CrossCountry Advance ticket changes

[kacper]

Has anyone used XCs free advance ticket changes? I heard that it works on non XC journeys too. Do you get a new ticket and the old one becomes invalidated? How many hours before departure is the cut off point for changing your ticket?

 

[Joe Paxton]

Has anyone used XCs free advance ticket changes? I heard that it works on non XC journeys too. Do you get a new ticket and the old one becomes invalidated? How many hours before departure is the cut off point for changing your ticket?

Yes, I've used the facility multiple times, though not that recently.

Yes, it works for all Advance tickets, i.e. not just XC journeys.

You are issued a new ticket and the old one is no longer valid. The process used by the Trainline (which powers XC's booking site) is that you are issued a refund to your card for the original ticket, and then in another (pretty much simultaneous) transaction you're charged for the new ticket - which seems a bit clunky but in practice it works just fine.

(If the old ticket was issued as a printed ticket and it has actually been collected from a ticket machine, then you need to send it back to XC/Trainline by post before the refund will be issued.)


XC's information page on No Admin Fee for Advance Ticket Changes states the following:

You can make changes to your Advance train ticket 2 hours after you have purchased and up to the day before the departure time on your ticket.

However my experience was that you could make changes pretty much right up to the scheduled departure time of the original journey on the day of travel. I think this is still the case but I can't guarantee it.

Do note that you cannot change the origin and destination, only the date and time.

 

[Watershed]

You are issued a new ticket and the old one is no longer valid. The process used by the Trainline (which powers XC's booking site) is that you are issued a refund to your card for the original ticket, and then in another (pretty much simultaneous) transaction you're charged for the new ticket - which seems a bit clunky but in practice it works just fine.

I believe this process only applies for paper tickets, since there the new ticket is issued (or rather, a record inserted into the industry LSM system) before the old ticket has been received for a refund.

With e-tickets you are simply charged the difference (if anything).

However my experience was that you could make changes pretty much right up to the scheduled departure time of the original journey on the day of travel. I think this is still the case but I can't guarantee it.

This is correct. I've routinely changed Advance tickets just moments before the first booked train's departure. Occasionally the form is a little buggy and requires the use of desktop mode to work but in general it's a very easy-to-use facility.

Do note that you cannot change the origin and destination, only the date and time.

It's also worth noting that you can't enter 'via' points when searching for your new journey - therefore if you want a slower itinerary for your new Advance ticket (e.g. for an overtaken operator such as WMT or Northern) you may struggle to find it. I presume you'd have to contact their Customer Relations (who are useless, in my experience) if that happens.

Note that this does also allow you to change (or remove) the applied Railcard(s), in case that's of any use. And you're free to select any ticket type for your new ticket - you're not limited to Advance tickets. So you can safely buy an Advance ticket and then change this to a walk-up ticket just by paying the difference, in essence.

 

[kacper]

Thank you both for the info

 

[trainophile]

It would be great if this was an enhancement that could be offered on this forum's ticket selling site, and/or Trainsplit given they are associated. I wonder how much XC lose by doing this. If it's negligible perhaps it could be considered by other ticket agents.

 

[MrJeeves]

There are fixed and variable costs for fulfilling tickets, as well as fees to our suppliers, as well as payment processing fees.

I don't see this being something we at TrainSplit could reasonably do as a small business without having to levy fees elsewhere, which we wouldn't do.

In almost all cases, you can use our refunds portal for changing an advance, by supplying the new booking ref when refunding the old one, but that's subject to the standard £10 admin fee (per booking, not per ticket like some retailers do).

I would imagine XC don't really care if they lose some money as it comes from the taxpayer's pocket anyway under the current contracts.

 

[trainophile]

There are fixed and variable costs for fulfilling tickets, as well as fees to our suppliers, as well as payment processing fees.

I don't see this being something we at TrainSplit could reasonably do as a small business without having to levy fees elsewhere, which we wouldn't do.

In almost all cases, you can use our refunds portal for changing an advance, by supplying the new booking ref when refunding the old one, but that's subject to the standard £10 admin fee (per booking, not per ticket like some retailers do).

I would imagine XC don't really care if they lose some money as it comes from the taxpayer's pocket anyway under the current contracts.

Fair enough. My tickets generally cost less than £10 so I wouldn't benefit from changing them. Thanks for explaining.