Virgin Trains abolishes cheaper First Class 'Advance' fares in 2015?

[ivanhoe]

I imagine they are taking note of ever-increasing numbers of business users not being allowed First Class, and therefore considering that it is increasingly going to become a leisure product?

Neil

In one Neil. In 2010, nobody from my University could travel first class. This was also repeated across great swathes of the Public Sector. Even the Private Sector cut back . The savings were not astronomical but it was a statement that Public monies had to be seen to be used more frugally.

 

[bb21]

In one Neil. In 2010, nobody from my University could travel first class. This was also repeated across great swathes of the Public Sector. Even the Private Sector cut back . The savings were not astronomical but it was a statement that Public monies had to be seen to be used more frugally.

Using a "one size fit all measure" is a bit silly.

My university doesn't have this problem. In fact my HoD thinks it is ludicrous to buy a Standard Class ticket if a First Class one is cheaper and would personally sign off those claims where appropriate.

 

[dave87016]

Yes I have looked at January as for the past 2-3 years ive used the following services and the 06:40, 08:15 and 09:41am Preston - Glasgow and the 18:40pm Glasgow - Preston have always had first class tickets available at £24:70 with railcard now the cheapest tier on all the above services £35:30

 

[yorksrob]

In one Neil. In 2010, nobody from my University could travel first class. This was also repeated across great swathes of the Public Sector. Even the Private Sector cut back . The savings were not astronomical but it was a statement that Public monies had to be seen to be used more frugally.

Indeed. As I've said on previous posts, the best thing that the railway could do would be to provide an easy way to upgrade a standard ticket to the equivalent first class one on presentation at the ticket office (anyone who's had to procure train tickets through a large organisation will know what I mean !).

Too late for me though, as my employer has now started clamping down heavily on all travel !

 

[StephenVT]

From what our team on the front line know, we'll be converting our 9 carriage trains to have less first class seats. coaches A,B,C,D,E,G will all be standard. H,J and K will be first class. there's no current plans to change the 11 carriage Pendolinos as of yet!

 

[MidnightFlyer]

From what our team on the front line know, we'll be converting our 9 carriage trains to have less first class seats. coaches A,B,C,D,E,G will all be standard. H,J and K will be first class. there's no current plans to change the 11 carriage Pendolinos as of yet!

Indeed, that was confirmed in the extended franchise agreement a few months ago.

 

[yorksrob]

From what our team on the front line know, we'll be converting our 9 carriage trains to have less first class seats. coaches A,B,C,D,E,G will all be standard. H,J and K will be first class. there's no current plans to change the 11 carriage Pendolinos as of yet!

Three still seems like enough to be going on with to be fair.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Using a "one size fit all measure" is a bit silly.

My university doesn't have this problem. In fact my HoD thinks it is ludicrous to buy a Standard Class ticket if a First Class one is cheaper and would personally sign off those claims where appropriate.

Yes, that makes sense - travel should always be on the cheapest available ticket offering the level of flexibility required for the journey.

It is not common (but not completely unknown) for there to be a First Class ticket cheaper than the cheapest Standard Advance ticket on the same service. If there is, fine. But what some people do is compare the price of a First Class Advance ticket with a Standard Anytime or Standard Off-Peak, and that is taking the mick because they are not the same product.

The one case I might allow that (were I an employer) is if an employee would normally travel back on a train where only an Anytime or Off Peak was valid (no Standard Advances) and they are willing to wait until later in the day at their own cost (i.e. without overtime pay, and without claiming any extra meals unless the total still came in under the cost of the earlier train) to come back First Class. But not if there was a Standard Advance ticket available at the time they were needed by the business to travel back.

Neil
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

From what our team on the front line know, we'll be converting our 9 carriage trains to have less first class seats. coaches A,B,C,D,E,G will all be standard. H,J and K will be first class. there's no current plans to change the 11 carriage Pendolinos as of yet!

Would it make sense, if a coach F will be the same as a coach F layout on the 11-car, to change G to F, thus making them consistent between the two types?

Neil
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Indeed. As I've said on previous posts, the best thing that the railway could do would be to provide an easy way to upgrade a standard ticket to the equivalent first class one on presentation at the ticket office (anyone who's had to procure train tickets through a large organisation will know what I mean !).

I agree. On SBB you just buy a "surclassement" (in the French bit, I forget the German) which is available at any ticket office. It's charged as a slight premium, but it's dead easy. My employer only pays Standard/2nd class, and as such I've upgraded myself out of my own pocket in this way on a few occasions.

Of course you *can* do this at a ticket office in the UK if your ticket is an Anytime one. However, the absence of First Class Off Peak tickets on most TOCs means if your ticket is an Off-Peak it's rather pricey, never mind if it's an Advance.

Of course on weekends there's Weekend First.

Neil

 

[Starmill]

I imagine they are taking note of ever-increasing numbers of business users not being allowed First Class, and therefore considering that it is increasingly going to become a leisure product?

Neil

The price elasticy of demand for lesiure travel is a lot lower than for business travel. So, although you're right about businesses being in First on expenses is sometimes looked down on (certainly not always!). This doesn't explain why increasing the price is a good idea!

 

[Bletchleyite]

The price elasticy of demand for lesiure travel is a lot lower than for business travel. So, although you're right about businesses being in First on expenses is sometimes looked down on (certainly not always!). This doesn't explain why increasing the price is a good idea!

Indeed not, though it would explain the reduction in provision (on the 9 car sets) in line with a reduction in sales.

Neil

 

[martynbristow]

Erm
Has someone from Virgin been reading this thread
It would seem there's some £30odd tickets crept in for the 31st Jan
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Liverpool-London may I add
It was a lot more the other day
It's available on the 1247

 

[Starmill]

Ah, very good. It's become a guessing game of when the lowest tier are released. They are probably testing the water to see how many people who hang on the release of tickets can be persuades to switch up a tier.

 

[bb21]

I'm kind of lost now. Does that mean this thread started out on an incorrect observation as it turned out?

 

[Squaddie]

I'm kind of lost now. Does that mean this thread started out on an incorrect observation as it turned out?

I think the observation (that there were no lowest-tier Advance tickets available for a particular period) was correct, but the conclusion (that they must therefore have been abolished) was, possibly, an assumption too far.

But it does seem that some rail companies are now releasing Advance tickets in an unpredictable fashion, meaning that it is not always better to buy them as soon as they go on sale.

 

[All Line Rover]

I checked January availability today, and the cheaper Advance 1st tickets have returned! It seems that Virgin aren't concerned about cheap tickets 'devaluing their image'.

I don't care either way about the availability of cheap Advance 1st tickets, but I am annoyed that they were deliberately hidden for around 3-4 weeks, only to be made available around 8 weeks in advance. Advance tickets are supposed to be cheaper the further in advance you book. I would not be happy if I had booked more expensive Advance 1st tickets for travel in January, only to discover that the cheaper tickets were eventually released.

Why has Virgin done this? Should they do this?

 

[Starmill]

I don't care either way about the availability of cheap Advance 1st tickets, but I am annoyed that they were deliberately hidden for around 3-4 weeks, only to be made available around 8 weeks in advance. Advance tickets are supposed to be cheaper the further in advance you book. I would not be happy if I had booked more expensive Advance 1st tickets for travel in January, only to discover that the cheaper tickets were eventually released.

Why has Virgin done this? Should they do this?

If you were unhappy about it, they could consider themselves to have won

They are doing it, I think, because it makes them more money. I'd guess that people doing their yield analysis wanted to know what the price elasticity of demand was for the cheapest tickets. If they were testing how many they can sell at the higher rate they might have been considering removing the lower tiers from sale - on some trains or all of them. I'm afraid that this 'Advance tickets are supposed to be cheaper the further in advance you book.' while it would be nice for consumer groups and people like us, is not how the most effective examples of yield analysis works. The principle of price discrimination dictates that more effective ways to segment the market are going to increase the amount of consumer surplus a firm can take up. Releasing the very cheapest tickets a little after the others may well be a way they have found (or were looking for, in this exercise) to better segment their market.

As for should they? Well I dunno - it depends what you think first class is for. I think what should be done is to increase rail capacity at a much higher rate than demand growth in order to reduce the average price of tickets to take up more custom - and away from the roads. Unfortunately there's basically a 0% chance of that happening until HS2 - although it kind of is happening with the introduction of HSTs in Scotland. Also note that on SoctRail they don't really seem to do Advance First, but FC walk up tickets are a consistent 150% the price of standard. Imagine that on the WCML!

Holding back the cheapest tiers has been done by other TOCs (notably East Coast) too. It's also routine as a sliding scale on both airlines and in hotels to best match demand to price.

 

[Bletchleyite]

FC walk up tickets are a consistent 150% the price of standard. Imagine that on the WCML!

If they did that I would start travelling First Class by default on longer journeys. I bet I'm not the only one.

(I will not, as noted elsewhere, switch to Advance tickets - though I do use Weekend First fairly often)

Neil

 

[Greeby]

First Class on the West Coast where Virgin own the fare flow is priced at Standard X 1.5. Unfortunately it's 1.5 of the obscenely high Anytime fares.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Exactly. For me to travel FC as a matter of course it would have to be on the Off Peaks as well.

 

[Greenback]

If there was an off peak first class ticket that was 1.5 or 2x the off peak fare, it might encourage people to upgrade and gain more revenue for the TOC as opposed to having to convert FC carriages to SC because the latter Advance fares are too low and the walk up fares in FC are too high.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If there was an off peak first class ticket that was 1.5 or 2x the off peak fare, it might encourage people to upgrade and gain more revenue for the TOC as opposed to having to convert FC carriages to SC because the latter Advance fares are too low and the walk up fares in FC are too high.

I think 2x would be too much, but at 1.5-1.6x it would certainly attract me, provided it was restricted in the same way as the normal Standard fare (no TOC specific nonsense, break of journey restrictions etc). I think First Class would become the default for longer journeys.

Neil

 

[deltic]

If there was an off peak first class ticket that was 1.5 or 2x the off peak fare, it might encourage people to upgrade and gain more revenue for the TOC as opposed to having to convert FC carriages to SC because the latter Advance fares are too low and the walk up fares in FC are too high.

I tend to agree - for business I am often able to buy a first advance outbound because its not much more expensive than standard or in cases of trips from London to Manchester can be half the price of a standard advance! Coming back I tend not to buy advance tickets as I need more flexibility. I can get a cheap standard off-peak but the first class ticket is 3-4 times more expensive which I cant justify. So I end up in standard not being able to work while first is empty.

I'm not interested in the complementries just the room to be able to work - an almost guaranteed power socket (the batteries in my laptop and phone are both useless) and some peace and quiet.

 

[martynbristow]

I checked January availability today, and the cheaper Advance 1st tickets have returned! It seems that Virgin aren't concerned about cheap tickets 'devaluing their image'.

I don't care either way about the availability of cheap Advance 1st tickets, but I am annoyed that they were deliberately hidden for around 3-4 weeks, only to be made available around 8 weeks in advance. Advance tickets are supposed to be cheaper the further in advance you book. I would not be happy if I had booked more expensive Advance 1st tickets for travel in January, only to discover that the cheaper tickets were eventually released.

Why has Virgin done this? Should they do this?

I pointed this out 2 weeks ago!
Virgin is a business and are entitled to price their products to meet the needs of the public. the period the tickets were withdrawn for were around a potentially very busy period. They may have expected a rush for January tickets for people travelling and this hasn't happened. From my experience the cheaper fares are actually always in the middle range and I've never booked first class stupidly in advance because it wasn't cheap.
To me this seems like classic supply and demand, which incidentally is the whole point of advance ticketing!

 

[Greenback]

I pointed this out 2 weeks ago!
Virgin is a business and are entitled to price their products to meet the needs of the public.

...or the business! Yes, that is correct provided they remain within the regulations. They can do this as Advance tickets aren't regulated as far as I'm aware.

 

[All Line Rover]

I pointed this out 2 weeks ago!

I checked two weeks ago when you made your post and the cheapest tier wasn't available on the services I looked at, whereas they are now. Perhaps you saw promotional fares?

 

[GodAtum]

This is very concerning. As you may have noticed I plan to go to Bolton every weekend. If i cannot get an advanced 1st class ticket I will have to stop my plans

 

[Bletchleyite]

Standard isn't terrible you know

 

[Starmill]

If there was an off peak first class ticket that was 1.5 or 2x the off peak fare, it might encourage people to upgrade and gain more revenue for the TOC as opposed to having to convert FC carriages to SC because the latter Advance fares are too low and the walk up fares in FC are too high.

Scarcely has more sense been said on the matter of First/Standard balance.

 

[Butts]

Standard isn't terrible you know

Perhaps not , but the clientele are

 

[Squaddie]

Standard isn't terrible you know

Unfortunately, Standard is often terrible, being overcrowded with little legroom, few tables and sometimes no window view. If I can't get a decently-priced first class advance I almost always choose not to travel.