Preference to buy tickets from a ticket office

[Haywain]

If the rule only applies to TOCs, how is it that some TOC websites offer splits?

The rule applies to specific points of sale - ticket offices and TVMs (and guards?). This is because TOCs are mandated to provide such facilities as part of franchise agreements, and as station facilities operators to do so without prejudice to other train operators. Websites are not impartial points of sale.

I would imagine that CrossCountry are particularly keen on monitoring such behaviour because they don't operate any stations or retail facilities themselves.

 

[The exile]

Maybe ticket offices in your area never refuse the sale of valid tickets; maybe they never have queues (to be fair, in my experience York generally doesn't, but that's only because on the rare occasions I use it, I'm typically the only one there!) and maybe they don't use the new style till roll format (in which case, enjoy CCST while you can, as it likely won't last too much longer).

If so, this makes you very lucky, and I'd be curious to learn where this is!

At times I’m there - Bath Spa.

 

[AlterEgo]

Maybe I'm missing something, but what here state that you can't offer splits, provided you offer them equally for services by all operators (including the operator operating the booking office)?

It’s not retailing impartially if you do that, because you can’t offer splits on every operator. You do need to read the entire agreement to understand it I’m afraid, but essentially the word Fare is capitalised throughout for a reason and TOCs are supposed to sell the appropriate Fare (singular). The TSA explains the only circumstance where you may sell two or more Fares proactively precisely for this reason.

 

[styles]

Which TOC websites currently offer splits? LNER did for a bit but don't now (as it undermined their fare increase trial*) but it was just split Advances issued as a single ticket with a discount. The Trainline TOC engine can do it as it was briefly switched on for WMT but it was switched off again fairly sharpish so it was probably done by mistake.

I do like the no-fee simple splits Trainline does on the day of travel (both routes I commonly use to London save a couple of quid if you split), but it would be handy to be able to do them the day before travel without a fee and without the effort of buying the two tickets separately

* LNER at the moment is doing a lot to advertise Trainline, as on almost all London-Edinburgh journeys a split is cheaper than a through ticket, though obviously there are the other workarounds no retailer can sell those unless you specifically search for them.

ScotRail started selling split tickets in July last year. They use Trainline's booking engine, so not the best split ticket algorithm.

It actually looks like LNER may have quietly dropped their split ticket feature, as I can't manage to find any split tickets on their app or their website any more. It was a bit odd as well as they only seemed to offer split tickets for journeys involving LNER-operated legs.

 

[Bletchleyite]

ScotRail started selling split tickets in July last year. They use Trainline's booking engine, so not the best split ticket algorithm.

The Trainline algorithm isn't as good as Trainsplit but it does show up two splits I use all the time and without a share of savings fee, so I might give that a go! I don't pay Trainline fees as they aren't charged if you buy on the day, but it would be handy to be able to buy the day before without a fee.

 

[Djgr]

I buy all my tickets online, helped by significant kickback (typically 5-12%).

I guess like everyone on this forum I have had some pretty atrocious experiences over the years, where railway staff have sworn blind that a perfectly valid ticket isn't.

The latest one a few weeks ago was when an Avanti conductor/guard/customer host? challenged me using an Off Peak ticket from Runcorn to London Euston on an early morning service

...but it was a Friday.

I can call up their website on my phone in a matter of seconds and confirm that this is valid.

"If you're travelling with Avanti West Coast, you can start your weekend early with Off-Peak Fridays - travel at any time Friday if you're departing or heading to London Euston..."

This is absolutely basic stuff that railway staff fail at.

At least buying online will often give me an itinerary that I can present to counteract such nonsense.

 

[Haywain]

It actually looks like LNER may have quietly dropped their split ticket feature, as I can't manage to find any split tickets on their app or their website any more. It was a bit odd as well as they only seemed to offer split tickets for journeys involving LNER-operated legs.

It was only ever offered on the app, and was limited to LNER journeys. It didn't offer split tickets, just the split ticket price applied (as a discount) to a through ticket.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It actually looks like LNER may have quietly dropped their split ticket feature, as I can't manage to find any split tickets on their app or their website any more. It was a bit odd as well as they only seemed to offer split tickets for journeys involving LNER-operated legs.

It seems it was dropped because it was undermining the fare increase trial, as on those routes a split is near enough always cheaper, sometimes by £50 or more.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Chiltern did it for a while, but I stopped using that website so it may well have changed again.

It's been disabled as the site didn't tell you it was selling a split and only displayed the least restrictive ticket type on the results page. So for a combination of an Advance and an Anytime Day Single it just said Anytime Day Single.

The first time you knew it had sold a split was when the tickets were fulfilled. Less than ideal if you've chosen Ticket on Departure, don't collect until the day of travel and you've missed the booked train on the Advance you didn't know you'd bought.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The ScotRail one appears to say "specified train only" even if it is selling a split only containing Anytimes, which isn't quite true but is probably a safer bet for the layperson.

"May be valid on other trains; please check with staff" might be a better one.

 

[A S Leib]

As somebody who uses ticket offices quite irregularly (I buy almost all of my tickets online), I've had good experiences with Carlisle and Penrith ticket offices today. Carlisle sold me a Northern newspaper deal ticket without any issue, and Penrith at least tried to sell what I was looking for (a Burnley PlusBus ticket to go with the former; is that possible to sell without a rail portion to begin with?).

 

[styles]

The ScotRail one appears to say "specified train only" even if it is selling a split only containing Anytimes, which isn't quite true but is probably a safer bet for the layperson.

"May be valid on other trains; please check with staff" might be a better one.

This is imo the main drawback of split tickets - retailers may sell them, but it's not an especially easy thing to communicate to passengers what the impact is on their journey. I mean, plenty of passengers don't really understand when off-peaks are valid, or when their railcards can be used, without trying to explain the different restrictions on multiple non-through tickets for a single journey.

Obviously in an ideal world, the need for split tickets probably wouldn't exist, but given they can save such large amounts of money, passengers do need to be able to access them. I would argue that this includes ticket offices at railway stations. I know if my mum wanted to buy train tickets without my or my sister's help, she would go to a ticket office. Had she done that when we went from North Wales to London for the Eurostar, she would've ended up paying much more if the staff at Chester don't proactively offer split tickets. She also wouldn't have had the CIV protection (though I'm a little unconvinced of the value of that these days). On the flip side, if she took it upon herself to buy them on whatever site comes up first for her on Google for 'train tickets' (probably Trainline in all honesty), she might end up with tickets with restrictions she doesn't understand.

 

[Haywain]

a Burnley PlusBus ticket to go with the former; is that possible to sell without a rail portion to begin with?

Ticket offices can sell them in isolation, but should check that a valid rail ticket is held. Websites and TVMs cannot sell PlusBus without a rail ticket being purchased at the same time.

 

[kkong]

Ticket offices can sell them in isolation, but should check that a valid rail ticket is held.

I can confirm this is possible.

I recently bought an Aberdeen PlusBus at Haymarket ticket office and presented my CCST rail tickets (which I had just collected from a TVM 20 away) to the clerk.

 

[A S Leib]

Ticket offices can sell them in isolation, but should check that a valid rail ticket is held. Websites and TVMs cannot sell PlusBus without a rail ticket being purchased at the same time.

That makes sense. That's useful for future reference, although this time I've bought an Accrington to Burnley+PlusBus ticket for £3 more instead.

 

[Krokodil]

If you offer splits proactively you aren’t acting impartially towards other train companies.

“The fare is £100 for that journey” (however with this trick I can circumvent that for you and save you £50).

It’s not about being impartial to the customer.

This is a very long established principle from the dawn of privatisation although perhaps it is not covered in retail training any more. It was in my training, and I didn’t even sell tickets. I did handle a lot of technical complaints relating to fares though.

All seems rather dated in an age where all of the money goes to the same place anyway. I'll stick to being customer-focused until I'm actually pulled up on it.

I'm not going to charge a little old lady more than £130 for her journey to Leeds to see her grandchild graduate (true story btw) when she can do it for less than £70. All because the longer journey has a peak restriction that has clearly been applied in a blanket fashion and is completely inappropriate for the actual journey being made, hence why Off Peak tickets are fine for both individual portions.

I would imagine that CrossCountry are particularly keen on monitoring such behaviour because they don't operate any stations or retail facilities themselves.

And because they have the most to lose when a through fare (on which they'd have most of the ORCATS pie) is split into a number of local tickets, on which they might expect more like a 50% share with the local operator.

Wouldn't be an issue if the response to XC's capacity issues hadn't been "more carriages" rather than "hike fares" but here we are...

 

[redreni]

There are certain things I use ticket offices for where it would be at least inconvenient, and sometimes impossible, to get the ticket any other way. I got three of the £10 Northern day rangers this year, for instance. I also forgot to get a PlusBus ticket when I bought the first of the three day rangers, but was able to get one from the ticket office. They're good for excesses.

Ticket office staff often behave in ways that seem very unlikely to encourage repeat business. In fact, on each of the last three occasions I've wanted to use a ticket office, it has taken two attempts to find somebody willing to do their job properly (trying to buy a ticket at a Southeastern ticket office using a rail travel voucher issued by GTR; trying to exchange a different GTR-issued rail travel voucher for cash at a GTR ticket office; and finally trying to get a day travelcard issued to Smartcard at an LNER ticket office). It shouldn't be like that.

I would point out, though, that if a ticket office clerk won't do what you ask, you can try somebody else and you may have better luck. If a website won't do what you ask, coming back the next day generally won't help. Some of the better websites will fix issues if you raise it through their customer services, but not if RDG's specs won't allow them to. Getting advances issued to/from zone U1 when the fare hasn't been specifically priced as such, for instance, is still possible at ticket offices even since online retailers were told to stop doing it.

I would also point out that, despite their shortcomings, for those of us who do still find ticket offices useful, there is at least an argument for using them at least some of the time even when you don't have to. Otherwise their market share, which is fairly small but not so small as to be insignificant, will continue to shrink and then they won't be there when we do want to use them.

 

[MrJeeves]

I've had various positive and negative ticket office experiences over the last few years.

Typically if I want something rarer, I'll try a ticket office I have faith in, such as St Pancras EMR. I bought my Highland Rover at the start of the year there, and bought a second for my friend at an LNER TVM. The latter had an interesting error on the printed tickets, but netted me cashback I'd forgotten about!

I've also tried to get excesses at some stations, to no avail. Often accompanied by "nothing to do with us; it was bought online". Bromley South was particularly bad for this when I tried there. Then immediately got the excess issued on board the Southeastern train by a friendly guard who agreed they were talking nonsense!

On the other hand, I managed to borrow a pen at Victoria Station from their ticket office a year or so ago, which was helpful.

 

[AlterEgo]

All seems rather dated in an age where all of the money goes to the same place anyway. I'll stick to being customer-focused until I'm actually pulled up on it.

Well the TSA is there not for you but for TOCs, the principles therein aren’t a staff manual.

I'm not going to charge a little old lady more than £130 for her journey to Leeds to see her grandchild graduate (true story btw) when she can do it for less than £70. All because the longer journey has a peak restriction that has clearly been applied in a blanket fashion and is completely inappropriate for the actual journey being made, hence why Off Peak tickets are fine for both individual portions.

I’m assuming that’s on a line of route you’re familiar with, yes?

Now tell me the cheapest splits using your memory or standard issue equipment for something 200 miles from your patch.

That is how this practice results in partial behaviour from TOC staff.

But anyway, as you say, in an age where the money flows to the same place the TSA is ripe for putting in the bonfire. I would like to - and expect to - see it go.

 

[sad1e]

I've had staff at the St Pancras Thameslink Ticket office completely not know about the existence of the Anglia day ranger and tell me that i have to go to Liverpool street to buy one.
A quick pop into the EMR ticket office upstairs and they issued it instantly no fuss or anything , I've even brought a Barlaston to Wedgwood single from them with not even a question asked.

Now i always use the EMR ticket office , the staff at the Thameslink ticket office don't seem the most well informed about more uncommon tickets.

 

[JackandAda]

You can do that by creating an account on the GWR site these days.

They are not supposed to do this; staff can get into trouble for it, and indeed memos have been released instructing ticket offices not to do this.

You’ve said that staff are ‘not allowed’ to recommend cheaper tickets on a couple of threads, do you have actual proof of this or is all conjecture?

There are also ticket offices which will proactively offer splits, especially ones which all trains stop at, or on seasons. It isn’t quite as cut and dray as they can’t, as there are interpretations of the rules which allow them to.

I can assure you that whilst it obviously varies between different operators who run different Ticket Offices (it could even vary between different Station Managers within the same company!) where I work I've never been criticised for offering split tickets.
Particularly seeing many websites will automatically offer them. I always make it clear if I'm offering a split ticket any conditions they need to follow to make sure they're valid.

If you offer splits proactively you aren’t acting impartially towards other train companies.

“The fare is £100 for that journey” (however with this trick I can circumvent that for you and save you £50).

It’s not about being impartial to the customer.

This is a very long established principle from the dawn of privatisation although perhaps it is not covered in retail training any more. It was in my training, and I didn’t even sell tickets. I did handle a lot of technical complaints relating to fares though.

We were shown in training how to look for and issue splits, and actively offer them where either it doesn't make any difference to an itinerary or it saves a lot of money or the customer specificly wants the cheapest fare. Everyone in the ticket office knows the most common ones and they're issued without question.
Equally, we offer day tickets when they're cheaper than a return.
We offer season tickets when it's cheaper than buying daily.
All these options save the customer money and keeps them coming back to the ticket office. But we are ticket office pro-active with recent recruitment and extending hours and reopening ticket offices that have been shut for years.

 

[ChrisC]

I've had staff at the St Pancras Thameslink Ticket office completely not know about the existence of the Anglia day ranger and tell me that i have to go to Liverpool street to buy one.
A quick pop into the EMR ticket office upstairs and they issued it instantly no fuss or anything , I've even brought a Barlaston to Wedgwood single from them with not even a question asked.

Now i always use the EMR ticket office , the staff at the Thameslink ticket office don't seem the most well informed about more uncommon tickets.

With the well reported in these forums exception of Sheffield, I have always found EMR ticket office staff very good. Only a couple of weeks ago at Nottingham I bought a 7 Day East Midlands Rover and the friendly member of staff found this with no problem within 30 seconds. A couple of years ago for a journey down to Plymouth, I got exactly what I wanted with no problems at Nottingham, splitting at Cheltenham and Tiverton Parkway plus an 8 Days in 15 Devon and Cornwall Rover for the rest of the journey. I have also found EMR staff very good at Chesterfield and Alfreton. These days I usually buy most of my tickets online using the forums ticketing site, but if my journey begins at Alfreton I buy my tickets at the ticket office to give the ticket office my business and to help justify keeping the station staffed.

 

[Krokodil]

I’m assuming that’s on a line of route you’re familiar with, yes?

The first leg of the journey would be the train I was working, the second leg being another operator on a route I did not sign.

Simply a result of looking up the fare, cringing at it (believe me, there are some prices I mumble when telling the passenger or just show them the amount on the screen, they are so extortionate it's embarrassing to say out loud), and thinking "it seems daft that this is at an Anytime price [valid from 0900], it could be gone midday by the time that the passengers is actually in Leeds. This train wouldn't be considered 'peak' if she was only going to Manchester, so let's price an Off Peak ticket to there and see what's available between there and Leeds". I certainly wouldn't do it if there were a risk that it could go wrong for the passenger (if it precluded a return routing they might possibly use or where peak restrictions might trip them up when coming back for example) unless I was happy that they understood any restrictions.

For example on a North Wales to Blackpool journey, there is a saving to be had by splitting at Warrington. However if I was to offer this (the first occasion was at the specific request of a passenger) I would make it clear that they must stick to that route when they returned.

I even double check itineraries in both directions for them, just to make sure that there will be a reasonable itinerary that they could use with that ticket. I've encountered enough passengers who could have done with that sort of diligence from online retailers. I once had a passenger whose period return tickets went something like Rhyl-Crewe, Crewe-Nuneaton (or some other Trent Valley stop), Nuneaton-Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes-London (Avanti only). Presumably her outbound journey was direct from London to Crewe on one of the few Avanti services that does stop at Nuneaton. But there wouldn't be one for her going southbound so I had to tell her to get the xx:13 stopper, then change at Milton Keynes for an Avanti service. The saving from these splits was tiny too, considering what a faff the return journey became as a result.

XC priced fares rarely factor in the journeys I'm looking at. Passengers making the sorts of journey from here that might involve an XC priced ticket would usually opt for a "via Hereford" one instead if they value money over time.

 

[yorkie]

We were shown in training how to look for and issue splits, and actively offer them where either it doesn't make any difference to an itinerary or it saves a lot of money or the customer specificly wants the cheapest fare. Everyone in the ticket office knows the most common ones and they're issued without question.

Which TOC is this?

Are you given tools, or do you do manual searches using your TIS?

If the rule only applies to ticket offices, that seems rather unbalanced!

They have very different target audiences, costs, and operate on different principles.

The ticket office at any location is what it is; the choice you get from website providers can't be recreated in the physical retailing world.

If ticket offices did splits, would you be happy if you had to use the office, and the person ahead of you wanted the cheapest combination for a long distance XC journey? You'd be queuing for a very long time!

 

[Krokodil]

If ticket offices did splits, would you be happy if you had to use the office, and the person ahead of you wanted the cheapest combination for a long distance XC journey? You'd be queuing for a very long time!

Not really any different to queuing for any other reason - Bert and Ada planning their annual trip to Scarborough or a backpacker from Berlin asking about local places to go hiking.

 

[yorkie]

Not really any different to queuing for any other reason - Bert and Ada planning their annual trip to Scarborough or a backpacker from Berlin asking about local places to go hiking.

It is very different; what should be a quick transaction could potentially take half an hour, as such journeys may require 10+ tickets each way. And you'll want to reserve the same seat. Great care needs to be taken to ensure the times (and date!) all match up.

 

[JackandAda]

It is very different; what should be a quick transaction could potentially take half an hour, as such journeys may require 10+ tickets each way. And you'll want to reserve the same seat. Great care needs to be taken to ensure the times (and date!) all match up.

It is easy. The date and time on ticket office systems remains unaltered till you issue the tickets for this reason.
Not all splits involve advance tickets. Indeed, only a teeny tiny amount of ticket office sales involve advances, the vast majority are walk-up tickets for immediate travel

 

[cav1975]

During the prolonged Island Line modernisation closure railway replacement buses ran from Ryde Esplanade to Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway as the Ryde to Shanklin RRBs couldn’t call at Smallbrook Junction. These were only advertised locally so didn’t appear on any internet based systems; tickets to/from Smallbrook Junction were required. As they weren't in the system timetable, online tickets couldn’t be purchased. Despite that I was able to get the ticket office at Rainham (Kent) to issue me the correct ticket, just on my say so. Well done to them.

 

[yorkie]

It is easy. The date and time on ticket office systems remains unaltered till you issue the tickets for this reason.

But the departure time from the next station would not be "the same", would it? Take a journey from Yorkshire to Cornwall, which would typically require 10+ splits to get the best price. As far as Bristol, you'd need to compare splitting at Sheffield, Chesterfield, Burton/Tamworth, Cheltenham, with splitting instead at Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Cheltenham, or possibly Chesterfield instead of Sheffield/Derby, and it may also be cheaper to split at Burton/Tamworth and Birmingham. Then from Bristol, you need to consider various other permutations. From each stop, you need to ensure you are looking at the XC train and not a following/preceding train by another operator, or the following stopping XC from Derby etc.

Not all splits involve advance tickets. Indeed, only a teeny tiny amount of ticket office sales involve advances, the vast majority are walk-up tickets for immediate travel

Depending on where you are (for example, if you're in the London area, the vast majority of journeys will be on Contactless or with Travelcards, so passengers would not be visiting a ticket office anyway), Advance fares account for a significant proportion of journeys.

By your own admission, passengers who are booking in advance and have particular requirements such as booking onto specific trains to meet their requirements, generally do not visit ticket offices; this is surely indicative that people are not using ticket offices as an alternative to a website for complex / specific journey requirements.

On the rare occasions I'm in York ticket office (e.g. to use an RTV or get PlusBus), I agree with you that if there is someone else there, they are typically asking for something like "a return to Leeds", which would easily be purchasable from a TVM if they don't want to book online, so that puts into question any suggestion that ticket offices are there to get people the best possible deal for more complex journeys!

During the prolonged Island Line modernisation closure railway replacement buses ran from Ryde Esplanade to Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway as the Ryde to Shanklin RRBs couldn’t call at Smallbrook Junction. These were only advertised locally so didn’t appear on any internet based systems; tickets to/from Smallbrook Junction were required. As they weren't in the system timetable, online tickets couldn’t be purchased. Despite that I was able to get the ticket office at Rainham (Kent) to issue me the correct ticket, just on my say so. Well done to them.

Yes, it is often the case that ticket office purchases are enforced because of a failing by the rail industry to enable tickets for online purchase, for a wide variety of reasons, i.e. many of the transactions at ticket offices are made by people who have no other choice.

If many people genuinely preferred to use ticket offices than book online, the huge and incredibly busy York Travel Centre of the past would not have been reduced to a tiny office with hardly any patronage today.

 

[JackandAda]

But the departure time from the next station would not be "the same", would it? Take a journey from Yorkshire to Cornwall, which would typically require 10+ splits to get the best price. As far as Bristol, you'd need to compare splitting at Sheffield, Chesterfield, Burton/Tamworth, Cheltenham, with splitting instead at Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Cheltenham, or possibly Chesterfield instead of Sheffield/Derby, and it may also be cheaper to split at Burton/Tamworth and Birmingham. Then from Bristol, you need to consider various other permutations. From each stop, you need to ensure you are looking at the XC train and not a following/preceding train by another operator, or the following stopping XC from Derby etc.

Depending on where you are (for example, if you're in the London area, the vast majority of journeys will be on Contactless or with Travelcards, so passengers would not be visiting a ticket office anyway), Advance fares account for a significant proportion of journeys.

You pop the journey into the journey planner mode and it keeps the journey, so the time will change with the split. It's very basic stuff in a ticket office and incredibly simple. It's nowhere near as complicated as you're trying to make out.
The best deal is very customer specific, some passengers don't mind paying for one through ticket, some don't mind lots of tickets to save a few quid. Others don't mind one or two splits, but don't want loads. Others only want to split where they change trains. As ticket office staff we can establish what works for them and tailor it to them. Price isn't everything for everyone.
Generally, people wanting advance tickets book online. That's fine. We can, and do, sell them, but only in small quantities. People come to the ticket office because they want advice or something more bespoke than websites are offering them.