ticketing faqs

[ess]

as a passenger for many years it wasn't really until i stumbled upon this forum that i started to understand some of the finer points of rail ticketing. it occurs to me that national rail aren't doing a very good job of raising awareness of some aspects of the ticketing system, so i think an faq section on tickets on nationalrail.co.uk would be really useful. questions would be things like...

- what is an excess fare?
- what is a penalty fare?
- what is a permit to travel?
- can i buy season tickets for any journey?
- what happens if i buy a season ticket but i move house?

what other questions would you put?

 

[yorkie]

as a passenger for many years it wasn't really until i stumbled upon this forum that i started to understand some of the finer points of rail ticketing. it occurs to me that national rail aren't doing a very good job of raising awareness of some aspects of the ticketing system, so i think an faq section on tickets on nationalrail.co.uk would be really useful. questions would be things like...

- what is an excess fare?

They don't like us to know about excess fares. Many ticket office staff refuse to issue them or do not issue them correctly. So I don't think they will do this unfortunately (but there are plans to make The Manual publicly viewable which will solve the issue).

- what is a penalty fare?

See: Penalty Fares

- what is a permit to travel?

Described on the Penalty Fares page.

- can i buy season tickets for any journey?

To see if a Season ticket is available: Season ticket calculator
Info about Season tickets: Season tickets

- what happens if i buy a season ticket but i move house?

See Season ticket conditions under 'Changeovers'

 

[RJ]

The internal National Rail site on Excess Fares states that the industry is having a review on the subject, but then it has been saying that for years.

To be honest, the majority of people don't really need to know about them. People can ask to "pay the difference" or "change their ticket" and in most cases, clerks will provide them with the appropriate excess. Plus, there are other rules that can take precedence over the Excess Fares Procedures which vary depending on the area travelled in so there's plenty of scope to add unnecessary confusion to an already cumbersome system!

Some people have twigged onto the fact that there's money to be saved by wringing the excess system. As with other workarounds, the information is there for people with the correct mindset to extract and take advantage of, but I for one don't feel that it should be compulsory to advertise. I think it'd just add a layer of complexity for your average traveller.

 

[ess]

thing is when i first heard of excess fares i assumed excess fare = fine (ie an adjective rather that a noun) and i assumed a £10 refund fee would be the least worst option