No it's the same underlying problem, GC preventing retailers from booking normal fares on their trains. This retailer has only been able to sell a split fare because there is no GC-only through fare AND they are blocked by GC from booking the normal through fare.

At least, on the bright side, it prevents even GC from selling their own tickets through any of the retailers who don't offer split tickets. Not that I expect that GCC are at all bothered about what they might consider local journeys.