Reading all this lets me know how little I know and how much there is to know but as a simple user of trains I guess I think life is too short beyond the odd (or should I say "not so odd"
) split.
The one time I used something a little bit adventurous I kept waiting nervously for a Scotrail guard to get out the thumb screws but once I had been checked out OK I enjoyed the rest of the journeys
Questions for RJ if reading
Do all these combinations allow you to travel on a through train and how much do you think you tend to save on a journey or in a year?
I commute once or twice a week for 9 months of the year, saving around £65 per journey or £2500 - £3000 annually through use of creative ticketing. Even factoring in the opportunity costs related to dealing with all the disputes, it's still worth it. Yes, I always travel on the fastest train possible.
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Ok, pleased to say that my commutes on EMT have finished for the next few months
On the last sb trip, I boarded a service at Leicester which was fast to London. The TM made an announcement, sounding a lot like the guy that attempted to stop me boarding an early train out of London one morning and issued me with a UFN that got cancelled by EMT themselves, so I wasn't looking forward to talking to him again. To my surprise an RPI appeared on the train. I handed over my whole ticket wallet showing ticket used along with the appropriate supporting documentation. He said that he was confused but before I had a chance to say anything, he said "Oh hang on, you're the guy who uses the weird ticket combinations aren't you? Don't worry, I've had my briefing" and he carried on. Just as well as as of last week I moved onto a brand new ticket which needs even more explaining than the previous ones did
.
Yesterday morning, I travelled on the 05:45 ex St Pancras. The TM himself was barriering the train. I was the first one up and he inspected my ticket. He said it wasn't valid, but every reason he tried to come up with, I countered with the appropriate explanations. Before long, he gave up, saying that he'd let me travel, but he wasn't sure and would get it checked out.
It was interesting to see the varied reactions I got to the tickets I used. Most problems wouldn't have arisen if these guards had a basic, up to date knowledge of the National Rail Conditions of Carriage. Granted in the last month or two, I've been using more complicated tickets that fall beyond the scope of a cursory inspection, but while some guards were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, others were tenacious in their desperation to "punish" me for not buying a new Anytime ticket from them. Whilst they don't know what they're talking about, I'm not handing over a single penny that I don't owe them. Not even to the ones who try to force me to hand over a payment card when I told them I have no money allocated to give them for a new ticket when I already have a valid one they don't want to accept.
It was interesting to see the phenomenon of closed ticket offices and TVMs that didn't offer the ticket I required. Guards sometimes refused to issue the full range of tickets as they're supposed to. I left my home in London at 4am yesterday morning. My local station is weird, the ticket office is open from virtually the first to the last train of the day, it has TVMs as well as a working PTT machine. Anyway, I walked to the TVM which is on the roadside and was able to purchase my ticket for use on EMT. Southern's TVMs are excellent for allowing the purchase of tickets from anywhere to anywhere, plus they print the restriction code on Off Peak tickets as well, which has proven to be useful in fending off guards who are too lazy to check the restriction for themselves. I would love for all TVMs in the country to do this but as it goes, the Southern ones are something of a luxury to use for someone like me. Had this not been available, with both ticket offices at STP shut at 05:45, I would have had to buy my ticket from the guard which I seriously doubt I'd be able to do without some problems. This is something I have been made to dread. I did explore the option of online purchase and ToD but there's a weakness in that online websites are too restrictive in what they're willing to sell.
I await the next fares change with interest. Closure of loopholes I have been using will solely be for my (dis)benefit. If anybody else in the country was using tickets the way I do on those services, it would have been flagged by staff already. The reason given of "preventing other people from saving huge amounts doing the same thing" is something of a red herring, given that no one else has been doing it for however many years the loopholes have been open. I'm not Martin Lewis and see no merit in broadcasting details of loopholes. Closing loopholes in the hope that I'll start buying through SORs is
never going to work unless the powers that be see fit to lock down the ticketing system so heavily that a significant number of passengers will be majorly inconvenienced with the lack of flexibility. If that ever happens, I'll simply use the coach or buy a car. Despite me "commuting," I actually always arrive at my destination several hours or even a day before I commence whatever business I'm doing, sitting at "home" or chasing 37s at either end in the meantime, so it's a minor for me.
It was great to have the issue addressed through retail/revenue staff being briefed about me. Guards that don't know what they're doing and don't know when to admit that they don't know waste everybody's time and money. Some have chosen to spend up to an hour on me as they don't want to accept my valid ticket, when they could have been sorting out a whole train full of passengers. This in turn causes more unnecessary work for their accounts/prosecutions departments, IRCAS and the HQ, plus my own time and money is wasted getting their very poorly judged actions reversed. It only makes sense to order them to stop doing this, Is one person's personal pride trip really worth creating all that unnecessary work?
Anyway, this is all great stuff for me and may well go into my dissertation, tentatively based on the UK railways fares system