Curious TPE booking experience

[Ianigsy]

I'm just wondering whether anybody has any particular wisdom about a booking experience I've just had.

Thanks to a family commitment falling about 36 hours before I'm due to fly to New York, I've been on the TPE website this afternoon booking the following:

Saturday 3rd December Leeds-Northallerton
Sunday 4th December AM Northallerton-Leeds; PM Leeds-Manchester Airport
Saturday 10th December Manchester Airport-Leeds

However the website wouldn't offer me collection from Leeds- it was special delivery or first class post and nothing else. After I'd paid, I tried booking a theoretical journey from Leeds to Manchester Piccadilly tomorrow and it offered me collection at Leeds station.

It's not a massive inconvenience as we're still three weeks away from the weekend when I'm due to travel, but I was wondering whether this was likely to be a permanent feature and if there was a rationale behind it- either with the two journeys, the site can't work out where I want to start, or for non-urgent bookings, is it perhaps cheaper for TPE to post the tickets out rather than pay Virgin whatever they need to for printing the tickets off at Leeds?

 

[causton]

Can't say why it did it, but two notes:

• ToD codes work anywhere, even though you have to select a station, this is mostly just to make sure you choose somewhere that actually has a machine/ticket office that lets you collect them!
• The fee to pick up tickets is reportedly 40p from a TVM, or 90p from a ticket office window (source)

 

[maniacmartin]

Is one of the tickets an Airport Advance? Can this type of tickets be collected from a TVM?

 

[Deerfold]

Is one of the tickets an Airport Advance? Can this type of tickets be collected from a TVM?

I've had no problems collecting Airport Advances from Keighley's TVM.

 

[sheff1]

I had a similar problem. TPE only offered special delivery or Print at Home. I wanted neither, so booked via another site.

Possibly a glitch somewhere in the system ?

 

[Romilly]

Not on TPE but on other booking sites, I sometimes find that what determines delivery options is the last ticket added to the basket. Sometimes that means adding a simple single for the following day, updating the basket and delivery options, and then removing the unwanted simple single. More often than not, that doesn't undo the desired delivery option. All gloriously unfathomable!

 

[Ianigsy]

After posting last night, I tried again but this time pretending to book my journey for 23rd December and was offered collection at Leeds.

I've reached the conclusion that I might have triggered some sort of security measure by booking two separate return journeys coming to just over £50 in total. If that's the case, it's perhaps a shame the system isn't quite smart enough to realise that somebody trying to buy tickets with a stolen card isn't going to buy advance tickets tied to specific seats and trains weeks hence, as it's a dead giveaway where the fraudster is likely to be found!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Just to round things off, the tickets arrived in this morning's post (so no slower than it would have been if I'd collected them this lunchtime) - just slightly disappointing that TPE seem to use a mailing house in Crawley to send out their tickets!

 

[Kite159]

After posting last night, I tried again but this time pretending to book my journey for 23rd December and was offered collection at Leeds.

I've reached the conclusion that I might have triggered some sort of security measure by booking two separate return journeys coming to just over £50 in total. If that's the case, it's perhaps a shame the system isn't quite smart enough to realise that somebody trying to buy tickets with a stolen card isn't going to buy advance tickets tied to specific seats and trains weeks hence, as it's a dead giveaway where the fraudster is likely to be found!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Just to round things off, the tickets arrived in this morning's post (so no slower than it would have been if I'd collected them this lunchtime) - just slightly disappointing that TPE seem to use a mailing house in Crawley to send out their tickets!

The mailing house in Crawley is used by many TOCs.

Although they need to look at the printer as the font used on advance tickets is tiny