"Missing" Advance Fares

[TheDavibob]

A few times a year, I make the journey from Cambridge North to Lichfield Trent Valley. There's a useful evening service via London, so that's often the route I take.

However, there is no AWC+Connections Advance Fare on this route (and there hasn't been since Cambridge North opened), though both neighbouring Cambridge and Waterbeach have this fare available (and, indeed, it's the same price).

This doesn't particularly bother me, but given it's the only ticket type that doesn't offer interavailability between the Cambridge stations, the cheeky purchase of the Cambridge North <-> Cambridge ticket to bridge the gap feels a little silly. More irritatingly, it requires a bit more effort to find the best fares in the first place.

Is this sort of "oversight" (for want of a better word) the sort of thing AWC would fix, if prompted, or would they just not care?

 

[Ianno87]

I've seen other examples of Advance fares that exist for Cambridge that have never been added for Cambridge North (Rail Sail fares to Dublin via Holyhead) that have no real reason not to exist.

I think it's worth contacting them and seeing what happens. They probably just have genuinely forgotten to set them up!

 

[TheDavibob]

I've pinged off a message, let's see what happens. (Though I don't expect too much first thing on a Sunday morning...)

 

[Paul Kelly]

They probably just need to add Cambridge North to the relevant cluster, which in this case would be T255; see here: https://www.brfares.com/!expert?orig=CBG&dest=LTV

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Sep 2021 ==

I've seen other examples of Advance fares that exist for Cambridge that have never been added for Cambridge North (Rail Sail fares to Dublin via Holyhead) that have no real reason not to exist.

This one would be Cluster QB65; see here: https://www.brfares.com/!expert?orig=CBG&dest=M490

I wonder is there somebody central in RDG whose job it is to fix these things when new stations open, or does it all depend on somebody in each TOC being aware enough of stations opening far away from their patch, to update these things.

 

[Starmill]

There are rather more problematic omissions out there. For example, Chester to Norwich has no flexible fares for travel via London. The relevant person in Avanti was made aware of that a couple of years ago, and there were messages sent through customer service channels pointing it out too. But so far nothing has changed.

 

[TheDavibob]

Cluster T255 appears to have been updated, though it hasn't filtered through to the booking systems.

Oddly, the update has been adding the Cambridge Stations group, rather than Cambridge North.

 

[Watershed]

Cluster T255 appears to have been updated, though it hasn't filtered through to the booking systems.

Oddly, the update has been adding the Cambridge Stations group, rather than Cambridge North.

Rather odd indeed. AFAICT this is the first and only use of that group. Obviously some local fares are different from either station but surely it would make a lot of sense for most longer distance fares to be issued to Cambridge Stations?

 

[TheDavibob]

All non-Advance tickets are valid to either (there's an easement to this effect, though it's hidden away) so there isn't much actual benefit to using the Stations group.

But yes, in an ideal world all tickets to either would be marked as Cambridge Stations, I think.