What's the furthest in advance you can buy train tickets?

[londonbridge]

As some members will no doubt know,tickets for Take That's tour in June/July 2011 went on sale six weeks ago. They have added four more shows which are on sale tomorrow. In order to acomodate the extra Wembley show one of the existing shows which was scheduled for a Sunday has been rescheduled to the previous Thursday.. People who were making travel and acomodation arrangements for the weekend are complaining about the prospect of losing money. I'll quote part of the post from another forum if I may:

"Not only did I spend the morning off work to take nearly fives hours to get tickets for a weekend. I have spent many hours researching and booking our hotels and train fares for eight people. The only tickets we could get were Wembley and we are travelling from the north midlands but I know many will be much worse off if they have to travel from abroad. As we have booked the cheapest we can find none of our hotels or train fares are refundable or transferable. We as a group will be over £300 out of pocket without taking into consideration getting time off work or loss of pay! I really don't know what we are going to do and all See tickets can offer is a refund and I understand its not there fault.
Not only have we lost that money on hotels and trains when we book another hotel prices are more expensive for the week compared to the weekend savers we had. It's going to cost at least £36 more a room so that's another £144 down the drain and I have not even looked into train fares or anything else yet".

I understood advance fares were released by the TOCS twelve weeks in advance? So how can this person have booked trains,is there anywhere or any way to buy train tickets for June/July 2011 now??

 

[jopsuk]

Online retailers certainly don't seem to allow you to buy tickets for June/July yet? Tried East Coast, EMT and thetrainline so far. They simply don't allow dates that far to be selected. Where the hell did they buy from?

 

[MCR247]

You are able to buy open/off peak tickets before advance tickets go on sale, but I'm not sure about that far ahead

 

[jopsuk]

Indeed- and you can from most of the sites, but they would be refundable (minus admin fee) but can you find anywhere selling them for June/July?

 

[londonbridge]

Apparently there's also a couple from Australia who based a holiday around it,they're in Paris on the Saturday night,then have a Eurostar booked to London on the Sunday morning before flying back to Oz the next day. And a group of twenty who are in Spain for a wedding on the Thursday. Not sure what their travel plans were though.

I feel for all those affected as several times I've lost money by booking advance trains for travel to football matches which have subsequently been moved by Sky. Obviously this is on a much larger scale with thousands of fans affected to some extent,but basically as per my original post I'm just interested to know how people can claim to have train tickets already and where they got them from-I'll make an exception for the Aussie couple though as it may be feasible that Eurostar would sell that far ahead.

Edit: Just looked at Eurostar website and that is currently selling tickets up to and including April 8th,even if you select the book Eurostar plus hotel option. So again,where have they got tickets from,unless the hotels have some sort of arrangement to sell tickets?

 

[yorkie]

You can buy 'walk-on' train tickets up to 12 months in advance, however it is generally best to buy walk-on tickets on the day, as if you cancel your trip you will need to pay a £10 admin charge per ticket.

Reservations / Advance bookings typically open 12 weeks in advance but this does vary by route/operator, particularly at weekends, see: http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/booking_horizons.html

 

[LexyBoy]

My feeling is that the prevalence of Advance fares has led to a lot of confusion and mis-sold tickets. Many people have taken in the 'book in advance to save money' message but not that that this only applies to certain ticket types, which results in cases like this where the person concerned clearly bought (walk-on) train tickets thinking they would only get more expensive, and now that they have lost their money.

I've also had colleagues worrying that their ticket wouldn't be valid on a different train (when asked it was an off-peak return), and argued with several people who were all sure you could be fined for getting off at an intermediate station with a Season Ticket... (one of whom regularly travelled beyond his season validity, presumably on a new ticket re-covering the whole of their season).

I would like to see the online booking engines make clear which are 'walk on' fares and which not - maybe with coloured bands or a message before purchase - so it's clear that advance purchase isn't necessary. It would be nice to see the ASA being stricter too and taking down more of the 'online is cheaper!!!' type ads (as with the Trainline's sheep one). Then again, it's not like the information is that hard to find at the moment :roll:

 

[Greenback]

There is genuine confusion out there about rail tickets. I have also known or talked to people with the same sort of misconceptions that you mention. People are buying walk up tickets well in advance because the perception for many now is that buying early will always save you money. Only yesterday morning a man wanted to buy four off peak tickets to London for use this morning - why????!!!!! He had made a special trip to the station for this!

 

[hairyhandedfool]

There is clearly an issue with people not understanding the difference between 'advance fares' and 'walk-up fares', and even between the various 'walk-up fares'.

Today I had someone ask for an advance fare to Birmingham for travel today, actually quoteing the price a website had shown him a week ago.

I'm quite specific about this sort of thing when I quote prices at work, but websites are vague at best and, in my experience, quite often misleading.

 

[Sapphire Blue]

As some members will no doubt know,tickets for Take That's tour in June/July 2011 . . .

I understood advance fares were released by the TOCS twelve weeks in advance? So how can this person have booked trains,is there anywhere or any way to buy train tickets for June/July 2011 now??

Lots of events/shows/concerts are advertised in local newspapers ( eg Huddersfield Examiner) including hotels and rail travel, often 6 or more months in advance.
Presumably these companies will buy the rail tickets for you nearer the time of the event.
Perhaps it was something along these lines.

 

[142094]

Sure they are not just beefing up their story and trying to get some sympathy? I've heard this with football fixtures, where the times have been changed. Some go on about how they booked in advance, yet when you point out that they couldn't actually buy an advance ticket they go all quiet.

 

[moonrakerz]

My feeling is that the prevalence of Advance fares has led to a lot of confusion and mis-sold tickets. Many people have taken in the 'book in advance to save money' message but not that that this only applies to certain ticket types, which results in cases like this where the person concerned clearly bought (walk-on) train tickets thinking they would only get more expensive, and now that they have lost their money.

Not helped by some of the TV advertising put out by ticket sellers (not TOCs) which, while not untruthful, is not telling the whole truth !

 

[MikeWh]

Sure they are not just beefing up their story and trying to get some sympathy? I've heard this with football fixtures, where the times have been changed. Some go on about how they booked in advance, yet when you point out that they couldn't actually buy an advance ticket they go all quiet.

Considering that Sky only have to give 5-6 weeks notice and that progression in cup competitions can sometimes change a fixture with about 10 days to go, I would suggest that a lot of the time football fans have a point.

 

[142094]

Considering that Sky only have to give 5-6 weeks notice and that progression in cup competitions can sometimes change a fixture with about 10 days to go, I would suggest that a lot of the time football fans have a point.

Of course when it is 5-6 weeks before the fixture I can understand that but it has happened recently on a few matches with ESPN.

 

[jopsuk]

My feeling is that the prevalence of Advance fares has led to a lot of confusion and mis-sold tickets. Many people have taken in the 'book in advance to save money' message but not that that this only applies to certain ticket types, which results in cases like this where the person concerned clearly bought (walk-on) train tickets thinking they would only get more expensive, and now that they have lost their money.

Aye- I saw a group of mothers and kids collecting tickets at Whittlesford Parkway this evening. As they had no luggage, they clearly weren't going far- certainly, not far enough for there to be Advance tickets. I'd guess they'd almost certainly bought from thetrainline. Buying from the machine directly would have been no-more complicated or time consuming.

 

[Simon11]

12 Weeks is the industry standard in the uk for selling advance tickets for all companys. Note this mean that not all trains are aviable in 12 weeks before booking ie for weekend engeering work, trains might not have been confirmed yet to be running.

There's a strong debate about this, with Long distance operators prefering to sell tickets further than 12 weeks to go, but with comuter operaters perfering less, ie 8-10 weeks. This is because Long distance groups can make higher revenue however it makes comutor operators unhappy as they have to confirm what trains are running that far ahead.

 

[island]

Aye- I saw a group of mothers and kids collecting tickets at Whittlesford Parkway this evening. As they had no luggage, they clearly weren't going far- certainly, not far enough for there to be Advance tickets. I'd guess they'd almost certainly bought from thetrainline. Buying from the machine directly would have been no-more complicated or time consuming.

And cheaper.

 

[wintonian]

I have bought advance tickets from Winchester to Bournemouth a day or 2 before travel in the past costing £2.00 each compared to £11.05 for a CDR (railcard prices), not my usual style but I knew I had to be there for a certain time and didn’t mind allowing extra time in case I couldn't get back to the station on time.

 

[Flamingo]

Advanced tickets are available from Bristol Parkway to Newport (one stop, 15 minutes) for £2 or £3. The holders of them get very upset when they get charged a new ticket because they are on the wrong train as well, as apparently "Nobody else ever bothers me" (according to the last chap).