323235
Established Member
But that would then result in revenue abstraction.
Take a passenger who knows they will get one of three services on their line of route, say 18:00, 19:00 or 20:00, but won’t know which one until shortly before travel. Advance fares are available for all three. At the moment, the passenger might buy a flexible ticket. Or they might buy an advance for the last one and change it to the flexible ticket if they end up travelling earlier, paying the £10 fee.
Under your proposed system, the passenger will always buy the advance for the cheapest/last journey and change it if needed, as the most they’ll spend is the cost of the flexible fare in any event, so the railway will lose out on the possible sale of a flexible ticket at the outset.
The fee should be called a change fee.
You ignore the fact that the industry view of the TOCs who offer widespread advance singles is that they would rather passengers buy a counted place advance single, than a flexible ticket to manage demand. The RDG have make great fanfare of the high percentage of people who buy advance single tickets in the past, compared to those that buy flexible tickets.
They can't have it all. This is a fair compromise for the allegedly small trivial number of people (pre/post-covid) who would need to do this.
I don't think you can really call it revenue abstraction either on the basis of a £10.00 admin fee, where a passenger is using identical trains regardless.