Differences in tickets available at booking offices and on National Rail Enquiries

[arb]

Following on from a thread I posted earlier in the year (http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=79465) where I was sold the wrong ticket by a booking office, I've generally stuck to buying online where I can be sure I'm getting what I want.

But today I wanted to buy a ticket with some Rail Travel Vouchers, and so armed with a printout from National Rail Enquires, clearly showing the availability of a £20 fare from Sheffield to Cambridge on December 28 at 8:38am, which I had ringed and highlighted, I went to the station to buy it. I'd also double-checked there were no split tickets involved, unlike the thread I linked to above!

However, the end result was the essentially the same as before. The booking office staff told me that there were no tickets at that price available at any time around 8:30 in the morning, and sold me a different ticket (this time I opted for the same price but an hour later, after being presented with various alternative options). I've since come home, looked on National Rail Enquiries, and found the £20 ticket at 8:38 that I originally wanted is still available. Further, for experimentation, I selected 8 passengers travelling at that time, and the cost offered is £160 (£20 * 8), so it's not as if the tickets at this price are close to selling out and might have been temporarily unavailable in the time window I was at the booking office.

The previous thread explained to me how the NRE and booking office systems are different, so might not show the same details, but this always seems to work against me, and not in my favour! Can anybody advise me of anything obvious I'm doing wrong, or anything different that I should be doing when trying to purchase advance tickets from a booking office?

Or alternatively, is there a website that uses the same system that the booking offices do, so that I can check for differences between NRE and booking office systems? That way I could completely avoid going to the station if I know they won't be able to sell me the tickets I want.

 

[Paul Kelly]

The only obvious thing I can think of is to go to a booking office with more competent staff. Did the printout show exactly which trains you were intending to catch, i.e. direct EMT service from Sheffield to Ely via Nottingham followed by FCC service from Ely to Cambridge? If it did, there really is no excuse for this incompetence.

I think the problem is very likely that their system by default is only showing them the fastest itineraries, and since there is a train leaving Sheffield 6 minutes later that can get you into Cambridge at the same time, the direct Sheffield to Ely train isn't showing up. But like I said, a competent clerk should be able to work around this. In fact, simply telling them that you want to travel via Nottingham might be enough to get the ever-so-slighly-slower-but-massively-cheaper itinerary to show up.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

If I understand it correctly, the fare in question is routed 'AP XC EMT & CONS' and the trains are the 0838 from Sheffield to Ely (EMT) and the 1125 from Ely to Cambridge (FCC), so it may be that the ticket machine in the booking office thinks that XC and EMT are required to be used to have that fare. Without knowing what fare the clerk saw on the system and what was offered to the op it is difficult to make any kind of judgement.

Further to this, I have known NRES to pick up on 'Internet Advance' fares from EMT which are cheaper than the regular fares available at the ticket office and hence not available there. So if we could dispense with the staff bashing until we get more info I think that would be appreciated.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Strangely, although XC is mentioned in the human-readable description of the route, there is nothing in any of the relevant electronic data feeds mentioning CrossCountry at all. Ticket type 2FB is a standard EMT advance type, so the only main (required) TOC is EMT and connecting travel is allowed on any TOC, and the electronic versions of the route (both in the fares and routeing guide data) do not mention any further TOC restrictions, stipulating only that the route does not include cross-London travel, and that travel via Euston nor Bedford is not permitted.

 

[arb]

Did the printout show exactly which trains you were intending to catch, i.e. direct EMT service from Sheffield to Ely via Nottingham followed by FCC service from Ely to Cambridge?

It was a printout of the main results page from NRE, so it showed five possible journeys, and in each case the departure time from Sheffield, arrival time in Cambridge, and number of connections. It didn't give the stations I needed to change at or the time of the connections, but did have an East Midlands Trains logo and the text "Only valid on booked CrossCountry and East Midlands Trains services and required connecting services. This fare is only valid on the train(s) selected" next to the service I wanted.

I've just tried playing with NRE to get it to display details of the connections, and:

1) I can't find a page that does this and still has the selected fare shown as well. The "Details" link goes to a separate page that does show the connections but not the fare, and whilst the "1" link for the number of connections does show the connections in a little pop-up window thing next to the fare, this information doesn't appear when I print the page. Am I missing something?

2) The 8:38 service that I originally wanted has now gone down in price from £20 to £13! What's going on here? I thought advance fares only ever went up over time?

In fact, simply telling them that you want to travel via Nottingham might be enough to get the ever-so-slighly-slower-but-massively-cheaper itinerary to show up.

That's fair enough, but how I am supposed to know that Nottingham is the one to use in their system? I travel between Cambridge and Sheffield fairly often, and I know various via/avoid points to make the booking engines show different journeys (avoid Doncaster, via Worksop, via Chesterfield, via Nottingham, via Leicester, via Stevenage, avoid Ely). I can't really ask someone in a booking to try all of them on the off-chance one of them will change what their system shows. (Or can I? Would they mind? Would the people behind me in the queue mind?!?)

If I'd had to explicitly put one of those via/avoid points into a booking engine to make the journey I wanted to appear, then I'd be prepared to ask the booking office staff to do the same thing - but in this case I didn't have to. Hence my original question: is the system they use in booking offices available online anywhere, so that I can find out how to get the journeys I want to appear in it?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

IThe "Details" link goes to a separate page that does show the connections but not the fare

No, hang on, it does show the fare. I just had my browser window sized such that the fare was right at the bottom of the first screenful of information and only half visible, and doing a "Page Down" caused it to disappear off the top of the second screenful.

So that's obviously a better page to print out in future!

 

[Tetchytyke]

NRES used to have a significant lag on it compared to the retail websites, is that still the case?

 

[arb]

Shortly after this incident, I wrote to Greater Anglia asking them why their booking office staff weren't able to find the ticket I wanted, and what I could do to help prevent this problem in the future. They recently sent me a reply, which included the following text that was quite surprising, to me, at least:

If you look up a journey on National Rail Enquiries, it will show you the lowest ticket provided for your journey. It will not, however, tell you whether that ticket is actually available for sale. Advance Purchase tickets are sold as a quota controlled ticket type, with a portion of the quota available online, and the rest available at our booking offices

Obviously I knew that advance tickets were quota controlled, but I'd never realised before that the quota was actually split in two between online sales and ticket offices! I'd always assumed that, under the hood, both systems would be accessing the same quota of available tickets.

 

[RJ]

I am in the ticket office today. The 08:38 didn't initially show up, but did when I added Nottingham as a via point. Cheapest fare is £27 at the moment. There is a quota of 2HS (£38) and 2IS (£42) Advance fares available, full whammy after that.

As for the service you get, it's luck of the draw!

 

[maniacmartin]

I think their reply is totally wrong. There are not separate quotas in the booking office. As RJ has said, the ticket probably didn't appear because their TIS's journey planner didn't consider that route. Adding the via point forces it to look at that route

 

[causton]

Sounds like a "that sounds like a reasonable explanation so I won't bother them anymore" fob-off excuse

 

[yorkie]

Obviously I knew that advance tickets were quota controlled, but I'd never realised before that the quota was actually split in two between online sales and ticket offices! I'd always assumed that, under the hood, both systems would be accessing the same quota of available tickets.

You are right. GA are incorrect.

Unfortunately it's not possible to rely on Train Companies for accurate fares information.

 

[bb21]

That reply made me choke on my coffee.

Can you rely on GA customer service to give out accurate information? If my experience is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding no - not a clue more like. It's probably better that they don't have a customer service department at all.