Avanti (and others) not offering best value tickets

[pdq]

I've been planning a journey from Coventry (COV) to Weybridge (WYB) on Friday 3rd September.

• COV 0732, change London, arr WYB 0957.
• WYB 1712, change London, arr COV 1942.

National Rail gives a flexible return price of £64.10 which seems pretty reasonable to me.
I went to Avanti to book as they are the principal carrier. Their site doesn't offer this return fare; instead it gives me two single advances for £97.90 or an Anytime Return for an eyewatering £194.00.

I then tried TPE as I have an account with them. This shows the £64.10 off peak return but then gives no options for the return journey.#
LNER does offer the fare, as does TrainSplit, which is where I bought the tickets, due to the ability to choose seats.
Out of interest, I also tried Trainline (OK), Northern (OK), Raileasy (OK), Cross Country (OK) South Western (NO), Red Spotted Hankey (NO).

How is it that the principal operator for this journey is unable to offer the off peak return ticket? I checked the restrictions and none of the usual peak restrictions apply on the Friday.
Or have I done something wrong on the Avanti site that I didn't see?

 

[Joe Paxton]

Avanti now use a booking engine called PICO4UK which going by all accounts on here is pretty hopeless. It's derived from Trenitalia's PICO system used in Italy - Trenitalia has a 30% stake in Avanti West Coast.

Disappointing that the Worldline-based systems (SWR and Red Spotted Hanky) are failing to offer the £64.10 Off Peak Return.

 

[30907]

I get the same with Avanti - obviously they think there are morning restrictions.
TPE misbehave in the evening, and SW doesn't offer even offpeak trains

 

[Wallsendmag]

I’ll take that as a win

 

[pdq]

This intrigues and worries me in equal measure. Someone not 'in the know' could plan this exact journey on the Avanti website, assuming the operator's own site to be correct. There, they will be met by a big price banner:

It's 'unbeatable', it's 'guaranteed'. Why look elsewhere? Yet this price is easily beaten by over a third, with added flexibility thrown in. It surely cannot be right that no-one within Avanti has noticed or tested this - or have I picked an obscure journey? I did test it on a COV - Euston journey for the same trains and was correctly given the off peak return ticket.

What would a customer's rights be if, having bought - and potentially used - a £98 'guaranteed unbeatable' ticket (and an Advance to boot, so non-returnable), they subsequently found out about the £64 ticket?

 

[reb0118]

Avanti have form for this. My mother & her friend were offered 2x Advance singles each for a trip from Edinburgh to Penrith - at almost double the cost of the Off Peak Day Return that was valid for their intended trains.

 

[30907]

Going back to the restriction issue, and purely a guess:
2C which applies to this journey has a morning and evening restriction at Kensington Olympia which does apply on Fridays. Journey Planners often offer this route, so I wonder if Avanti's booking engine has misapplied it generically to destinations where the customer might go that way? The Trenitalia OJP has no concept of through fares other than to add two fares together.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Avanti have form for this. My mother & her friend were offered 2x Advance singles each for a trip from Edinburgh to Penrith - at almost double the cost of the Off Peak Day Return that was valid for their intended trains.

The worst thing about this is that it perpetuates the old "but Trainline is cheaper so the fees are worth it" thing, because in some cases it is, because Avanti are failing to sell valid tickets.

Going back to the restriction issue, and purely a guess:
2C which applies to this journey has a morning and evening restriction at Kensington Olympia which does apply on Fridays. Journey Planners often offer this route, so I wonder if Avanti's booking engine has misapplied it generically to destinations where the customer might go that way? The Trenitalia OJP has no concept of through fares other than to add two fares together.

To be fair Trenitalia doesn't really have through fares, the long distance stuff is all ticketed budget airline style with one ticket per vehicle journey.

 

[Watershed]

What would a customer's rights be if, having bought - and potentially used - a £98 'guaranteed unbeatable' ticket (and an Advance to boot, so non-returnable), they subsequently found out about the £64 ticket?

They would be entitled to a refund of the difference. And if it were discovered that Avanti were engaging in a commercial practice whereby they routinely claimed to offer the cheapest tickets despite doing nothing of the sort...

 

[XAM2175]

If somebody were to put together a handful of examples it could be worth a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority.

 

[Adam Williams]

If only there was an industry body tasked with coming up with a common set of standards and providing a process for ensuring that these retail systems worked correctly and sold the correct fares. Maybe we could call it "accreditation".

 

[pdq]

I thought I'd post an update on this. I submitted a query to Avanti pointing out the problem back in mid August, about the same time as creating this thread.
Yesterday they apologised for the delay in responding to the 'complaint' and sent me a voucher for 2 free 1st class Advance tickets. Whether I'll make use of these is debateable, as I would travel to London from Wakefield not Manchester, but nice to have nonetheless.
The website is now correctly showing the £64.10 fare for the COV/WYB journey on a Friday.

So looks like they have fixed this problem and compensated me disproportionately as well!

 

[trebor79]

Is it because of seat reservation policies? I had a similar experience attempting to book Attleborough to Glasgow tickets a couple of weeks ago (LNER in this case of course). LNER and some other ticket sites wouldn't offer me the off-peak ticket, offering only the very expensive anytime return. GA sold me the off-peak return.
The trains from Peterborough was full and standing, so I assume this was another manifestation of the LNER "compulsory but not really compulsory" reservation policy. Just a matter of finding a booking engine which ignores the restriction. Was a bit annoying as I have some credit to use with Raileasy, but that site also wouldn't offer the ticket.

 

[OhNoAPacer]

Avanti website couldn't even give me a train from Northampton at 10:38 to change onto the 11:42 to Edinburgh at Coventry, it gave all manner if departuresfromNorthampton but neverthat one. It is as if the 10:38 didn't exist. Thank goodness that the forums seemingly favourite booking site trainsplit actually knows of the existence of trains.
I suspect thinking about it that the Avanti site wants me to change at Rugby and Crewe, always and with no exceptions.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Avanti website couldn't even give me a train from Northampton at 10:38 to change onto the 11:42 to Edinburgh at Coventry, it gave all manner if departuresfromNorthampton but neverthat one. It is as if the 10:38 didn't exist. Thank goodness that the forums seemingly favourite booking site trainsplit actually knows of the existence of trains.
I suspect thinking about it that the Avanti site wants me to change at Rugby and Crewe, always and with no exceptions.

Generally the trains via Brum are slower so don't come up unless you specifically ask for via Brum.

 

[OhNoAPacer]

Generally the trains via Brum are slower so don't come up unless you specifically ask for via Brum.

Which is kind of what I came to realise. Of course this would have been easier to spot had not one of the journey suggestions by the Avanti site not had me leaving Northampton earlier than 10:38 to end up on the train I would catch at Coventry but having caught it at Crewe. I don't know what would crop up if I looked now, and didn't specify via Brum, as I gave up with the Avanti site after that.

 

[Old Yard Dog]

When I looked on the Avanti website recently, it wouldn't sell me a flexible off-peak saver return from Crewe to London unless I could find a train where seat reservations could still be had. So I had to go to my local station (Hooton) to buy a bog standard ticket without seat reservations. Ironically you can't pick up tickets pre-booked online from Hooton.