Avanti West Coast "Off Peak Return" validity before 09:30

[kkgbd2223]

Hello,

I have a query regarding the ticket London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly "Off-Peak Return" with restriction code 9I priced at £98.10. Currently both the NRE website and Avanti's website show that this ticket is not valid on the 07:20 departure from London Euston arriving at Manchester Piccadilly at 09:28 Monday to Thursday, However, when I look up restriction code 9I it shows there is an "easement" permitting the use of this ticket on the 07:20 departure, specifically it states:
Train Easements
Also unconditionally valid on the following trains:

VT7005 0616 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 12 September 2022 until 9 December 2022 Mo Tu We Th Fr (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7020 0655 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 9 December 2022 Mo Tu We Th Fr (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7025 0720 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 9 December 2022 Mo Tu We Th Fr (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7040 0820 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 9 December 2022 Mo Tu We Th Fr (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7050 0856 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 9 December 2022 Mo Tu We Th Fr (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7070 1020 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 9 December 2022 Mo Tu We Th Fr (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7137 1056 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 10 December 2022 Sa (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7200 1857 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 7 December 2022 Mo Tu We (AVANTI WEST COAST)​
VT7205 1922 LONDON EUSTON to MANCHESTER PICCADILLY​	From 25 August 2022 until 9 December 2022 Fr (AVANTI WEST COAST)​

I would appreciate it if someone far more knowledgeable than me could confirm if this ticket "Off-Peak Return" priced at £98.10 is valid for departure from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly at 07:20?

Many thanks.

 

[jfollows]

NRE shows validity for me: (I chose outbound tomorrow morning, 28 August)
[IRRELEVANT because I chose a Friday departure date when there are no peak restrictions anyway.]

 

[kkgbd2223]

Thank you for getting back to me. I have written to NRE's Customer Services earlier today, it could be that they've now implemented the easement. However, Avanti's website shows it's not valid:

Thanks.

 

[jfollows]

Hello,

I have a query regarding the ticket London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly "Off-Peak Return" with restriction code 9I priced at £98.10. Currently both the NRE website and Avanti's website show that this ticket is not valid on the 07:20 departure from London Euston arriving at Manchester Piccadilly at 09:28 Monday to Thursday, However, when I look up restriction code 9I it shows there is an "easement" permitting the use of this ticket on the 07:20 departure, specifically it states:
Train Easements
Also unconditionally valid on the following trains:

​

Many thanks.

I wasn't aware of this, so it's interesting to know, thank you for posting. I can't answer your question; one interesting observation is that there isn't anything similar for the reverse direction, so presumably the up morning services from Manchester remain busy, but the down morning ones from London aren't.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Aug 2022 ==

Avanti shows this (now): (for tomorrow am, returning Saturday)
[IRRELEVANT as above because there aren't any restrictions on a Friday anyway.]

 

[kkgbd2223]

This is the reply I got from NRE's Customer Services:

Thanks for taking the time to email us. I was sorry to learn that our journey planner displayed incorrect time restrictions. I understand that you feel the 07:20 service from London Euston to Manchester should display as an Off-Peak Return instead of the Anytime Return ticket.

I would like to explain that the fares and the restrictions displayed on our website for a particular journey are provided to us by the train companies which operate services on the route.

I’ve planned your journey on our website and can confirm that our journey planner displays the correct restriction. The restriction code for 9l for the outward journey states, that the ticket is not valid for the trains to depart London Euston before 09:26 Monday to Friday. Therefore, the 07:20 service is considered an Anytime Return and not an Off-Peak Return.

 

[jfollows]

This is the reply I got from NRE's Customer Services:

twaddle! Presumably they just didn't read your email properly and decided the answer on this basis.
But maybe this is a sudden/recent change which hasn't been communicated well?
If it's relatively recent, it presumably takes a finite time to percolate to the ticket selling sites.

 

[kkgbd2223]

The NRE website still shows the ticket as not valid on the 07:20 departure:

 

[jfollows]

SORRY!

My posts are irrelevant because I chose a Friday for the outbound service - tomorrow - which doesn't have restrictions anyway.

Sorry for the confusion and I continue to be as puzzled as you are.

Even though I've previously taken advantage of it, I keep forgetting the removal of Friday restrictions from off-peak tickets.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The reason this isn't coming up is that the retail service IDs are different. The 0720 today is VT7159, not VT7025, for example. These are unpublished restrictions so you have no specific right to them.

However I don't get why those easements are even in there. COVID period perhaps?

 

[kkgbd2223]

Thank you all for your replies, I got this response from NRE customer services:
Thanks for your response further to your query registered with us. I understand that you have provided us with the screen capture of the easements which are issued by Avanti West Coast.

Firstly, I would like to clarify that National Rail Enquiries provides passenger railway information services such as train times, fares and live departure information, but we do not retail tickets, operate trains or decide time restrictions for any route.

To answer your question, I would like to advise you that the train information and off-peak restrictions displayed on our website are based on the updates we’ve received from Avanti West Coast (Train Operating Company on your route). Even the Avanti West Coast website displays that the 07:20 train London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly is a peak hour service. Until they amend this information on their website, we cannot make any changes on our website.

If you wish to discuss this matter further, I would recommend that you can contact Avanti West Coast Customer Services Team, as set fares and ticket restrictions for this route. I'm sure that their Customer Services will be the best people to address your complaint.

I will write to Avanti West Coat Customer Services.

In terms of other points, in my view:
1. The Easement has been made public via a publicly accessible data feed, therefore it has been "published". I don't consider it an "unpublished restriction"
2. When you buy a train ticket, you enter into a legally binding contract with the train company, as a customer, you are required to be furnished with the details of that contract, that would not be acceptable to have a contract subject to "unpublished restrictions" that you are not permitted to see. That wouldn't stand to scrutiny in Court
3. Trains in the UK (I know Europe is different) are generally identified by Departure Time and Destination, not by train number or "retail service ID". Those numbers are mere variables in a database that can be changed at any time, time tables and stopping patterns cannot. Therefore, to have a contract validity based on a data variable that one party can arbitrarily change as they see fit which makes the contract invalid is dishonest. Whilst I'm not a lawyer, I'm pretty sure that would not comply with UK and EU Consumer Law.
4. Avanti have published the easement, therefore, they either need to remove it, or honour it.
5. In the easement, Avanti have stated the easement is valid on the 07:20 departure London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly through to 9th December. If they had no intention of the easement being valid on this train, they should not have issued it.
6. In terms of NRE's response, it shouldn't be for me to pursue the matter with Avanti, I've notified NRE of the issue, they should be speaking with Avanti to clarify it. At the very least, the data provided is "inconsistent" therefore, it's unclear what the correct fare is for the 07:20 departure.

I will write to Avanti and post back here.

 

[reb0118]

Out of interest have you been stopped from using an off peak ticket on this train?

 

[Paul Kelly]

I think you are reading too much into the information shown on BRfares.com. Avanti have not specifically published an easement regarding "the 07:20 departure London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly through to 9th December"; all they have done is put a schedule unique ID in the data feed and what you are looking at it is BR Fares' best-effort interpretation of that. As @Bletchleyite has pointed out above the train identified in the unpublished information on BR Fares may not even be running and may have been replaced by a different schedule on all days on which it was scheduled to run.

BR Fares is not a timetable information site and specifically, does not attempt to show whether a train schedule is actually running on any given day that you might be interested in. It simply shows a description of the train schedule mentioned in the easement, as it exists in the timetable data. The train is indeed scheduled to run Mon-Fri until December, but it might well be cancelled or overridden every day and so never actually run. If you click through the links in the BR Fares unpublished information to BRtimes.com you can select a specific day and check whether the schedule is running on that day (by default, BR Times will show you the next day on which the schedule is running).

This is all obviously very confusing but that's Avanti's fault for all the messing about they are doing with their schedules!

 

[miklcct]

In terms of other points, in my view:
1. The Easement has been made public via a publicly accessible data feed, therefore it has been "published". I don't consider it an "unpublished restriction"
2. When you buy a train ticket, you enter into a legally binding contract with the train company, as a customer, you are required to be furnished with the details of that contract, that would not be acceptable to have a contract subject to "unpublished restrictions" that you are not permitted to see. That wouldn't stand to scrutiny in Court
3. Trains in the UK (I know Europe is different) are generally identified by Departure Time and Destination, not by train number or "retail service ID". Those numbers are mere variables in a database that can be changed at any time, time tables and stopping patterns cannot. Therefore, to have a contract validity based on a data variable that one party can arbitrarily change as they see fit which makes the contract invalid is dishonest. Whilst I'm not a lawyer, I'm pretty sure that would not comply with UK and EU Consumer Law.
4. Avanti have published the easement, therefore, they either need to remove it, or honour it.
5. In the easement, Avanti have stated the easement is valid on the 07:20 departure London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly through to 9th December. If they had no intention of the easement being valid on this train, they should not have issued it.
6. In terms of NRE's response, it shouldn't be for me to pursue the matter with Avanti, I've notified NRE of the issue, they should be speaking with Avanti to clarify it. At the very least, the data provided is "inconsistent" therefore, it's unclear what the correct fare is for the 07:20 departure.

I will write to Avanti and post back here.

My view is that, it is a published easement in the machine-readable format. However, machines process trains using UID, and according to the schedule, the corresponding UID does not run on that date, therefore the easement is effectively void.

If you want to rely on a machine-readable version of an easement you will need to process it using the specifications on retail systems published by National Rail, which uses the UID for identification.

 

[Paul Kelly]

according to the schedule, the corresponding UID does not run on that date

Being a bit pedantic here but I just wanted to clarify what BR Fares is showing: according to the schedule the UID does run on a range of dates, including the date that the OP wants to travel - this is what BR Fares is showing. But in addition, Avanti have cancelled it on certain days and this is not shown on BR Fares, as the information is potentially quite open-ended and complicated to display. You can check the status of the schedule on any given date using TimetableHistory.com: http://timetablehistory.com/times.aspx?uid=G65052&date=20220829

 

[Bletchleyite]

My view is that, it is a published easement in the machine-readable format. However, machines process trains using UID, and according to the schedule, the corresponding UID does not run on that date, therefore the easement is effectively void.

If you want to rely on a machine-readable version of an easement you will need to process it using the specifications on retail systems published by National Rail, which uses the UID for identification.

I would not get stuck up on the meaning of published. The contract is established on one of two things - the textual wording of the restriction shown to you on a TVM or by checking it on nationalrail.co.uk/<code> or read to you at a booking office, or the itinerary against which you purchase. There is no situation where brfares.com, which is not an official rail site, could be considered to be in any way part of the contract.

Thus, if you are sold an Off Peak against one of these trains it is unquestionably valid on that booked train (but not the others). Beyond that you have no such rights, and attempting to push these will just result in that internal data ceasing to be made public.

I don't entirely know why these are in the data, I suspect they are a mistake, but it doesn't overly matter why they are because unless an itinerary actually sells an Off Peak using one they are not relevant to the contract.

It is easy to see what the restriction is intended to be by reading the text.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Another point that I think everyone has missed so far is that the easements mentioned only apply to the return journey (which would be MAN-EUS on a London to Manchester Off-Peak Return) - yet the trains being discussed are all trains in the outward direction from EUS-MAN. So, another reason why the easements are totally meaningless.