Group Save discount on Advance tickets

[hatt55]

I'm looking at buying 3 tickets for a journey between Bristol Temple Meads and London Paddington on June 20th.

There are currently Standard Class Advance tickets available for £24 and the GWR ticket search shows me a total cost of £72 (i.e. it appears that there are at least 3 tickets available at this price). I was expecting that the Group Save ticket would mean that we would save 1/3 on the £72 price. However, the GWR website only lists a Group Save ticket discount being applied to a Super Off Peak Single.

I've sent them a query and they are saying that the Group Save discount doesn't apply to Advance tickets.

The Ts and Cs (https://assets.nationalrail.co.uk/e...ed2fc886/Terms_and_Conditions_-_Groupsave.pdf) says that Group Save tickets generally apply on Off-Peak fares. The GWR website itself doesn't say this as far as I can see. As a different example, LNER says that you can use it on Advance tickets but only with a 20% discount. I had interpreted Off-Peak in this case to just be the timing of the journey - it would be at an Off Peak time.

Is it the case then that the Group Save discount varies between operators and that GWR don't allow it for Advance tickets?

 

[Haywain]

Groupsave does not apply to Advance tickets, only to walk-up tickets and generally at 'off peak' times. The discount that LNER offer is their own Small groups discount, not Groupsave. Some other operators also offer group discounts that may vary from the 'standard' Groupsave discount.

 

[Watershed]

Group discounts are unnecessarily complex and inconsistent across the industry, as with so many things. Around half of all operators participate in the national GroupSave standard - the rest do things in their own way. EMR add to the confusion by calling their own discount 'GroupSave' - even though it's a different and incompatible kind of GroupSave to the national standard.

GWR participate in the national GroupSave standard; however, this doesn't offer any discount on Advance fares. The GroupSave terms and conditions aren't completely correct in that you can sometimes get a discount on Anytime fares too - it depends on what the company setting the fare has enabled. But in any event you cannot use GroupSave discounted tickets before 09:30.

LNER have their own small and large group discounts, but they do not participate in the national GroupSave standard. Their discount is only available on Advance-type tickets and not on walk-up tickets.

There's also the Family & Friends Railcard, which may save you a lot of money if there are any 0-15 year olds in the group (16 year olds can also be included - and travel on discounted child fares - if they were 15 when the Railcard was bought). It has time restrictions for journeys entirely within the Network Area (see map), but is otherwise unrestricted and can be used on all standard class singles & returns (including Advances).

 

[Wallsendmag]

EMR add to the confusion by calling their own discount 'GroupSave' - even though it's a different and incompatible kind of GroupSave to the national standard.

ScotRail have the same Groupsave scheme as EMR, it's a bugger to sell on a TVM or website

 

[hatt55]

Thanks for the responses. Having only used a GroupSave ticket once before I didn't realise it was another of those incredibly complicated UK train travel things.

On this occasion then it might be that two of us buy a Two Together railcard. We have a few other trips planned so will make use of it over the next year. We'll then do the nice thing and split the total cost of the tickets 3 ways for this particular journey to London.

It amazes me how many hoops need to be jumped through sometimes to get even the smallest reduction in price!

 

[Haywain]

it's a bugger to sell on a TVM or website

It shouldn't be because both of them have instructed (in the past) that it should only be sold at staffed sales points.

 

[Wallsendmag]

It shouldn't be because both of them have instructed (in the past) that it should only be sold at staffed sales points.

We had one set up as a quick issue at Grantham but it simply vamished