Southeastern App offering off peak ticket for an itinerary in peak hours

[caitlinhoskins]

I am buying a ticket from Walmer to Hereford on 6/6 returning on 7/6. The SouthEastern app is offering my ticket for £108 and the itinerary includes the 8.30 train from Walmer to St Pancras which is High Speed and arrives into St Pancras before 10am so I know it's a peak service. How could a Super Off Peak ticket be valid at this time? Is it because I am travelling onwards to Hereford? Has the app made a mistake? I've attached a screenshot.

 

[hexagon789]

I am buying a ticket from Walmer to Hereford on 6/6 returning on 7/6. The SouthEastern app is offering my ticket for £108 and the itinerary includes the 8.30 train from Walmer to St Pancras which is High Speed and arrives into St Pancras before 10am so I know it's a peak service. How could a Super Off Peak ticket be valid at this time? Is it because I am travelling onwards to Hereford? Has the app made a mistake? I've attached a screenshot.

There's no such thing as a 'peak service' it is the ticket that determines any time restrictions.

As I see it, there's no restriction on arriving into St Pancras for this cross-London journey, but you cannot depart Paddington before 10:10 Mon-Fri, nor return from Hereford before 09:00 Mon-Fri.

Restriction YQ:

Return Travel​
Outward Travel​
Not valid on trains timed to depart: London Paddington after 04:29 and before 10:10 and after 15:01 and before 19:01. Reading after 04:29 and before 10:30 and after 15:30 and before 19:01. London Waterloo after 04:29 and before 08:15 and after 15:59 and before 19:01. Clapham Junction after 04:29 and before 08:20 and after 15:59 and before 19:01.
Travelling via Hereford and Oxford, not valid on trains to depart Hereford before 09:00. Travelling via Newport (South Wales), not valid on trains timed to depart Newport (South Wales) after 05:45 and before 10:00. Not valid on trains timed to arrive at London Waterloo before 11:48.

 

[Watershed]

I am buying a ticket from Walmer to Hereford on 6/6 returning on 7/6. The SouthEastern app is offering my ticket for £108 and the itinerary includes the 8.30 train from Walmer to St Pancras which is High Speed and arrives into St Pancras before 10am so I know it's a peak service. How could a Super Off Peak ticket be valid at this time? Is it because I am travelling onwards to Hereford? Has the app made a mistake? I've attached a screenshot.

Welcome to the forum. The app is correct to offer a Super Off-Peak ticket for the journeys you're looking at, and any other ticket site would offer you the same ticket as well.

Time restrictions depend on the ticket you hold; trains aren't blanket "peak" or "off-peak". In this case, a Walmer to Hereford Super Off-Peak ticket has no restrictions between Walmer and London. It only has restrictions between London and Hereford, and by leaving Walmer at 7/8am you are departing Paddington long after the morning restrictions end.

You can look up the restrictions for any particular ticket using the associated two-character restriction code - for example, the Super Off-Peak ticket you're looking at has code YQ. As you can see on nre.co.uk/YQ (which is the link that would be printed on the ticket), the restrictions only apply at Paddington, Waterloo, Reading etc.

Online booking sites have electronic equivalents of these restrictions, and use them to determine when Off-Peak and Super Off-Peak tickets can be sold.

 

[Sleepy]

Interestingly the GWR website won't sell that ticket for services departing before the 0932 ??

 

[caitlinhoskins]

Thank you. I often catch that 8.30 train into London and the ticket inspector always says over the intercom that it's a peak service and off-peak tickets are not valid which is what threw me. Just don't want to risk being fined as they are very hot on ticket inspections on the high speed.

 

[Watershed]

Thank you. I often catch that 8.30 train into London and the ticket inspector always says over the intercom that it's a peak service and off-peak tickets are not valid which is what threw me. Just don't want to risk being fined as they are very hot on ticket inspections on the high speed.

As with many such announcements/notices, they are generalised and not entirely accurate. Off-Peak tickets to London might not be valid, but many beyond London will be.

You can't be issued with a Penalty Fare for travelling at a restricted time with an Off-Peak ticket. The worst potential outcome is simply needing to pay the difference ("excess") to the Anytime (or whichever other) fare you should have paid in the first place.

 

[All Line Rover]

You can't be issued with a Penalty Fare for travelling at a restricted time with an Off-Peak ticket. The worst potential outcome is simply needing to pay the difference ("excess") to the Anytime (or whichever other) fare you should have paid in the first place.

You can't in principle. You can in practice. You can, in practice, receive much worse than a penalty fare.

 

[mangyiscute]

Thank you. I often catch that 8.30 train into London and the ticket inspector always says over the intercom that it's a peak service and off-peak tickets are not valid which is what threw me. Just don't want to risk being fined as they are very hot on ticket inspections on the high speed.

If the ticket inspector tells you the ticket isn't valid, they are wrong, and all you need to do is show them the itinerary you got while booking telling you to take this train with the ticket, and that is enough to prove validity. If they still insist you're wrong, pay up whatever they're asking for and then claim a refund for any extra you had to pay from southeastern (but I'd expect this would be super unlikely)

 

[kingston]

B

You can't in principle. You can in practice. You can, in practice, receive much worse than a penalty fare.

What does this mean?

 

[pedr]

It means some staff will issue Penalty Fares which (we on this forum argue) are not valid when people travel on time-restricted tickets outside their period of validity, and some staff and some train companies will initiate or threaten prosecution in these circumstances.

Which will, at the very least, cause time and effort to be expended convincing the train companies or appeal services that the ticket was valid on payment of an excess, rather than entirely invalid.

I have a little amount of sympathy for front-line staff: the difference between Advance ticket on the wrong train (usually completely invalid); train-company restricted ticket on the wrong train (ditto) and time- or route-restricted ticket on the wrong route or at a restricted time (probably valid if an excess is paid) is narrow and fact-specific. I doubt their training covers this in as much detail or with sufficient refresher training to cement these rules in their minds. And ticket scanning devices which don’t necessarily differentiate in their error response probably make this worse. I was concerned to hear that “already used/scanned” gives the same response as other forms of potentially invalid ticket on some scanners - when break in journey on return portions of tickets can mean one ticket is scanned on multiple days, if a long journey is broken overnight a few times.