Im looking to buy tickets from Newcastle to Manchester airport on the 28th Dec and return on the 1st Jan. Looking on the main ticket sites the price comes to around £300 but on raileasy it comes to £178.60!? and on trainsplit it comes to £139.00! with a stop to Manchester Piccadilly on the way back. Very confused should I buy these tickets?
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Massive ticket saving - scam?
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The_Train
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Why wouldn't you? That's why sites like trainsplit exist
Because Ive read somewhere that the tickets are the same price everywhere. The train to Manchester airport is direct with no stops on these two websites with one stop on return and on virgin/trainline it costs £150 just to Newcastle to Manchester airport
You would be buying different tickets from the sites offering the lower fars.
You seem rather confused. There are no trains which run from Newcastle to Manchester Airport with no stops. At a minimum they will stop at York, Leeds and Manchester Piccadilly and, almost certainly, other stations as well.
Trainsplit is an accredited ticket issuing retailer for rail tickets in this country and certainly not a scam.
Trainsplit is an accredited ticket issuing retailer for rail tickets in this country and certainly not a scam.
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Esker-pades
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Slight technicality, some services do not serve Darlington (see here).
ForTheLoveOf
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TrainSplit is certainly not a scam; the notion that you will be recommended the same tickets at the same price everywhere is sadly not true. Due to historic and modern-day pricing policies and anomalies, it can often be cheaper to obtain a combination of tickets for a journey, rather than using one through ticket. TrainSplit works out what the optimal combination is, and then sells you this, together with one itinerary and one booking confirmation.
It is not necessary to get off the train and get back on at each point where you change from one ticket to the next; you are quite clearly granted the right to use a combination of tickets to make one journey under the National Rail Conditions of Travel.
An informed traveller can save a great deal compared to the price that an ill-informed one, or in particular a foreigner, may pay. Simple measures, such as booking well in advance, and using sites like TrainSplit that recommend a cheaper combination of tickets, can result in a significant saving.
Thanks for the replies. What I mean is when I search on virgin/trainline the price comes to £300 but on trainsplit its only £139 and that's direct without changing trains. I've tried lots of websites and they're all £300 but trainsplit is saving me £161 which is found to good to be true
Given the prices you have quoted, I am assuming the journey is for two adults?
You are right in that, in theory, all websites charge the same price, however (errors excepted), they are not all selling you exactly the same product! You might find a post I wrote in 2016 interesting to give you some details of why prices appear different: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/east-coast-vs-trainline-vs-nre.129289/#post-2529085
The reason theTrainline implies the cost is over £300 is because the most obvious option on the website is to buy a single ticket for the outward and a further single ticket for the return leg. You actually have to scroll down the page to buy the Return ticket; if you do this you will notice that it is available for £178.60 which is the price Raileasy is charging.
TrainSplit is an advanced booking engine, one of its many features is that it looks up if it is cheaper to buy multiple tickets rather than just one ticket. In the case of the £139 journey you are being offered, it has worked out that it is cheaper for you to buy two day singles between Manchester Main station and the Airport and then a return between York and Newcastle and a return between York and Manchester.
roversfan2001
Established Member
Trainsplit is most certainly not a scam. The whole point of it is to save you money.
To use an analogy from everyday life, TrainSplit is like the friendly attendant in the shop who tells you that buying four 4-packs of batteries is cheaper than buying one 16-pack.
You could have figured that out yourself, but to do this for every product you buy would take forever, and you'd waste more time than the saving was worth.
It's the same with TrainSplit. You could check the prices for every possible combination of tickets you could buy for a journey, but it would take forever, so TrainSplit does this for you. In return, you pay TrainSplit a fee of 10% of the money you saved by using their service. This fee is included in the price TrainSplit quote. If TrainSplit can't save you money (i.e. where one ticket for the entire journey is the cheapest option) they don't charge you any fee - you only pay a fee if they save you money.
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Howardh
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Even the split tickets seem excessive. Are the cheaper advance fares not available yet (worth waiting?) or combining day tickets such as Manchester wayfarer with any on the other side of the Pennines?
It might be cheaper to travel (or fly!!) to London and then back up to Manchester!!
It might be cheaper to travel (or fly!!) to London and then back up to Manchester!!
Gareth Marston
Established Member
Nothing wrong with using TrainSplit of course if you have the knowledge you can do it yourself and not pay the share of the savings.
The price you say TrainSplit quotes sound very much like a TPE only off peak return from Newcastle to York and an off peak return from York to Manchester Airport. Don't worry if it's easily identifiable that means others are doing it.
I got my daughter a flexible day return from Durham to Manchester Stations for £37 this Sunday (she does have a 16 to 25 railcard).
The price you say TrainSplit quotes sound very much like a TPE only off peak return from Newcastle to York and an off peak return from York to Manchester Airport. Don't worry if it's easily identifiable that means others are doing it.
I got my daughter a flexible day return from Durham to Manchester Stations for £37 this Sunday (she does have a 16 to 25 railcard).
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Don’t buy anything yet. Check every 3-4 days to see if Advance tickets become available - these will be much cheaper.
RJ
Established Member
Virgin and TheTrainline will sell you one ticket that covers your journey. This is the price the train operators want you to pay for that journey.
TrainSplit will sell you a series of tickets that cover your journey. You change from one ticket to another at some of the stops along the way. For complicated reasons, this is often a lot cheaper than buying one ticket for a long distance journey. TrainSplit just helps you find a good deal where this is the case.
It isn't a scam and it's not too good to be true! It is expressly permitted by the rules - see paragraph 14.1 if you'd like reassurance!
Puffing Devil
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It's worth adding that if the trip is for two and the cost is more than £90, it would be worth getting a two together railcard which would give a discount of 1/3 for an outlay of £30. You can buy the tickets in advance without the railcard, just make sure you buy a railcard before you travel.
SickyNicky
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10% in fact. Some affiliates using the same platform charge a little more, but we charge 10% of any saving. The customer keeps 90% of the saving. No saving=no fee. This pays for the not inconsiderable costs we have in calculating the best split tickets we can.
Thanks to all for the nice comments. We are trying to save people money!
Joe Paxton
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Just regarding the 10% fee, this is something I've been intending to comment on for a little while. On both the new TrainSplit website and app, there doesn't appear to be any obvious explaination of the fee charged (the old TrainSplit website made it clear). Like many others on here I know it's 10%, but a new user would be none the wiser. (OK, it's possible to work it out, but it is not explained.)
On a more general note, the information / help / about pages on TrainSplit are rather spartan, and I think could do with a comprehensive overhaul (indeed this might allay the suspicions of anyone thinking 'it's too good to be true' as the OP seems to have thought).
No criticism of the underlying product though, which is quite some achievement and very impressive.
A Challenge
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The information is linked from https://trainsplit.com/info.aspx, however I do agree that it doesn't look very professional, being a plaintext .aspx page, and that this might be better. The fact that this page is only linked to at the very bottom along with the the copyright, technical information and statements they are required to make but few people will actually ever read.
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