"Rail.Ninja": un-accredited UK ticket retailer?

[Adam Williams]

These guys appear to be "selling" UK rail tickets via their site (along with European rail tickets). Internet is full of 1 star reviews. There is no way the website could've passed accreditation, it can only sell tickets for about 5 UK stations; no support for railcards, ability to buy tickets in 2024 and the ticket information offered is nonsense.

I bought a ticket from Coventry to London via them for the lulz, using a credit card (via Google Pay). Fulfilment is manual (!) and apparently can take up to 1 business day from purchase.

If it's not just a complete scam, I am going to be very interested to see what sort of ticket I get sent and look at the NLC/UTN on the ticket. Maybe they're just manually buying tickets from another retailer and fowarding on the E-Ticket/ToD collection ref to the customer?

It's very interesting to me that they somehow have access to the timetable and fares data to be able to generate a page of reasonably realistic results. Are they abusing the open data? I can't see that they're going to be able to query availability from RARS, so presumably the prices are all wrong and they'll sell tickets for sold-out services.

Relevant: Comboios de Portugal' statement

We inform that "Rail.Ninja" and "Kiwi" are not authorised agents for CP tickets selling and there isn't any contractual agreement between CP and those companies. CP declines any responsibility for the information disclosed by those entities or for any losses arising from ticket purchases made through them.

To buy CP tickets, Clients have the following official channels...

All very sketchy. I'm not sure if it's an obvious scam, "travel agent" who just catch out unsuspecting tourists and book on their behalf (levying a hefty fee), affiliate of a "real" retailer?

 

[KeithMcC]

There is a long running thread on the Tripadvisor Train forum of people complaining about Rail Ninja - overcharging, no customer service........

Train booking in Europe thru rail.ninja - Train Travel Message Board - Tripadvisor

Answer 1 of 670: Has anyone make use of the above to book train tickets for travel within Europe? Thx.

www.tripadvisor.co.uk

Be careful.

1. I have just checked Vienna-Budapest.

The correct OBB prices that you get direct from Austrian Railways own site are from €19 in advance or maximum possible price is the full flex €39 you'd pay at the station.

Rail ninja want €46-€59 which makes no sense at all, as that's more than you'd pay at the station on the day for a full-price full-flex ticket!

2. Now we check Frankfurt-Cologne. I picked 26 April, 06:00.

German Railways own site http://www.bahn.de/en has €45.90 for the 06:38. Rail Ninja wants €69.

German Railways own site http://www.bahn.de/en has €29 for the 09:29. Rail Ninja wants €94!!!!!

And where are the 07:27, 08:16, 09:09? All correctly shown on bahn.de, missing from R/N.

3. Now we check Paris-Nice. This didn't get past the first hurdle. R/N says 'no services'. Of course SNCF's own site and trainline.eu and loco2.clm all come up with services....

But they can look cheap so the inexperienced use them.

 

[mmh]

No idea if they're "accredited" or not (whatever that actually means, it's a term often used here with no explanation), but I'd be wary of any retailer who has "Are we legit" (sic) in their list of customer service questions.

 

[Royston Vasey]

I did use them for a ticket in South Korea, bought from the UK, as the Korail site was impenetrable. It was clear enough but the ticket came through a day or two later, as if someone had to buy it for me and email it to me. I received a legitimate ticket and seat assignment for the train I'd booked, so no issue there.

In the end I had to cancel it and was charged a fee of £35 on a £116 ticket (i.e. the refund was £81). I was claiming from the company so no big deal but I thought this was excessive! I don't know what the KR refund to them as the agent would have been, no doubt a lot more than they paid me!

 

[Alex365Dash]

How it thinks there’s already late night engineering works with rail replacement on the Brighton Main Line in January 2030 is beyond me.

Last I checked, Class 700s had 3+2 seating unless you get declassified first class at the back, and it also quotes £41 for a single fare, even though the Super Off-Peak Day Single from St Pancras to Brighton route Not Underground is £13.60.

That said, considering it’s for 2030, we’ll have to wait for the 2029 fare rises before seeing what the correct fare actually should be

 

[hexagon789]

The most significant complaints are:

• Their large, often huge markups over the fare actually charged by the Airways companies
• Poor customer service
• Surcharges
• Difficultly in obtaining refunds
• Tickets never appearing
• Reservations not being made
• When refunds are "successful", they keep about 30%-ish as an admin fee!

That's just from what I've read.

 

[Watershed]

No idea if they're "accredited" or not (whatever that actually means, it's a term often used here with no explanation), but I'd be wary of any retailer who has "Are we legit" (sic) in their list of customer service questions.

Accreditation is an RDG process that prospective retailers have to complete if they want to sell tickets in their own right (as opposed to licensing other retailers' systems, or, as appears to be the case here, acting as a middleman).

There are many requirements that retailers must comply with in order to be accredited, e.g. only offering permitted routes, correctly applying the (unpublished) electronic route/time/company restrictions, as well as posting a significant security bond with RSP.

 

[XAM2175]

Last I checked, Class 700s had 3+2 seating unless you get declassified first class at the back ...

You may want to check again

 

[Adam Williams]

That said, considering it’s for 2030, we’ll have to wait for the 2029 fare rises before seeing what the correct fare actually should be

Clearly their site is an excellent deal, allowing you to lock in today's prices to avoid uncertainty around a decade of inflation!

 

[skyhigh]

Clearly their site is an excellent deal, allowing you to lock in today's prices to avoid uncertainty around a decade of inflation!

Part of me wonders what you'd actually get if you booked a ticket now for 2030. I don't wonder enough to actually part with any cash though...

 

[alistairlees]

There has been some behind the scenes investigation into this 'retailer', in an attempt to get rid of them. They are Hong Kong based (if I remember correctly; that was two years ago) and are difficult to pin down.

They have been scraping other websites' journey and fare results, then presenting these as their own. They do not have any licence to retail, and are not accredited. They are not an affiliate of any retailer. They do not have any connections with any industry systems.

When they take orders they have been buying tickets from other retailers, then passing these over (as some have realised). Of course, where an Advance ticket has been "sold" by them, this can cause issues where an Advance ticket at the same price is no longer available to buy...

 

[Adam Williams]

There has been some behind the scenes investigation into this 'retailer', in an attempt to get rid of them. They are Hong Kong based (if I remember correctly; that was two years ago) and are difficult to pin down.

They have been scraping other websites' journey and fare results, then presenting these as their own. They do not have any licence to retail, and are not accredited. They are not an affiliate of any retailer. They do not have any connections with any industry systems.

When they take orders they have been buying tickets from other retailers, then passing these over (as some have realised). Of course, where an Advance ticket has been "sold" by them, this can cause issues where an Advance ticket at the same price is no longer available to buy...

Interesting to know, thanks! That makes a lot of sense and explains some of what's going on. I'm surprised whoever they are scraping is returning results back for queries in 2024 and beyond, but perhaps they've just built up their own cache of some sort from the current month/year and are using that to generate fake realistic-looking results. Who knows

---

I did notice that their API is kind enough to report the real price as well as their markup slapped on top, nicely labelled as "profit"!

 

[Merseysider]

They seem to think the Northern stoppers between Manchester and Liverpool are “Intercity Express”, a “High Speed Train” and worth £27-£35.

Edinburgh to Glasgow is pretty much the same story.

Oh, and they want £262 for the Manchester to London trains tomorrow

Anyone daft enough to book with them without doing any research / checking prices / reading reviews has no sympathy from me

 

[hexagon789]

They seem to think the Northern stoppers between Manchester and Liverpool are “Intercity Express”, a “High Speed Train” and worth £27-£35.

Edinburgh to Glasgow is pretty much the same story.

Oh, and they want £262 for the Manchester to London trains tomorrow

Anyone daft enough to book with them without doing any research / checking prices / reading reviews has no sympathy from me

And looking at that TripAdvisor thread, that is a huge number of people. (I mean there's a lot of posts in that thread, but I'm sure there will be even more people who have used them and either - still don't know they are being overcharged, are too embarrassed by their mistake, simply haven't posted about it.)

 

[miklcct]

Do you know if they are not actually selling National Rail tickets, or instead selling seats of ITX (independent tour excursion) packages, or some sort of tickets like Megatrain in the past?

 

[JB_B]

Interesting to know, thanks! That makes a lot of sense and explains some of what's going on. I'm surprised whoever they are scraping is returning results back for queries in 2024 and beyond, but perhaps they've just built up their own cache of some sort from the current month/year and are using that to generate fake realistic-looking results. Who knows

---

I did notice that their API is kind enough to report the real price as well as their markup slapped on top, nicely labelled as "profit"!

View attachment 121201

So presumably that's a 3rd party API , also used by other dodgy resellers?

 

[hexagon789]

Do you know if they are not actually selling National Rail tickets, or instead selling seats of ITX (independent tour excursion) packages, or some sort of tickets like Megatrain in the past?

They are selling National Rail tickets or the equivalent in other countries.

Which they buy or supposedly buy, for someone who "purchases" a ticket from their website. They then add a significant mark-up, plus a large booking/admin fee.

Often they don't actually buy them until much closer to people's travel dates, in which case the price has gone up and they then claim more money from people to secure the tickets.

Given the resale of National Rail is illegal, I wonder how they can operate in the UK...

 

[Mcr Warrior]

No trains from Newcastle to Edinburgh next week apparently. Totally bizarre!

 

[miklcct]

Often they don't actually buy them until much closer to people's travel dates, in which case the price has gone up and they then claim more money from people to secure the tickets.

Isn't this illegal?

 

[Starmill]

Isn't this illegal?

Reselling tickets in this manner is a breach of the ticket conditions, if that's what you are getting at, yes.

 

[Adam Williams]

So presumably that's a 3rd party API , also used by other dodgy resellers?

I don't think so, though of course can't know for sure! At first glance, it looks like something custom they've thrown together in the context of their Drupal site, there are references to "train route harvester" entities which sounds like a scraping operation (as Alistair indicated).

 

[miklcct]

Reselling tickets in this manner is a breach of the ticket conditions, if that's what you are getting at, yes.

they then claim more money from people to secure the tickets.

I'm questioning if the second quote block (claim more money from people to secure the tickets) is illegal.

 

[Alex365Dash]

You may want to check again

I live near them, I should know better!

Too much of the Class 450s on the Portsmouth Direct Line have gotten to me

The same prompt would show up if I selected London to Cambridge and picked a Greater Anglia service, but it only shows Thameslink (not even the Great Northern fasts!).

I'm questioning if the second quote block (claim more money from people to secure the tickets) is illegal.

The National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT) Condition 5.1.3 states that:

A Ticket may be transferred by the person who bought that Ticket to another person, but only if: […] and the transfer is not a resale for more than the price paid for the Ticket by the person who first purchased it from a Train Company or a Licensed Retailer.

This means the ticket isn’t transferrable in the way Rail Ninja have done it, and Railway Byelaw 21(2) makes this a criminal offence:

subject to Byelaw 21(4), no person shall transfer or receive any unused or partly used ticket, intending that any person shall use it for travelling unless the conditions of use for the ticket specifically permit such transfer

which they don’t.

What confuses me a bit is Byelaw 21(1), where reselling a ticket for less than or equal to that of the amount paid to the licensed retailer or TOC appears to be permitted by the NRCoT, but not Byelaw 21(1)?

subject to Byelaw 21(4), no person shall sell or buy any ticket

For context, I leave Byelaw 21(4), which allows licensed retailers and TOCs to sell tickets without breaking said Byelaw, Rail Ninja not included:

the sale or transfer by, or the purchase or receipt from, an authorised person in the course of his duties or from an authorised ticket machine is excepted from the provisions of Byelaw 21

 

[takno]

No trains from Newcastle to Edinburgh next week apparently. Totally bizarre!

There's a line block from the 1st to the 9th isn't there?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

There's a line block from the 1st to the 9th isn't there?

Indeed, but was looking at dates in September. And in any event, you can still travel with LNER from Newcastle to Edinburgh via Carlisle in early October.

 

[superalbs]

They seem to think the Northern stoppers between Manchester and Liverpool are “Intercity Express”, a “High Speed Train” and worth £27-£35.

Edinburgh to Glasgow is pretty much the same story.

Oh, and they want £262 for the Manchester to London trains tomorrow

Anyone daft enough to book with them without doing any research / checking prices / reading reviews has no sympathy from me

Also the TPE train is EMR apparently!

 

[Wallsendmag]

Indeed, but was looking at dates in September. And in any event, you can still travel with LNER from Newcastle to Edinburgh via Carlisle in early October.

No you can’t total block first week of October which is next week. We had problems with third partys scraping our site in the early hours until we put measures in place to stop it. All these unaccredited and self accredited retailers need to be brought in line or put out of business

 

[skyhigh]

This means the ticket isn’t transferrable in the way Rail Ninja have done it, and Railway Byelaw 21(2) makes this a criminal offence:

The thing is though, you'd have a very difficult time trying to prosecute a company based in Hong Kong over a Byelaw offence...

 

[DanNCL]

No you can’t total block first week of October which is next week

@Mcr Warrior is right, there are diversions via Carlisle every day that the ECML is shut north of Newcastle, this includes Monday 3rd and Friday 7th October as well as the weekends either side. I've just looked at the VAR schedule for every day that week. The only possible exceptions are strike days where timetables are yet to be (publicly) confirmed.

There has been some behind the scenes investigation into this 'retailer', in an attempt to get rid of them. They are Hong Kong based (if I remember correctly; that was two years ago) and are difficult to pin down.

The thing is though, you'd have a very difficult time trying to prosecute a company based in Hong Kong over a Byelaw offence...

They are registered in Hong Kong as 'Firebird GT Ltd' and in Malta as 'Arsia Ltd'

 

[Paul Kelly]

There are many requirements that retailers must comply with in order to be accredited, e.g. only offering permitted routes, correctly applying the (unpublished) electronic route/time/company restrictions, as well as posting a significant security bond with RSP.

I don't think the bit in bold is true unless something has changed quite recently (which could of course be true)? The journey planner systems which calculate permitted routes are not subject to accreditation; there is just a sort of vague trust-based system that the results are correct.