Why is it not a requirement to enter expiry date of railcard for ticket purchases?

[Adam Williams]

It ought not be impossible to enter a railcard number for validation to produce a ticket with the card holders name plus ‘valid only with proof of identity’ printed on it

Tickets are transferable per the NRCoT

Will I get an additional discount for losing my right to transfer my ticket?

 

[Ianigsy]

I’d have thought that with the 16-25 and Senior railcards, most of them are going to be bought shortly after the first birthday when you become eligible, which should be a reminder of sorts.

 

[Harpo]

Tickets are transferable per the NRCoT

Will I get an additional discount for losing my right to transfer my ticket?

What other organisation offers a transferable discount?

 

[Adam Williams]

What other organisation offers a transferable discount?

Nobody seems to bat an eyelid at people transferring their Clubcard discount to customers without one (or kids, who are banned from having a Clubcard apparently) when I go shopping!

 

[AlterEgo]

This sort of thing gets suggested on here every so often but I've not heard of any serious proposal from a train company on this.

How much are train companies making from charging people £2000 when forgetting to renew a railcard when the real loss was £30 or so?

• Are ticket selling websites/machines/ticket offices going to have to enter the railcard number every time you purchase a ticket?

That would be a good idea and in line with almost every other loyalty or discount scheme, and much less open to obvious fraud, the risk of forgetting to renew, and so on.

• Will this number be checked against a central database or can I just input any number I like?

Yes, it should be. That it isn’t is just a hangover from where railcards used to be filled in on paper and with a pen, or printed off a machine. Very embarrassing situation for 2025.

• What happens if the link to the central database is down (it happens!)

“It might break” is a specious argument against change. How do all the other discount and loyalty schemes work?

• How much slower will the ticket purchasing process become because of this?

Hardly at all, especially if you have an account which saves your railcard.

• How does someone buy a ticket on behalf of someone else?

You use their number.

• Does the railcard have to match the person trying to buy the ticket?

It should match the traveller.

• If not, cue much sharing of railcard numbers amongst friends/family/social media etc as a workaround thus defeating the object.

The ticket should be tied to an individual which is what happens in very many places and is only controversial in Britain. There is a lot of reverse exceptionalism about our railways which breeds conservatism of a bad system - that the customers and the system are uniquely backwards or stupid, it cannot work here despite it working everywhere else, change is always bad, and so on.

One thing which really grates with me is how our enthusiast class is very bad at activism, being inward looking and self serving (“I like the Byzantine system which I understand and exploit”) rather than the urbanist type found in most developed countries.

This thread is absolutely peak Britbrain and I often show this forum to enthusiasts in other countries to see how British people love the crap system very much - it’s our system, it’s crap, and we won’t learn about anything else.

Arguments against change here are an argument for the status quo which is ridiculous and extremely anti-passenger, leading in some cases to people being criminalised or on the hook for thousands of pounds by rapacious train companies which aren’t properly funded. Very few businesses work in this way and we should actually just change the system.

I would nuke it tomorrow.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Mar 2025 ==

Nobody seems to bat an eyelid at people transferring their Clubcard discount to customers without one (or kids, who are banned from having a Clubcard apparently) when I go shopping!

Gosh, is that because supermarkets are customers oriented businesses who don’t treat every customer as a potential fraudster?

 

[The exile]

Gosh, is that because supermarkets are customers oriented businesses who don’t treat every customer as a potential fraudster?

However, while you will probably get away with using someone else’s cash and carry card for ages - there will be consequences if you’re found out.

 

[paul1609]

"You need a Railcard to use this ticket. Enter expiry date here dd/mm/yy"
If you don't have this, tick the 2nd box"
YOU HAVE TICKED THE SECOND BOX. GET A RAILCARD NOW!

Or words to that effect

Thats exactly what you have to do with a National Express coachcard, enter the serial number and expiry date to make a booking at the discounted rate. I make extensive use of mine, to date Ive never been asked to show it on the coach although you do have to carry it.

 

[saismee]

How much are train companies making from charging people £2000 when forgetting to renew a railcard when the real loss was £30 or so?

...

(Quoted on mobile and it was too difficult to select the specific text, apologies in advance)

The goal shouldn't necessarily be to prevent fraud (though it could certainly reduce it). It should be to protect the customer from a silly and much-to-common mistake, which seems to end up with them being charged hundreds or thousands of pounds (rather than the excess!!!). Adding a prompt with some extra steps isn't that big of a deal, you shouldn't be in such a rush that it matters. Why are people so against protecting customers? Yes, it is quite literally their own fault, but should they be so harshly punished? I understand that the charge can't be reduced to an excess because it would lead to fraud, but then surely it shouldn't be so easy to slip up.

Another concern of mine is the risk of certain groups adding a railcard discount by mistake. ESL (English as a second language), 16 year olds, and people with cognitive disabilities are three groups that may struggle with the rules surrounding railcards. Earlier today I saw a post from an 18 year old who used the 16-17 saver without realising they actually needed to purchase something for the deal, it's certainly a possible mistake (whether that user was telling the truth or not is another story). Elderly people are also going to struggle more now that ticket offices are few and far between in some areas - they can hardly renew it in person anyway!

There shouldn't be so much pushback on a feature that both protects honest people, and reduces the risk of fraudulent activity.

 

[AlterEgo]

However, while you will probably get away with using someone else’s cash and carry card for ages - there will be consequences if you’re found out.

Yeah, they're basically having the card confiscated and the membership closed - not having the police called or them prosecute you, or being invoiced for £2000 of stuff you already paid for. This is how things are handled in the real world by customer focused businesses who don't have the time or political incentive to keep penalising their customers to show how Very Mean they are and that Customers Are Bad And Sometimes Evil.

The railway is so completely broken culturally and is almost unique among British businesses in how low an opinion they have of their service users. This comes out in almost every aspect of railway culture, right down to the constant hectoring of announcements and signage.

 

[Hadders]

(Quoted on mobile and it was too difficult to select the specific text, apologies in advance)

The goal shouldn't necessarily be to prevent fraud (though it could certainly reduce it). It should be to protect the customer from a silly and much-to-common mistake, which seems to end up with them being charged hundreds or thousands of pounds (rather than the excess!!!). Adding a prompt with some extra steps isn't that big of a deal, you shouldn't be in such a rush that it matters. Why are people so against protecting customers? Yes, it is quite literally their own fault, but should they be so harshly punished? I understand that the charge can't be reduced to an excess because it would lead to fraud, but then surely it shouldn't be so easy to slip up.

Another concern of mine is the risk of certain groups adding a railcard discount by mistake. ESL (English as a second language), 16 year olds, and people with cognitive disabilities are three groups that may struggle with the rules surrounding railcards. Earlier today I saw a post from an 18 year old who used the 16-17 saver without realising they actually needed to purchase something for the deal, it's certainly a possible mistake (whether that user was telling the truth or not is another story). Elderly people are also going to struggle more now that ticket offices are few and far between in some areas - they can hardly renew it in person anyway!

There shouldn't be so much pushback on a feature that both protects honest people, and reduces the risk of fraudulent activity.

I’m all for making things easier but the proposals, from what I can understand, could have unintended consequences.

 

[Richardr]

Railcards are an anachronism, they should not exist. The only loss to the railway is the £30 cost of a new card. No other business could maintain a 35% attack on their set prices, unless the prices were inflated.

In most cases the railcards exist as it is thought they encourage rail use. Without them revenue would be down as fewer journeys would be made.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Mar 2025 ==

I’d have thought that with the 16-25 and Senior railcards, most of them are going to be bought shortly after the first birthday when you become eligible, which should be a reminder of sorts.

Just before the first qualifying journey after the birthday which may or may not be shortly after the birthday.

 

[Bletchleyite]

One reason is that you do not have to have a railcard to buy a ticket, only to use it.

Notably that hasn't always been the case. You used to have to show the Railcard at the time of purchase, though when this was the case Advances were far less of a thing.

 

[James H]

I bought an SNCF railcard last year (whilst booking ticket some months in advance of travel) and was quite impressed by how their system worked, with the railcard validity starting on the day of my ticket. More difficult to achieve in the UK with the profusion of sales channels

 

[Haywain]

Notably that hasn't always been the case. You used to have to show the Railcard at the time of purchase, though when this was the case Advances were far less of a thing.

That's true, you used to be able to buy a ticket that was dated for travel after the railcard had expired.

 

[Joshua_Harman]

With national express if you have a coach card you are required to input the card serial number and expiry date into the machines when purchasing discounted tickets if more than one is travelling each card must be input, and the card numbers are written on the ticket.

 

[sheff1]

So what other businesses give a generous 33%

Supermarket gave me a 50% discount the other day because I had a loyalty card.

IKEA give me a 100% discount on coffee, even if I purchase nothing at all.

 

[Harpo]

Supermarket gave me a 50% discount the other day because I had a loyalty card.

But didn’t have a button at the checkout saying ‘tick here for 50% off’.

No valid loyalty card, no discount.

 

[Adam Williams]

Arguments against change here are an argument for the status quo which is ridiculous and extremely anti-passenger, leading in some cases to people being criminalised or on the hook for thousands of pounds by rapacious train companies which aren’t properly funded. Very few businesses work in this way and we should actually just change the system.

Retailers already:

• Surface purchased Railcards at booking time, along with their expiry date (and only include them in the list if they're not expired)
• Offer automatic renew on Railcards that they sell, precisely to try and prevent criminalisation from simply forgetting to renew

So, I don't think the status quo is quite as poor or anti-passenger as is sometimes made out here - but the choice of retailer really does matter and picking one that is more customer-centric is probably more important than ever.

It seems to me like a lot of people have very valid reasons to criticise the "official" RDG retail function.

You're not going to see many people eager to add more friction on account of poor retail practice elsewhere. Particularly if it means your online flow becomes more painful than a ticket machine, or other online retailers.

But didn’t have a button at the checkout saying ‘tick here for 50% off’.

No valid loyalty card, no discount.

You can get a valid clubcard / other loyalty barcode just by googling. Or indeed, asking the other people around you at the self-checkout

 

[AlterEgo]

You're not going to see many people eager to add more friction on account of poor retail practice elsewhere. Particularly if it means your online flow becomes more painful than a ticket machine, or other online retailers.

How is entering a number and saving it to your account “painful”? This is such an uncontroversial change to suggest - that you enter your loyalty code when making a purchase rather than having to carry a bit of card under pain of criminal prosecution. It should be a requirement for every purchase method and there shouldn’t be such a thing as a physical or digital railcard.

 

[Adam Williams]

How is entering a number and saving it to your account “painful”?

They're reasonably long numbers, people will get them wrong. You'd be surprised how many people struggle with the basic concept of copying and pasting something without a introducing additional characters. If they've bought the Railcard from you it's easy - because you already know the number without needing them to input it. That would be great if you could sell every type of Railcard, but you're not allowed to; of course.

Not everyone will have an account with the retailer - I can tell you the proportion of guest bookings is much higher than you might expect. People don't want to remember yet another username and password, and not enough people use a password manager. Perhaps you want to encourage behaviour change here, but the first site that rolls this out will be at a disadvantage to everyone else who hasn't implemented the requirement. It will also disincentivise people switching retailer, because they'll have to set-up their Railcard preferences again. Ideally any new requirement to need this input before buying tickets would be rolled out across every retailer, including TOC retailers, at the same time. That's not exactly easy to coordinate.

The Railcard number will need to be validated, which takes time. The validation service may not be available 24/7. There is an open question as to whether that needs to be done in realtime or not.

When should the Railcard be revalidated? They can become invalid after purchase. How often should they be rechecked? Should tickets be cancelled if, after booking but before travel, the Railcard is no longer considered to be valid?

If you try and validate names, the names in the Railcard database likely won't match the ones on the account for a variety of reasons. Is that a showstopper, or do we not care about name mismatches? If we don't care, what stops people sharing Railcard numbers around? Should we limit the number of accounts that can use a particular Railcard number? Who will be responsible for storing the data of existing accounts associated with a Railcard?

If you require this online, you should also require this on TVMs so the playing field is level. How will input of Railcard numbers work there? The keyboards are awful to use, and people won't have a "TVM account". Should we introduce one, and require people to remember to "logout" of the TVM? Or perhaps we should retrofit Aztec barcode readers onto every TVM so the number can be read out of a Digital Railcard barcode. What about customers with a plastic Railcard?

It's very easy to oversimplify this into "just type in a number and save it into an account", but the reality is much more complex than that.

I am not saying I think the answer is "Do Nothing" or that there is no room for improvement, far from it - but I've already done quite a bit in this space to try and improve things and the industry collectively has grappled with this on numerous occasions in the past.

 

[talldave]

Gosh, is that because supermarkets are customers oriented businesses who don’t treat every customer as a potential fraudster?

Agree with everything you said. Railcard validation at point of purchase is a must - the system is archaic, actively aids full fare evaders, and walks the innocent and forgetful into the trauma of extortion by TOCs.

However, as a vaguely related light-hearted aside, I suffered from fraudulent use of my Nectar points last weekend, fortunately only a small amount as I'd used £20 worth only days before getting my son some Lego!

But one call to Nectar and I had a new card number, the app updated itself and within a few hours the stolen points were refunded. I suspect that Nectar fraud must be increasing and that explains why they've recently added a spending lock on the account. Mine's now on!

 

[Harpo]

You can get a valid clubcard / other loyalty barcode just by googling. Or indeed, asking the other people around you at the self-checkout

Big difference between a cheeky code share that gets 40p off your cornflakes and a tick box that gives you a third off of everything in the shop with an uncapped discount.

 

[styles]

Just a slight aside, but I sometimes buy tickets before I've bought the railcard. The most common example will be people who have railcards which will expire before then, and they may refrain from buying the new one until nearer their date of travel so that they get the longer validity.

In my case, I often buy Two Together railcards for longer journeys, and I'll often only buy the railcard a week before, but the ticket maybe 2-3 months in advance for the best fares.

So there's plenty of situations where you wouldn't know the railcard expiry date at point of purchase. Similar reason you don't need your passport details to buy flight tickets, but do need to complete advance passenger information say 24 hours before.

 

[Hadders]

Agree with everything you said. Railcard validation at point of purchase is a must - the system is archaic, actively aids full fare evaders, and walks the innocent and forgetful into the trauma of extortion by TOCs.

I'm travelling on 8th June and I want to buy tickets today while they're cheap. My railcard expires at the end of May and I intend to renew it. Can I buy tickets today even though on the day of travel (as things stand today when I buy the ticket) I won't have a railcard for the day of travel?

I'm buying some Advance tickets for travel at the end of June with a friend. I don't often travel with them but a Two Together Railcard will pay for itself on this trip. Can I buy the tickets today and purchase the railcard the day before travel?

My mum is not tech savvy and has asked me to buy some tickets for her. She has a Senior Railcard but doesn't have an online account. Can I buy tickets for her using my account and apply a railcard discount?

I'm travelling to London with a friend tomorrow. We're meeting at the station and travelling together. I've got a Network Railcard, he hasn't so I've told him to buy a Network Railcard discounted ticket for himself as he can benefit from my railcard discount as we're travelling together. How does he buy this ticket as he doesn't have a railcard of his own?

 

[MarlowDonkey]

Railcard validation at point of purchase is a must

There are numerous exceptions where it doen't work as detailed in this thread.

What I find amazing is the absence of a requirement on retailers to retain historic details of railcards issued and their validity dates. TOC are able to get retailers to divulge a history of past ticket purchases including whether a railcard was applied. They aren't required to disclose, whether to their knowledge, a valid railcard was held.

 

[Harpers Tate]

Just a slight aside, but I sometimes buy tickets before I've bought the railcard. The most common example will be people who have railcards which will expire before then, and they may refrain from buying the new one until nearer their date of travel so that they get the longer validity.

In my case, I often buy Two Together railcards for longer journeys, and I'll often only buy the railcard a week before, but the ticket maybe 2-3 months in advance for the best fares.

So there's plenty of situations where you wouldn't know the railcard expiry date at point of purchase. Similar reason you don't need your passport details to buy flight tickets, but do need to complete advance passenger information say 24 hours before.

This. Anything that ties a booking to any given aspect of a specific railcard effectively precludes anyone from buying in advance of the earliest purchase or renewal date of the railcard. That wouldn't matter if it weren't for the pricing of Advances which (typically) increases as the date of travel gets closer and/or that certain trains are reservation only and can't be booked once full. Thus if my railcard expires on 31 May and I want an advance for travel on 1 June, or a compulsory reservation (or both) - and I have every intention of renewing my card prior to 1 June - then I can't take advantage of the first (cheapest) release of Advance fares or best seat availability (or both).

After all, a railcard does not have to be valid for purchase (online, at least); only at the point of travel.

 

[Ziggiesden]

We will refuse a sale at the Travel Shop at Haymarket unless you have your RailCard with you to prove entitlement. However, online there is nothing to stop you applying a discount and then chancing it. We regularly get people with the Scottish Youth RailCard (SRY) (via Young Scot) who have discounts applied when the RailCard portion of their Young Scot (SRY) expired three years ago. They "think" it is valid until the date shown on the National Entitlement Card (NEC) that contains the various products, including free bus travel here in Scotland until the age of 22. The SRY expires at the age of 19, although you can still get a 50% Rate Season Ticket for up to four months into the age of 19. Yet to meet someone who has actually read the T&Cs but considering they are at the bottom of that section of the ScotRail WebSite that links to National Rail, I’m not surprised. The Scottish Government website is pretty poor too, in presenting key information.


In my old BR days this was not an issue. With online retailing it must be losing hundreds of millions in fraud. The retail systems need to link to the RailCards databases. No valid RailCard for the booked journey, no discount. Simple.

As usual, in the mad rush to save pennies by closing Booking Offices, pounds were lost, that subsequently added up to quite a bit, but no one will ever know the true amount.

Incompetence at its finest.

We recently had a case of a guy using the SRY for a period of three years after the discount expired by booking online. The fraud amounted to more than £5,000 – he pled guilty.

This is, of course, money that could have been spent on the NHS and Social Care but as everything in Public Finances is dependent on what goes in and out of the Consolidated Fund it was not. In a sense, defrauding a Nationalised portion of the Railway is defrauding yourself, as well as everyone you know. As, we’ve seen recently taxes go up that are eventually passed on to us, the consumer.

 

[TUC]

Because it's OK to expect people to take responsibility for themselves in matters like checking whether their railcard has expired.

 

[MikeWh]

We will refuse a sale at the Travel Shop at Haymarket unless you have your RailCard with you to prove entitlement.

Then you'll lose sales where it's not possible to have a railcard at the time of purchase. For that to work you would need it to be ok to renew a railcard before the earliest date that cheap advances go on sale. Similarly you'd need to be able to apply for a senior railcard to cover the same situation before the age of 60.

 

[sheff1]

We will refuse a sale at the Travel Shop at Haymarket unless you have your RailCard with you to prove entitlement.

Sounds like Haymarket is seeking to rival Sheffield in detering use of the ticket office. Doesn’t surprise me having encountered the fantasists at the ticket barriers a number of times.