Trainline selling advanced singles before TOC?

[Denzo]

I'm a Scotsman living in London and I always plan my trips home far enough in advance that I get the best deals (often £40 return for standard class or less than £40 single in first class)

I usually put the ticket alert on trainline and wait for the email but then actually buy the ticket from the TOC to sidestep the booking fee, and in the case of VTEC, to get free WiFi.

I'm going again in June and had already booked my (weekday) London Kings Cross [KGX] > Edinburgh [EDB] ticket by taking advantage of the 24 week advanced booking window on weekdays.

I want to travel back to London on a Sunday (specifically 25 June) and got the email from trainline today. But on the VTEC website it's still £90 single.

In the end I bit the bullet because £0.75 booking fee isn't enough to put me off as good a deal as £16.50 one way, but I'd like to know why trainline are able to offer advanced i jets on this route before the actual TOC do?

 

[Clip]

Whose website did you look at first and did you put anything in either basket first as if you done train line you may have taken the last one out at that fare and are you sure its the same route? VTEC vs VTWC on the trainline?

 

[Clip]

In fact after looking at the VTEC site I get this

11:3015:5404:24hrs
£32.50
12:0016:4004:40hrs
£32.50
12:2016:4404:24hrs
£32.50
12:3016:5004:20hrs
£40.00
13:0017:4104:41hrs
£32.50
13:1917:4804:29hrs
£25.00
13:3017:5304:23hrs
£40.00
14:0018:4004:40hrs
£32.50
14:3018:5004:20hrs

So unsure where you have got 90 notes for a single from

 

[Joe Paxton]

I think there was another thread about something similar recently.

What's daft is that on this VTEC page about ticket availability, it clearly says tickets for weekend travel are available up to Sunday 13 August - and 25 June is not one of the excluded dates either.

The VTEC booking site seemingly isn't happy with lots of other weekend dates for which tickets should already be on sale, so it's not just the 25 June.

For what it's worth, it's possible to buy said ticket for 25 June via the VTWC booking site - which is 'powered by' the Trainline - with no booking fee. The booking form on the VTWC front page is keen to redirect you to the VTEC site for journeys on the East Coast, but you don't have to accept that redirection. However it's perhaps just easier to get to the VTWC booking interface via this URL:

www.buytickets.virgintrains.co.uk

Other Trainline-powered sites such as Greater Anglia, ATW and XC don't let you search for tickets for a date so far ahead, but the VTWC site is perfectly happy to do so. I'm guessing that's because any site selling these 'extended booking period' tickets needs to take on the administrative burden of contacting passengers if the times of the booked trains change?

 

[Wallsendmag]

I think there was another thread about something similar recently.

What's daft is that on this VTEC page about ticket availability, it clearly says tickets for weekend travel are available up to Sunday 13 August - and 25 June is not one of the excluded dates either.

The VTEC booking site seemingly isn't happy with lots of other weekend dates for which tickets should already be on sale, so it's not just the 25 June.

For what it's worth, it's possible to buy said ticket for 25 June via the VTWC booking site - which is 'powered by' the Trainline - with no booking fee. The booking form on the VTWC front page is keen to redirect you to the VTEC site for journeys on the East Coast, but you don't have to accept that redirection. However it's perhaps just easier to get to the VTWC booking interface via this URL:

www.buytickets.virgintrains.co.uk

Other Trainline-powered sites such as Greater Anglia, ATW and XC don't let you search for tickets for a date so far ahead, but the VTWC site is perfectly happy to do so. I'm guessing that's because any site selling these 'extended booking period' tickets needs to take on the administrative burden of contacting passengers if the times of the booked trains change?

Looks like it's fixed now

 

[Fuzzytop]

For what it's worth, it's possible to buy said ticket for 25 June via the VTWC booking site - which is 'powered by' the Trainline - with no booking fee. The booking form on the VTWC front page is keen to redirect you to the VTEC site for journeys on the East Coast, but you don't have to accept that redirection.

though ofc worth mentioning that if you buy Virgin Trains EC tickets on the Virgin Trains website, you don't get the complimentary Wi-Fi code.

 

[ASharpe]

This was an issue with 12 week out advances a few years ago when I used to travel London-Yorkshire weekly.

Back then they had a guarantee that only East Coast sold their cheapest fares and I took them up on that once or twice.

Seems to have gone with Virgin however.

 

[Joe Paxton]

The price promise still exists with VTEC.

Seems kinda ridiculous that whilst the VTEC extended booking horizon was loaded into the NRS (and so tickets were available via The Trainline), VTEC's own site hadn't been properly configured to sell these tickets. Hopefully someone somewhere is living and learning from this!