First Great Western Advance Tickets

[extendedpaul]

These seem to have shot up in price on the London Paddington to Cardiff route to a level where some cost more than buy on the day tickets.

The cheapest weekday advance fare I can currently find is £48, previously £18.50, that's looking at dates in February, March and early April from 10.15am onwards. A walk on single on departures between 10.15 and 14..45, including today, costs £5 less at £43 !

However on Sundays there are £18.50 advances available and on Saturdays they are priced from £22.50. In the past weekend fares were usually higher, not lower !

I have been travelling between Rainham (Kent) and Caerphilly on advance tickets for between £22 and £32 but now I can only get those fares on Sundays, weekdays lowest is currently £55. Avoiding HS 1 and travelling via Victoria makes no difference.

Any views or explanations for this ?

 

[animationmilo]

I too have noticed this and I live in Swansea. Their twitter team said the fares team think there's nothing wrong, but there is.

Take this for example, Good Friday fares Swansea-Paddington were £12.85 on Friday 16 January and by Saturday morning the entire lot were £28.70

I do understand if they need to put advance prices up, but do tell us then at least we know.

 

[Clip]

Make sure theres no football or rugby on the dates you want as these would've swallowed the quota up quite quickly.

Im not sure they should tell you when all tiers have sold out - if you see a good price then take it.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

Take this for example, Good Friday fares Swansea-Paddington were £12.85 on Friday 16 January and by Saturday morning the entire lot were £28.70

Easter may well be a bad example, as Reading is having one of its periodic closures or near closures.

 

[Greenback]

The lowest priced tiers can sell out quickly when events ar eon, or at popular travelling times as the number of tickets available may be limited. I'd expect people to have notifications set up to alert them when fares go on sale so that they can be quick off the mark, too, which will help them to sell out fast.

 

[extendedpaul]

Surely events are usually at weekends when lower priced tickets generally are still available. My problem is with weekday daytime off-peak services

There are no advances below £48 during the week on any of my searches, not on any day, not at any time, not in four weeks time, not in eleven weeks time or any time between. Nothing.

Plus should advance tickets at £48 be offered on services with £43 walk on fares?

 

[Clip]

That does seem odd then... Is it half term or anything soon?

Plus should advance tickets at £48 be offered on services with £43 walk on fares?

Depends if you value having a seat reservation or not

 

[Cletus]

There seems to be similarities to this thread I started recently about the disappearance of weekday advance tickets to Kent.
http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=110859

 

[furlong]

Plus should advance tickets at £48 be offered on services with £43 walk on fares?

No, and if this is the case and any have been sold, the purchasers ought to be given an automatic refund and apology. Until the industry is required to make meaningful efforts to track down the people affected and provide meaningful compensation when cases of overcharging or misselling are uncovered, it has insufficient incentive to put adequate systems in place to avoid making such mistakes in the first place.

 

[Greenback]

The Easter weekend is at the beginning of April. School holidays here start the weekend before.

I expect Advance tickets at low prices to be very popular and hard to get at these times whether it's weekends or weekdays. It's a popular time for travel and it makes no sense for any TOC to be offering lots of rock bottom prices.

I suspect that FGW hasn't allocated any low price tickets to some of the trains, and very few to others. The cumulative effect of this plus people booking early is that those low priced tickets that were released have been sold.

I expect this would be the same for travelling next month and earlier in March. Fortunately my parents managed to secure very cheap Advance tickets for 30 March on the day the fares were released.

A search I've just done supports my conclusion, as there are £18.50, £27 and £32 fares available on Tuesday 10 March, but it's mostly £48 tickets which I agree should not be offered.

 

[animationmilo]

The Easter weekend is at the beginning of April. School holidays here start the weekend before.

I expect Advance tickets at low prices to be very popular and hard to get at these times whether it's weekends or weekdays. It's a popular time for travel and it makes no sense for any TOC to be offering lots of rock bottom prices.

I suspect that FGW hasn't allocated any low price tickets to some of the trains, and very few to others. The cumulative effect of this plus people booking early is that those low priced tickets that were released have been sold.

I expect this would be the same for travelling next month and earlier in March. Fortunately my parents managed to secure very cheap Advance tickets for 30 March on the day the fares were released.

A search I've just done supports my conclusion, as there are £18.50, £27 and £32 fares available on Tuesday 10 March, but it's mostly £48 tickets which I agree should not be offered.

I think there could be a problem with the system, I do understand advances sell very fast, but it seems that theres hardly any advances and they had a problem last week.

 

[mikeb42]

I've happened upon this thread (having read quite a few threads on this forum over time but never posted) via a google search while trying to work out what the ... is going on on this score.

Part of the problem is that lengthy experience with Worst Late Western tells me that just about anything is entirely possible.

The situation being discussed has persisted for a while now. It's been a couple of weeks since I first went to NRE, thought hock: and grudgingly pencilled in using some other form of transport instead.

As far as I can recall, all was "normal" when I made some bookings just before Christmas, but all attempts since early January have led to the same point.

On the face of it, it looks as though FGW have effectively abolished advance fares on most off peak trains on weekdays with effect from January. This isn't the case on weekends, though there seems to have effectively been another drastic hiking of prices there on the whole.

Lengthy experiment with the NRE website with, say, trains from Swansea/Cardiff/Bristol to Paddington whether it's now, next week or in 10 weeks time shows the same thing.

Allowing for normal variations of demand this is an entirely different pattern to the norm of up to a few weeks ago.

Either FGW have reduced the quotas to almost zero or abolished them altogether. If there's simply a problem with the system, it's been there for a while.

Apologies for waffling on and on. It's probably more productive than trying to contact FGW though, again from experience. Unless getting a platitude on twitter from someone who doesn't really know what's going on is the solution you're looking for...

If this isn't a technical gremlin but a change of policy that FGW have carried out in a blaze of no publicity whatsoever, then this needs to get into the press. There was a certain amount of coverage of the 11%+ hike in advance fares last year and this is effectively much worse.

Again, apologies for going on (and on).

 

[Greenback]

I think there could be a problem with the system, I do understand advances sell very fast, but it seems that theres hardly any advances and they had a problem last week.

I wouldn't rule that out. Last week's problems may not have been fully corrected. I just know that people, including my relations, have found cheaper advances so they were available at some point, and that some still are, though they appear to be on pretty small numbers of services per day.

 

[pne]

Depends if you value having a seat reservation or not

Aren't seat reservations free?

 

[mikeb42]

Update:

FGW have responded (in slightly vague terms) to a contact's email asking what is going on.

It's somewhat unclear, and I'm paraphrasing, but it would appear that they acknowledge that a secondary issue has arisen following a fix for problems with advance fares for destinations on the GWML last week.

Again in rather vague terms, their advice is try again in a few days time.

 

[Clip]

Aren't seat reservations free?

Hence the wink

 

[island]

Aren't seat reservations free?

FGW has a policy of charging £5 for non-mandatory seat reservations. I am given to understand that it is rarely actually applied.

 

[mikeb42]

Problem now appears rectified.

 

[Greenback]

That's good news!

 

[andrewkeith5]

Depends if you value having a seat reservation or not

No it doesn't - seat reservations are just as valid on walk up tickets.

In an argument for another time, I don't believe it should be possible to reserve a seat with an Advance ticket.

 

[Clip]

No it doesn't - seat reservations are just as valid on walk up tickets.

In an argument for another time, I don't believe it should be possible to reserve a seat with an Advance ticket.

yes, again, hence the wink.

I was joking at the £5 cost for a reservation but I think this may have gone over your head.

 

[Wolfie]

yes, again, hence the wink.

I was joking at the £5 cost for a reservation but I think this may have gone over your head.

...er the difference between £48 and £43 perchance...

 

[Clip]

Indeed. Good to see some of you are on the ball

 

[pne]

FGW has a policy of charging £5 for non-mandatory seat reservations. I am given to understand that it is rarely actually applied.

Oh! I see.