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Restrictions on LNER Super Off Peak tickets

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Deerfold

Deerfold

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Yesterday I purchased a Super Off Peak Ticket from London to Keighley.

The LNER website was only offering this ticket on the daily direct service.

However, having picked up the ticket, it has restriction 9D and no mention of operator restriction.

Is it actually valid on any operator? If it is, why was the LNER website only selling tickets for some services at twice the price of this one?
 
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robbeech

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Was this a ‘saver half’ or whatever it’s called nowadays? I believe LNER website is set up to sell these but others aren’t. Someone will be along who can remember what this is about but it is a known thing I believe.
 
Mojo

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Deerfold said:
It's this one:
http://www.brfares.com/#faredetail?orig=KGX&dest=KEI&grpo=1072&tkt=SSU
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Are you sure, or is it actually £55.70?

The ticket you have been issued with is actually this but with a 50% discount.

Someone asked about the LNER website selling these tickets recently, so I'll just quote my message there.
Mojo said:
Traditionally on many routes, particularly long distance ones, it has been the policy of those setting the fares for walkon (ie. non-Advance) Single tickets to cost not much less than a Return. In the case of the this flow from London to Edinburgh a Single is £1 (65p with a Railcard) cheaper than a Return.

It has been the policy of the various East Coast operators for a few years now to offer a Super Off-Peak Single ticket priced at half the price of a return when purchased in conjunction with an Advance in the other direction; the rationale being to encourage people to move to Advance tickets but where on one leg an Advance cannot be bought (eg. because Advance tickets are not on sale or perhaps the customer requires some flexibility on one leg). When Virgin Trains launched their new booking engine, it was not compatible with this requirement and could not issue this reduced-rate fare in conjunction with an Advance booking on the other leg. To get around this, the developers modified the booking engine and simply offers a ticket with 50% off, but this ticket is offered to all customers where the journey planner returns an itinerary on LNER trains (although it is still valid on permitted routes including those of other Tocs), not just to those buying an Advance in the other direction.
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It should actually be offering a ticket at 50% of the Super Off-peak return (which is what the SSU ticket you linked to above is priced at), but for whatever reason they have set it to be half the price of a single.

I can only assume that the booking engine has been programmed to only offer this ticket for LNER itineraries because, whilst reading the ticket, it is valid on any Toc on any permitted route, the intention is that, it should only be valid in conjunction with an Advance for the other way.
 
Deerfold

Deerfold

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Mojo said:
Are you sure, or is it actually £55.70?

The ticket you have been issued with is actually this but with a 50% discount.

Someone asked about the LNER website selling these tickets recently, so I'll just quote my message there.
It should actually be offering a ticket at 50% of the Super Off-peak return (which is what the SSU ticket you linked to above is priced at), but for whatever reason they have set it to be half the price of a single.

I can only assume that the booking engine has been programmed to only offer this ticket for LNER itineraries because, whilst reading the ticket, it is valid on any Toc on any permitted route, the intention is that, it should only be valid in conjunction with an Advance for the other way.
Click to expand...

Presumably it's not supposed to be limited to LNER-only journeys? It should be offered as half of an LNER+connections ticket?

What is the one I linked to? Should that have been offered for the other itineraries? The cheapest tickets being offered apart from Advances were all over £100 to Keighley (but around £54 if you searched for Leeds instead).

Ironically, I did want to do a return journey but on Saturday the direct service from Keighley to London was not running (I couldn't see any reason on the LNER website for this, though were other changes due to engineering works), and due to the Northern strike I couldn't travel early at all. The services that were running from were running via Lincoln and between everything I couldn't have got to Kings X before 1315, making it tricky to get to the place I was staying and then the wedding I was attending - I ended up getting a coach overnight as it was that or a hotel in Leeds.
 
Mojo

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Deerfold said:
Presumably it's not supposed to be limited to LNER-only journeys? It should be offered as half of an LNER+connections ticket?
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It wouldn't be LNER+Connections because it's not an Advance ticket. I'm assuming it's just to do with the programming of the booking engine as to why it's appearing for LNER itineraries only; if you aren't buying an Advance in the other direction think of yourself lucky because this ticket shouldn't even be able to be bought for a one-way journey!

Deerfold said:
What is the one I linked to? Should that have been offered for the other itineraries? The cheapest tickets being offered apart from Advances were all over £100 to Keighley (but around £54 if you searched for Leeds instead).
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That is the ticket that should be sold in these circumstances, however it is not possible to buy at present, because of this issue with the website. I'm not sure if other websites sell you this ticket. Think of it as the East Coast equivalent of the "SVH - Saver Half" Single ticket that exists on the West Coast route.
 
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alistairlees

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As others have said, your ticket is quite valid on other operators and is not restricted to LNER only. Of course, you must adhere to any time of travel restrictions (there are none on a weekend).

To summarise:
- the LNER website is selling this ticket at the wrong price (and always has done). The correct price is indeed £56.20 yet LNER is selling it at £55.70
- this is because LNER is not actually selling you the SSU ticket; it is selling you the SSS ticket discounted by 50%. Until recently only LNER was allowed to use this 50% discount. You can now find it on other websites like Trainline.
- Unfortunately the LNER booking engine is so poor that it can't combine two discounts; it can't sell you a railcard discount at the same time as this 50% discount (which is just a work-round or hack; not a real discount). Consequently all railcard holders are being overcharged to travel using this ticket.

All in all, a bit of a mess.
 
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yorkie

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Indigo2 said:
Wasn't that only for a few weeks? I'm fairly sure it's been back to only the LNER site selling these fares for a while now.
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Both Trainline and Trainsplit are selling them at the moment (though there is a discrepancy with the price, with Trainline selling half price SSS and Trainsplit selling the SSU)
 
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