Great London to Edinburgh Fare

[SickyNicky]

This advert I saw on eBay looks like good value.

I wonder how they would fulfill it? Perhaps they put you in a taxi for the journey?

 

[LexyBoy]

Perhaps they put you in a taxi for the journey?

Or a sleigh?

 

[Tomonthetrain]

Oops!

 

[John @ home]

It is now being advertised to me above the FTR section of this forum!

 

[jopsuk]

Oops! Poor coding there!

 

[LexyBoy]

Oops! Poor coding there!

Very poor indeed. It claims that the fares have been checked (presumably against what's available), but it's clear that nothing of the sort has been done.

 

[Deerfold]

The East Coast site now claims that details of changes for the Christmas Period are available. There is a summary page at:

http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/travel-information/festivetips/

but if you then click on the link to the "timetable changes calendar and then click on the 25th or 26th of December there's one line - "We expect a good service across the East Coast route today".

It won't let you buy a ticket for one though.

 

[SickyNicky]

I wonder if two days of guaranteed zero delays help towards their punctuality targets as well...

 

[IanD]

I wonder if two days of guaranteed zero delays help towards their punctuality targets as well...

Or they could be classed as 2 days where 100% of the services were delayed...

 

[ollyrogers]

I think on balance I'd probably consider buying an East Coast train for £17... Is it a 91 or 43, and is rake included?

 

[Tomonthetrain]

Isn't that false advertising though?

 

[tony_mac]

According to National Rail, Merseyrail are running a full service on 25th/26th!

 

[Deerfold]

Isn't that false advertising though?

Certainly erroneous but unlikely to be deliberately false. That term is usually used for deliberately misleading claims.

 

[Paul Kelly]

It's misleading because the wording of the ad implies the fares shown have been checked against actual availability for the given dates - but in fact they are just pretending to have done this. So IMHO it is misleading.

 

[Deerfold]

It's misleading because the wording of the ad implies the fares shown have been checked against actual availability for the given dates - but in fact they are just pretending to have done this. So IMHO it is misleading.

It's quite possible for it to be incompetence rather than dishonesty.

It depends how it checks - if it checks if all of "tier x" fares have sold out the query may return "no - we've not sold any at that level" so the program assumes some are left.

It may even just check for journeys where no advances have yet been sold so it can advertise the best fares.

 

[Paul Kelly]

But how can there be any quota available to check, when there are no trains for the quota to have been allocated to?

 

[Deerfold]

But how can there be any quota available to check, when there are no trains for the quota to have been allocated to?

The East Coast ticket system may track when all of a tier are sold out for a day - specifically for this checker, perhaps (as it only claims the price is available for the day, not for any given train) and set a flag. The flag may not have been triggered as there are no tickets to sell and if nothing else depends on that flag it may not have been noticed as days with no tickets are rare.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Yes I suppose it could be something like that. But that would still mean they're not actually checking availability of journeys at the price shown, which IMHO the ad implies they are doing.

 

[Deerfold]

Yes I suppose it could be something like that. But that would still mean they're not actually checking availability of journeys at the price shown, which IMHO the ad implies they are doing.

But for every day with services it is effectively the same thing. Might still be worth mentioning to EC.

 

[shuttlewoodG]

Hi there, I work in the Marketing team at East Coast. Thanks for flagging this technical glitch up to us and sorry for the confusion this caused. These banners are relatively new, and on seeing this we discovered a slight issue in the way date suppressions are applied to our data feed which we use to populate the prices on these banners. Without going into the detail, the feed still thinks that these dates are available (as per our weekly timetable) and as no tickets have been sold, it's showing the lowest fare available (which would normally be correct).

This has now all been resolved and won't happen again. The data feed is refreshed every 4 hours to display the latest live price and these were designed to give people a much more transparent view of ticket prices and dates of travel. Thanks again for highlighting this.

George

 

[DaveNewcastle]

George. Thanks for coming on here to acknowledge the issue and to go some way to explaining the background to the error that led to the display of Christmas Day fares.

It's still a little unnerving to think that an advertiser will accept that a public claim to have checked the price of a product for sale would not actually have checked the prices of the actual fares offered for sale at all, and have hoped that that an explanation of a different process ("the way date suppressions are applied to our data feed") is a full and adequate explanation; but many other advertisers in a similar position will have remained silent or else hidden behind some corporate spin. So I, for one, congratulate you for the courage in reporting back on here, where there are so many vociferous critics of Railway Operators.

After all, we all make mistakes. Its our ability to acknowledge them and learn from them that marks our progress. You've convinced me that East Coast has done just that.

Thanks again!