Advance fares that are never available?

[CaptainHaddock]

I've been looking at a journey between Doncaster and Stamford on various dates in the future yet even though Advance fares exist on this flow I can't find a single train that has any availability. On the VTEC journey planner, the fare is shown but is always greyed out and hovering the mouse over it just brings up the message "This fare is not available for the services below".

Yet if I change the destination from Stamford to Peterborough, availability of Advance tickets is plentiful!

Checking on brfares, the fare definitely exists and is routed "VTEC & CONNECTNS", so why is it never available?

 

[Haywain]

The problem will be that the relevant quotas have not been made available on CrossCountry services. Unfortunately, they have limited capacity and may very heavily restrict what they make available.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

The problem will be that the relevant quotas have not been made available on CrossCountry services. Unfortunately, they have limited capacity and may very heavily restrict what they make available.

Thanks for the explanation. But if Cross Country have such limited availability for advance quotas, why do they offer plenty of availability for advance tickets to Stansted, for example?

 

[Haywain]

Thanks for the explanation. But if Cross Country have such limited availability for advance quotas, why do they offer plenty of availability for advance tickets to Stansted, for example?

Because they have a vested interest in selling their own Advance tickets as opposed to those for other TOCs. It's all about maximising their income.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Because they have a vested interest in selling their own Advance tickets as opposed to those for other TOCs. It's all about maximising their income.

Sorry, I meant the Doncaster to Stansted Advance fares, which I believe are set by VTEC.