GWR Bristol Temple Meads to Bath Spa PAYG confusion

[Spam1066]

Hello! Long-time lurker, first-time poster here – with what I hope is not a stupid question to start my RailUK Forums post history...

I've had a GWR Pay-As-You-Go smartcard (the tap-on tap-off type) for a while now, and I've made many journeys from Bristol Temple Meads (BRI) to Bath Spa (BTH) since having the card.

Last Saturday I travelled from BRI to BTH and on Sunday I made the reverse journey. I was charged £5.50 for each journey which is way lower than I'm used to. According to the National Rail website, the single fare is £9.70 between the two stations at the weekend.

I was worried that I'd incorrectly been flagged as a child, but according to the GWR account page I'm registered as an adult. And there is no railcard applied to my account either.

Surely it can't be any kind of special weekend two-day return rate (I'm pretty sure these don't exist but you never know) as my first £5.50 charge notification email came several hours before I made my return journey.

I'm mostly posting this here because I'm a bit worried that I've got some kind of discount incorrectly applied to my card, and don't want to be caught in the act even if it's not my fault.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

 

[mattdickinson]

Hello! Long-time lurker, first-time poster here – with what I hope is not a stupid question to start my RailUK Forums post history...

I've had a GWR Pay-As-You-Go smartcard (the tap-on tap-off type) for a while now, and I've made many journeys from Bristol Temple Meads (BRI) to Bath Spa (BTH) since having the card.

Last Saturday I travelled from BRI to BTH and on Sunday I made the reverse journey. I was charged £5.50 for each journey which is way lower than I'm used to. According to the National Rail website, the single fare is £9.70 between the two stations at the weekend.

I was worried that I'd incorrectly been flagged as a child, but according to the GWR account page I'm registered as an adult. And there is no railcard applied to my account either.

Surely it can't be any kind of special weekend two-day return rate (I'm pretty sure these don't exist but you never know) as my first £5.50 charge notification email came several hours before I made my return journey.

I'm mostly posting this here because I'm a bit worried that I've got some kind of discount incorrectly applied to my card, and don't want to be caught in the act even if it's not my fault.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

According to https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail...low=1&multi=0&fare=10&tkt=PEA&period=20240928 this is correct. It has been set at this figures as it's 5p less than half the Anytime Day Return which is £11.70, and PAYG doesn't have returns built in to the model.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Yep as above the PAYG fares are much lower than you may expect as they basically just halved the return fares to ensure using it for day returns wasn't more expensive than paper tickets. So if you are just using it for singles then it's usually way cheaper than the paper tickets.

 

[Spam1066]

Huh, interesting. I assumed it would charge me the full single fare if I didn't make a return journey on the same day.

Guess that's me proven wrong then!

Thanks both for your input.