For someone who used to work on the railways he should know this. Its like when I buy cheap advance tickets for london to Manchester I can get a return for £ 20.00 but I MUST get the service I booked I can't get one a few hours earlier because my ticket is not for that service even though the same train goes the same route over the same track it is not valid. Which seems to be the repeated case in RJ threads he is buying these cheap tickets and thinks he can go to the. End of the world and back. Isit not about time this thread get locked until RJ gets a final outcome
But you would be buying an ADVANCE ticket which limits you but gives you the cheapest (sometimes) fare. Say you buy an anytime ticket, then it is valid on all services. RJ is using these off-peak/anytime/super off-peak tickets and exploiting loopholes in the routeing guides, which is completely legal. Some TOCs understand it and will apologise for what has happened and sometimes give compensation, other TOC's like South Eastern think that services along their line aren't part of the NRCOC and that they use their own set of rules.
I don't know RJ personally and have never met him, but I admire how he does it and if you bother to look in the
routeing guide yourself then you would see (maybe after a few looks) just how he does it. I'd suggest you stop trying to think you know it, when clearly you don't.
It will definitely be interesting to see the outcome of this, and I can only hope RJ does something if South Eastern continue the way they are.
I've just bought a similar ticket that will use a loophole on EMT, and I can guarantee it will raise a few eyebrows, however I can only hope they will be like a member of East Coast staff who laughed and went 'Very good' he then came back after doing all his duties and asked me to show him how I did it. It's only with the help of members of this forum and doing my own research that I managed to learn how to do it and it's saved me about £50. I've only had one encounter with a bad guard, and even then all they did was say 'I haven't seen that before, and I don't think it is valid on this service' I pointed it out to him that it was showing him the relevant yellow pages and routeing maps, he told me he'd never seen them before but used his Avantix (?) to see if it was valid. Obviously his Avantix was showing a more expensive fare. After about 15 minutes he decided to say 'I'll let you off on this occasion, but if I see you again I'll be issuing you with an Unpaid Fares Notice. I have seen him since and he told me he'd done some digging around in his own time and realised it was valid. He then apologised. I'll admit I don't everything about the routeing guide, but I know what I need to know to prove my tickets are valid. If I do have an issue or query, a quick PM to one of the ticket advisers on here will be able to help me out.