Worcester Park to Winchester - SWR website/app says no fares available

[chrisp37]

I was looking at tickets from Worcester Park (WCP) to Winchester (WIN) for Sat 16 March. National Rail enquiries, Trainline and a handful of other retailers I tried such as Southern and Greater Anglia all show WCP to WIN changing at Clapham Junction as a permitted route and will sell me the ticket.

SWR on the other hand (both the app and the website) apparently don’t accept this is a possible journey, notwithstanding that both legs of said journey are operated by SWR. If you search for tickets you just get an error message of the “no available fares” variety.

What on earth is going on here? Gremlin in the system? It’s not the first time the SWR journey planner has refused to recognise a route that Trainline et al are quite happy to sell me a ticket for.

 

[kieron]

The issue here is, as I understand it, that different retailers interpret ticket validity (and, in particular, the easements which permit routes such as this one) in different ways. The rules for how to interpret these have not, that I know of, been made public, so I don't know if any of them are doing it right or wrong.

A rule which may be being relied on by web sites to show a "not via London" ticket as being valid via Clapham Junction may be easement 700452. This says:

Customers travelling from or via Surbiton to Motspur Park and beyond in possession of tickets routed "not via London"or "Any Permitted may double back between Raynes Park, Wimbledon, Earlsfield and Clapham Junction. This easement applies in both directions.

As it says, this applies to the "not via London" tickets. It does not affect the "SWR only" advance ones.

I don't know of a specific rule which would suggest that you can't make this journey (other than the restriction on doubling back through a station, which the above easement is meant to override), but there could be something.

All else being equal, I'd rather buy a ticket from a retailer which says that what I want to do is valid rather than one which doesn't. If you particularly want to buy a "not via London" ticket from GA or SWR, however, then you can select a different route (such as by requesting a route which avoids Wimbledon) and travel via Clapham Junction anyway.

 

[chrisp37]

Thanks. I just find it very odd that the SWR app/website essentially tell you that this journey can’t be done, yet the SWR ticket machines will sell you a Worcester Park to Winchester return.

I in fact had to claim delay repay for the journey and the SWR delay repay interface recognised it as a valid route so it’s all very strange.

On a related note, I’ve just booked a journey from Paignton to Worcester Park and the SWR website/app wasn’t showing certain journeys that were available as cheap advance singles from other retailers. So if you only used the SWR app/website you could end up paying a lot more. And why would most people check other retailers?

 

[Watershed]

Thanks. I just find it very odd that the SWR app/website essentially tell you that this journey can’t be done, yet the SWR ticket machines will sell you a Worcester Park to Winchester return.

I in fact had to claim delay repay for the journey and the SWR delay repay interface recognised it as a valid route so it’s all very strange.

On a related note, I’ve just booked a journey from Paignton to Worcester Park and the SWR website/app wasn’t showing certain journeys that were available as cheap advance singles from other retailers. So if you only used the SWR app/website you could end up paying a lot more. And why would most people check other retailers?

The Delay Repay site isn't concerned with permitted routes; it purely looks at the fastest itineraries.

Indeed we've seen quite a few cases where Delay Repay claims have been underpaid or wrongly rejected as they have assumed that the passenger took the fastest available alternative route, even if that used a route or operator that the ticket didn't permit (because it was non-permitted, or the ticket was operator/route restricted).