Hereford to Euston via Birmingham (WMT only): Query regarding advance availability and additional changes

[trainophile]

Just booked Hereford to Euston for 7th March, via BHM, on the Trainsplit website. Must admit was excited to get a bargain basement through Advance ticket, so it wasn't until checking the confirmation email that I noticed it has me leaving the 1136 WMR BHM-EUS train at Northampton and boarding one half an hour later, then leaving that one at Milton Keynes Central and again waiting 15 minutes for a different train to Euston. I've emailed them asking if this is necessary, as I don't understand why I need two changes on what starts off as a direct service to Euston, but waiting for a reply.

Is there any logic in this or is it a database error?

 

[Birmingham]

I think it will be working as intended.

As West Midlands Trains services between Birmingham New Street [BHM] and London Euston [EUS] are marked ‘Reservations available’, you will have booked whichever services have the cheapest quotas available for each section of the journey. For example, your first train might have the cheapest quota available between BHM and Northampton [NMP], but not between NMP and EUS, and so it’s chucked you off there to board the next one which does have the cheapest quota available as far as Milton Keynes Central — but may not have had the cheapest quota available from BHM to NMP (hence why it didn’t put you on that one from BHM).

 

[trainophile]

Good grief, oh well, it all adds to the variety of life. It's not a ticket split though.

 

[Birmingham]

Good grief, oh well, it all adds to the variety of life. It's not a ticket split though.

Good luck to you. I think you’d have to pay me to do that.

 

[JB_B]

Good grief, oh well, it all adds to the variety of life. It's not a ticket split though.

I'd say that trainsplit has done well to get you an itinerary for which the £9.50 advance single from Hereford to Euston is valid given available quota. ( Assuming that's what you're looking at?)

 

[yorkie]

Just booked Hereford to Euston for 7th March, via BHM, on the Trainsplit website. Must admit was excited to get a bargain basement through Advance ticket, so it wasn't until checking the confirmation email that I noticed it has me leaving the 1136 WMR BHM-EUS train at Northampton and boarding one half an hour later, then leaving that one at Milton Keynes Central and again waiting 15 minutes for a different train to Euston. I've emailed them asking if this is necessary, as I don't understand why I need two changes on what starts off as a direct service to Euston, but waiting for a reply.

Is there any logic in this or is it a database error?

What is your full itinerary please?

And what fare were you issued?

 

[trainophile]

Depart HFD 0939, arrive BHM 1109, dep BHM 1136, arr NMP 1238, dep 1318, arr MKC 1334, dep 1349, arr EUS 1424. £6.25 with railcard. Seems too good to be true but it's there on the website, although not available on TPE when I put HFD-EUS via BHM.

 

[yorkie]

If you are unhappy with the itinerary you have 2 hours to cancel it without incurring any fees.

The cheap quota is not available on the fastest itinerary departing at 0939 and stepping back is required to obtain it.

It seems correct to me; the only caveat is that I get the same fare, using Trainsplit, without stepping back at Milton Keynes (arriving at 1417 at EUS) so I am unsure why you ended up with the additional step back there; if you don't want that, cancel it within 2 hours and re-book.

It's also possible to manually specify changing at Rugby and also specify West Midlands Trains only, to arrive Euston at 1324.


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Dec 2022 ==

although not available on TPE when I put HFD-EUS via BHM.

The TPE website does not do stepping back; TOC websites are geared towards the fastest permitted route and will not do fancy things to generate a lower fare.

 

[trainophile]

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "stepping back"?

How does one cancel a Trainsplit booking? Is there a facility on the confirmation page or do you have to email them?

 

[yorkie]

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "stepping back"?

Getting off a train that would take you to (or towards) your destination and getting on a later one.

It's sometimes necessary to get the cheapest fare, but most websites will not offer that.

How does one cancel a Trainsplit booking? Is there a facility on the confirmation page or do you have to email them?

There is an automated process; simply complete the form: https://refunds.trainsplit.com/

If done within 2 hours of booking there is no fee.

For the replacement ticket, specify changing at: Rugby, and select WMT only, and you can get to Euston an hour earlier.

 

[Starmill]

Just a thought @trainophile it may make life slightly easier if you were to give your actual journey in the thread title (in this case, Hereford to London Euston). as above you're stepping back a train rather than splitting tickets so it may also be slightly easier if it said something like an "advance ticket availability question". Cheers.

 

[trainophile]

I've emailed Trainsplit with a few minutes left of the two hour period. Haven't re-booked yet so couldn't use form. Will see if they accept it in the circs.

Apologies @Starmill I will amend title. Never quite sure what to put.

 

[yorkie]

I've emailed Trainsplit with a few minutes left of the two hour period. Haven't re-booked yet so couldn't use form. Will see if they accept it in the circs.

Apologies @Starmill I will amend title. Never quite sure what to put.

I've amended it for you but feel free to alter it further if you can think of a better one.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Dec 2022 ==

I've emailed Trainsplit with a few minutes left of the two hour period. Haven't re-booked yet so couldn't use form.

You can make a refund request without re-booking anything ; you just have to be within 2 hrs. That said, as a general rule, I would always advise checking the itinerary is suitable before booking.

Just checking did you do anything other than specify Hereford to London and select cheapest? No via/change points, no specifying WMT only or anything like that? What I don't quite understand is that when I do the search, I don't get the unnecessary change at MKC (a change is required at either Rugby - which gives the fastest journey - or Northampton, but not additionally at MKC).

 

[trainophile]

Thanks for sorting the heading out @yorkie, that's much better.

I have a couple of options to re-book, one at my original starting time and one an hour later which actually suits me better, and means I have just over an hour to connect from Euston to Victoria for my onward journey, which should be ample, rather than hanging around for ages.

Have had a reply to my original email to Trainsplit, they are taking this (possible) anomaly up with other sources. Not had a reply re. requesting cancellation of the original ticket. If that fails I'll have to stick with my original itinerary, it's no great hardship but just seemed a bit strange.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Dec 2022 ==


*********************************************

Sigh, just had confirmation from Trainsplit that they are refunding the original ticket. Went to re-book and the only cheap one left is the exact same one I've cancelled, the direct 0939 and 1039 are no longer available. I input changing at BHM and max 2 changes, also tried with avoid changing at NMP and MKC but we're looking at silly prices compared with my £6.25. So I've snapped up another 0939 with 3 changes before those disappear as well . Presumably Trainsplit's research has resulted in whoever sets these prices realising their error.

 

[yorkie]

As I said before, if you manually specify:

Change at: Rugby
Operator: WMT only

You will be offered the 0939 departure, arriving 1324. The lowest price is still available.

 

[Cantab26]

Sigh, just had confirmation from Trainsplit that they are refunding the original ticket. Went to re-book and the only cheap one left is the exact same one I've cancelled, the direct 0939 and 1039 are no longer available. I input changing at BHM and max 2 changes, also tried with avoid changing at NMP and MKC but we're looking at silly prices compared with my £6.25. So I've snapped up another 0939 with 3 changes before those disappear as well . Presumably Trainsplit's research has resulted in whoever sets these prices realising their error.

If you follow the advice from @yorkie :

As I said before, if you manually specify:

Change at: Rugby
Operator: WMT only

You will be offered the 0939 departure, arriving 1324. The lowest price is still available.

then you will be offered this fare for both the 0939 and 1039 departures from Hereford.

There is no pricing error here as far as I can see.

 

[trainophile]

Oh well I pre-empted that (sorry I didn't take on board the detailed instructions, just re-created what I did before but with the addition of max 2 changes and don't change at NMP or MKC, as that brought up the direct 0939 and 1039 services last time - I was getting a bit stressed about doing the re-claim and skim read the rest of it, my apologies @yorkie ).

Anyway, I did eventually manage to re-create the journey I wanted on the WMR website, even though that was well tucked away too. So I've now booked that, the 1039 ex-HFD and direct BHM-EUS. I've sent another begging email to the poor guys at Trainsplit explaining the situation, if they can't do a second refund I will just have to suck it up as it's my own fault for being too hasty and missing the help given above.

 

[yorkie]

... if they can't do a second refund ...

Do you mean a ticket you bought in the past 2 hours? If so you can do that using the form without needing to email anyone.

 

[trainophile]

Do you mean a ticket you bought in the past 2 hours? If so you can do that using the form without needing to email anyone.

Yes, but that form seems to require a re-booking reference as per the old Book with Confidence scheme which alas is no longer an option - either that or you have to select from reasons that don't include cancelling under the 2-hour refund thing. Unless I'm missing something.

It's annoying that you have to jump through hoops to find these tickets, and know the dodges. It's as if they don't want people to save money!

It will probably turn out to be a strike day anyway, in which case the whole thing will have been in vain.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Dec 2022 ==

A couple of times I've been filling in the form and it has automatically redirected me to an email page. Sometimes I have to put my ticket photo as an email attachment, other times there's a box on the claim form. It's all very mysterious but seems to work, and at least with the emails you do get a response so you know they are dealing with it.

 

[yorkie]

It's annoying that you have to jump through hoops to find these tickets, and know the dodges. It's as if they don't want people to save money!

If WMT don't want people to buy such cheap fares for this journey, they could make changes to prevent them, but that's pure speculation.

It will probably turn out to be a strike day anyway, in which case the whole thing will have been in vain.

There is no way to know at this stage.

A couple of times I've been filling in the form and it has automatically redirected me to an email page. Sometimes I have to put my ticket photo as an email attachment, other times there's a box on the claim form. It's all very mysterious but seems to work, and at least with the emails you do get a response so you know they are dealing with it.

That won't work; if you use TOD you must not have collected the tickets. I would recommend using e-tickets as it makes refunds and delay repay claims easier.

Oops! I purchased the wrong tickets | TrainSplit

TrainSplit compares routes & fares to get cheap train tickets for your next journey through split ticketing with no booking fee & saving up to 90%

trainsplit.com

..... we’ll refund them for FREE within two hours of purchase, with a couple of provisos:

1. If you’ve selected Ticket on Departure, you mustn’t collect your tickets. Instead, just go straight to the refunds system and we’ll cancel them for you.
2. Obviously you can’t have used your tickets at all (not even to go through a barrier) and the refund can't be requested past the departure time of the service you booked.

Providing you meet both the conditions above, and you’re within two hours of having purchased them, go to our Refunds page and fill in the details. We’ll offer you the chance to get a full, no questions asked refund...

 

[Starmill]

Presumably Trainsplit's research has resulted in whoever sets these prices realising their error.

For the avoidence of doubt there isn't an error in evidence here, it's the expected behaviour where part of the quota has sold out for a journey shorter than your Birmingham New Street to London Euston. For example, there could have been many Northampton to London ticket sales on that train exhausting the cheapest quota, this will cause it to be unavailable for Birmingham to London even if there's still availability at that price for the Birmingham to Northampton section.

 

[trainophile]

When I clicked on Continue at the bottom of the form it took me to an email page requesting proof of replacement journey, so I entered the WMT booking ref.

If I hadn't re-booked and just wanted to cancel within two hours of purchase I still don't know what I should have done.

Appreciated @Starmill, but the very fact that I couldn't find the cheap ticket on Trainsplit despite all my contortions, yet eventually found it "behind the scenes" on WMT does make it look like they don't really want that particular low priced flow to be immediately obvious to the casual purchaser. Can't help wondering how many people would have just bought the £33 ticket (for exactly the same journey) on WMR without delving into the "cheaper, slower etc." sub-section to find the bargain one.

 

[yorkie]

When I clicked on Continue at the bottom of the form it took me to an email page requesting proof of replacement journey, so I entered the WMT booking ref.

If I hadn't re-booked and just wanted to cancel within two hours of purchase I still don't know what I should have done.

Appreciated @Starmill, but the very fact that I couldn't find the cheap ticket on Trainsplit despite all my contortions, yet eventually found it "behind the scenes" on WMT does make it look like they don't really want that particular low priced flow to be immediately obvious to the casual purchaser. Can't help wondering how many people would have just bought the £33 ticket (for exactly the same journey) on WMR without delving into the "cheaper, slower etc." sub-section to find the bargain one.

TOCs do not make any effort to show cheaper fares for slower journeys; Trainsplit does (but doing so in a manner that offers what is perceived to be the best itinerary is not a trivial matter).

Therefore any journey where the fastest journeys via permitted routes do not offer the best fares, will generally not appear on train company websites. Trainsplit will make an effort to show them; if it does not do so by default then you could try advanced options, such as choosing West Midlands Trains Only.

Train companies are not keen to show the cheapest fares; they just want people to take the fastest itinerary by a permitted route and the expectation is that passengers will pay whatever the price is. If it's too much money, train companies are more than happy for people to simply not travel by train, on the basis that trains which don't have the cheapest fares available are busy enough anyway.

It's not that WMT are desperate for you not to get a good fare, it's more that they have no interest in making a cheap fare for a slower journey available to you.

If train companies such as WMT wanted to show cheaper fares and slower itineraries to match those cheap fares, they would simply contact the suppliers of the technology that powers Trainsplit and offer it.

But there is no reason why they would do so as many people are prepared to pay whatever price the faster trains cost, and in any case the Government subsidises the railway so there isn't the sort of incentive that a truly private operation would have , in attracting users to the service.

It's a different mindset, which anyone who has worked in any other industry may struggle to understand.

 

[trainophile]

It's ironic then that after quite a lot of delving I did find the cheapest fare for the fastest journey (within the constraints of WMT only). Initially they would have had me pay something like £27 (can't remember exactly now) for the 1039 HFD departure, while hiding the £6.25 ticket behind the places people automatically see first.

I can understand why they do it, but it does seem a bit underhand. However if the alternative is no cheap tickets at all then I'll have to live with it and keep searching.

 

[yorkie]

It's ironic then that after quite a lot of delving I did find the cheapest fare for the fastest journey (within the constraints of WMT only). Initially they would have had me pay something like £27 (can't remember exactly now) for the 1039 HFD departure, while hiding the £6.25 ticket behind the places people automatically see first.

I can understand why they do it, but it does seem a bit underhand.

Train companies take the view that only the fastest journeys are generally shown.

However if the alternative is no cheap tickets at all then I'll have to live with it and keep searching.

If the quota of cheap tickets becomes unavailable on certain trains close to London, there is no real solution to that problem, other than to change onto a train where the cheap quota is still available. The only other solution would be to simply abolish Advance fares entirely, and that could be argued to make fares 'fairer'; some people do indeed argue for this.

It's just something you have to accept; the cheap fares may not be available on the fastest trains, and you may need to 'step back' or take convoluted routes to obtain the cheapest fares. Most people don't worry about this and simply select whatever fare is available on the fastest train (or simply don't travel by train if the price isn't right) and that's what the TOCs are geared up to cater for.

Also I can see why any TOC viewing this thread would not be keen to find cheaper fares for slower journeys; if it resulted in email queries questioning why the journey is slow, that would increase their staffing costs (response times for queries sent to TOCs are already very long, generally).

 

[trainophile]

Well yes, but unless we're comparing Avanti with WMT the "fastness" isn't really an issue. Many people like myself who only use the railways for leisure don't really mind the journey taking a bit longer. The only reason I flagged this up in the first place was because it seemed a bit unnecessary to make people "step back" from a train that goes direct to their destination and is not due to split ticketing. Anyway I'm sorted for now, so thanks for your input everyone.

 

[yorkie]

Well yes, but unless we're comparing Avanti with WMT the "fastness" isn't really an issue. Many people like myself who only use the railways for leisure don't really mind the journey taking a bit longer. The only reason I flagged this up in the first place was because it seemed a bit unnecessary to make people "step back" from a train that goes direct to their destination and is not due to split ticketing.

To be clear, it is necessary to step back in some cases, including this one, where the quota is not available all the way through to the destination.

However in this case the step back that was offered automatically was not optimal in terms of journey time and also number of changes.

Anyway I'm sorted for now, so thanks for your input everyone.

You're welcome, glad it's sorted now

 

[Starmill]

The only reason I flagged this up in the first place was because it seemed a bit unnecessary to make people "step back" from a train that goes direct to their destination and is not due to split ticketing.

For the avoidence of doubt, not finding the cheapest advance ticket quota on the first available train to arrive at the destination, but finding it on a different one which arrives shortly afterwards, is a relatively common scenario. So common in fact that the same issue cropped up shortly before yours did with Inverurie to London, where in order to buy a cheaper ticket, it was necccesary to let one train go and board the next one.

 

[trainophile]

Was getting tired last night so didn't respond in depth to the last couple of posts, but reporting back today that Trainsplit have in their usual helpful way agreed both refunds of the tickets with the extra changes, and also to clarify that by delving deep on the WMR website I did manage to select a cheap one involving just the one change at BHM, so it is possible, it just takes perseverance and knowing (or by trial and error working out) what to do. The slower/cheaper ticket page on the WMR site gave side by side two £6.25 listings, one with the three changes and one with just the BHM then direct to EUS. I can't think why anyone wouldn't chose the direct one so it still seems a strange way of presenting the options.

Stupidly I remembered after I'd logged off that I've already got tickets for another trip involving the same HFD-EUS trip, booked for Feb and already collected, same cheap Advances, and on looking at these this morning it forces a change at Rugby, but only a very brief wait there. I was hoping that despite the itinerary the actual ticket might just read HFD-EUS so nobody checking on board would be any the wiser, but it does indeed specify the step back at Rugby.

Sorry I didn't read the Inverurie to London thread so wasn't aware of the similar scenario. It's a funny old business, I find it quite amusing how complicated they can make a simple thing like buying a train ticket, and feel at an advantage having the benefit of this forum over the vast majority of travellers who probably just buy the first ticket they find. Still, long may it continue even if it is a messy process.

 

[yorkie]

Sorry I didn't read the Inverurie to London thread so wasn't aware of the similar scenario. It's a funny old business, I find it quite amusing how complicated they can make a simple thing like buying a train ticket, and feel at an advantage having the benefit of this forum over the vast majority of travellers who probably just buy the first ticket they find. Still, long may it continue even if it is a messy process.

If anyone wants a really simple journey, just search for the fastest journey, and the cheaper options won't complicate your life again

I think you are making a good case, in this post, to answer your question earlier regarding why TOC websites don't offer the cheaper fares: some people would see it as complicated and may contact customer services asking why it's a slower journey, which increases the retailers costs.

You can't really in one post complain that TOCs don't offer the cheap fares for slower journeys, but then in a subsequent post say how to complicated the slower journeys are!