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SailRail Changes again

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barrykas

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Evening all,

As part of the changes to SailRail that come into effect with NFM11 on 2nd January, a fundamental change to how the ferries appear in the reservations system has taken place, which may result in problems trying to retail SailRail tickets at stations.

Briefly, the ferries now appear in the reservations system as Sleeper services! As such, some Ticket Issuing Systems may get confused (and that's an understatement) when trying to issue a ticket, and if you use the "Quick Book" feature on Journey Planner (the replacement for RJIS) it tells you the ferry is closed for reservations.

The workaround to this is to use the "View Availability" function in Journey Planner to make the reservations individually.

Cheers,

Barry
 
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bkhtele

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Sail rail to Belfast via Holyhead. Still can't seem to buy these online. Journey shows but when you select buy no journeys are available. Belfast is not working at all!
 

4SRKT

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Will this farce be resolved soon? It's bad enough the highly restrictive changes that are coming into force without total confusion or even inability to buy the now greatly reduced in usefulness tickets.
 

island

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I suspect the priorities of the powers-that-be are to ensure that people travelling within the UK buy anytime fares rather than using these particularly low fares and finishing short. The demand for SailRail is minuscule so I would say there is not a substantial concern about people's noses being put out of joint by curtailing SailRail.
 

Daysaver

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Booking it as a "sleeper" requires the passengers name, gender and contact number.

I was under the impression that this was to help in the cases where ferries are cancelled, to inform the passengers before they travel type thing.

Ive never had a problem booking through view availability for a passenger either, its the only way I use as you can see if there is availability on the boat or not. When there isnt availability, many ticket offices just sell the through ticket without a reservation for the boat, which causes problems.
 

bkhtele

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Anytime tickets were great, never had a problem with ferry. Only once booked on 12 noon Scotland ferry that didn't exist. I had checked Stena and knew to get a later ferry. My biggest problem has been reservation system insisting that no train existed where it did! Can't book Holyhead or Cairnryan route today online (or yesterday)
 

Greeby

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Here in Tribute land, we've figured out how to issue Standby tickets with only a ferry reservation. But on Advances, there seems to be no hope. Bizarrely, the Standby ticket comes out with the "Travelcard" wording and TFL logo at the top! :| We're waiting to hear back from Arriva's pricing manager.
 

barrykas

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Here in Tribute land, we've figured out how to issue Standby tickets with only a ferry reservation. But on Advances, there seems to be no hope. Bizarrely, the Standby ticket comes out with the "Travelcard" wording and TFL logo at the top! :| We're waiting to hear back from Arriva's pricing manager.

Haven't had cause to issue one yet...Well, more accurately I did, but I gave up when I kept getting "Service is closed" messages trying to use the "Quick Book" function on Journey Planner because I'd neglected to read the "Emergency" bulletin which mentioned the changes.

I'll have to have a play around tomorrow and see what FasTIS does when I try to issue one, apart from moaning about routeing guide issues. ;)

UPDATE: Having now had a play at doing a "Standby" ticket, FasTIS gets horribly confused and won't do the reservations, so those have to be done in Journey Planner, but it does print the ticket correctly.

Cheers,

Barry
 
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bkhtele

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I am off to my local station to buy ticket to Belfast via Dublin ferry port wish me luck. If they struggle (which they usually do) any pointers other than those mentioned that I should give to make the system work
 

island

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Apparently they should look in the "sleeper" section, per above. Good luck.
 

bkhtele

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Well done Swindon FGW travel centre, at one stage 4 staff were helping me get my sail rail ticket, they were great! Now a proud owner of an advance sail rail Swindon - cheltenham- Birmingham-Holyhead-Dublin-Enterprise to Belfast - arriving in Carrickfergus N.Ireland. then coming back Stena Cairnryan sail rail anytime single - bus Ayr- Glasgow sleeper to Euston. Not bad value £97.50 plus sleeper supplement. (oh plus £7.50 advance next day Paddington to Swindon) It did all take around 45 mins, the booking system is complicated but they did have all their printed 2012 guidelines to hand!
 

Greeby

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15 Apr 2011
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Further update. We've heard back from the Arriva pricing manager. Apparently the Travelcard bit was happening because ticket type SLD (Standby) was once used for a form of Travelcard, this has now been corrected. We should have Advance sales opened up by the end of the week.
 

barrykas

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Further update. We've heard back from the Arriva pricing manager. Apparently the Travelcard bit was happening because ticket type SLD (Standby) was once used for a form of Travelcard, this has now been corrected. We should have Advance sales opened up by the end of the week.

*thinks back* Hrm...If memory serves, wasn't it the old MML "London Day Out", which was withdrawn years ago? Though quite why Tribute still tries to issue it as a Travelcard is left as an exercise for the reader! As noted previously, FasTIS will quite happily issue the "Standby" tickets in the "normal" Advance type format.

Cheers,

Barry
 

quarella

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7 Dec 2009
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And I thought booking on CRS was complicated. :D It was preferable to Tribute though. Very frustrating to have a totally valid journey that Tribute would not allow you to book.
 
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