Friend offered reduced train tickets -- Question

[43094]

It still does happen now, human error, a misunderstanding or a lapse in/incorrect communication can all cause this.

I’m reminded of a recent occasion for a TOC (details removed) where a station queried the allocation of something which had been outstabled overnight.

The issue was, what the station said it was in reality, the allocations showed as being at a depot at the other end of the route.

I strongly suspect the Controller on duty would have had an interesting few minutes finding out what had happened, and if there were any side-effects (exam implications, etc). Probably followed by them questioning ‘how’s that happened’, especially given the root cause was likely to have happened the previous day.

 

[duffield]

In which case, the solution isn't restricting sales to stations and one website: it's making it clear what is an authorised website, and taking action to close down unauthorised sites.

That would be ideal. Unfortunately, dodgy websites are like cockroaches, you shut down one and another hundred pop up; and there currently exists no good/reliable way to distinguish authorised from unauthorised. Any website can copy an 'authorised' logo or similar.

Many dodgy websites are hosted abroad and cannot be shut down by UK authorities. They could be blocked by ISPs to some extent but that typically needs a court order and by the time it was obtained they could well have moved to another address.

The official National Rail website could have a list of links to genuine retailers but that doesn't help unless people know to go via it instead of doing a search for 'cheap rail tickets'.

There are no easy solutions.