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Train ticket price is this vaild
- Thread starter Josh Robin
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RailUK Forums
I would venture to suggest that SET's Pricing Manager has got more than enough work to do with Oval than to worry about relatively trivial things like this.Can we get a book on how long it will take for that to happen
I stand for correction, however!
RJ
Established Member
While that’s true in all likelihood, it doesn’t add much workload to correct anomalies. Businesses often don’t like customers getting the better of them and will spend time stopping people getting unintended value.
That and the disproportionate amount of resource it takes to deal with the problems that arise from staff on the ground being presented with tickets they are not familiar with. Customers shouldn’t be able to run rings around the company and shutting down the anomalies reduces the opportunity for that.
All that said there’s nothing to stop determined people from finding anomalous fares, it’s an ongoing game of cat and mouse really.
If you have an itinerary then there can be no doubt that it's permitted. If you rely on your own calculations of what the Routeing Guide etc. permits, this can also be just as valid - but the fact that you won't have an itinerary to back it up will make it harder to defend it if you are "pulled up" by staff or if things head towards being charged for a new ticket/Penalty Fare/prosecution.
I tend to make sure I do never had issues with it if ticket was for somewhere else in the UK and tells me to take HS1 but alwsy never works on barriers and get let through well at London st pancreas
You're much less likely to encounter issues if the ticket isn't obviously "too cheap" (as far as barrier staff are concerned).
Barriers have to be manually programmed to accept any tickets that aren't issued to/from the station in question. Since this is a manual process and (as I understand it) there is a memory limit to the number of tickets that can be programmed in this way, operators focus on the most popular tickets and anything that isn't popular is likely to be rejected.
Most barriers can also only be programmed to have one set of time restrictions for Off-Peak or Super Off-Peak tickets, so operators tend to program them based on the most common restrictions for tickets seen at that station. But not all tickets have the same restrictions, and so tickets that have more or less onerous time restrictions than the "norm" can also be incorrectly rejected or accepted.
It's all makes for rather a poor customer experience!
Can they also make it flag on ticket with railcards ?
That can be figured manually. The default is generally to allow Railcard tickets through, but they can be set to be rejected or to produce an alert sound if they want to manually check that people have the Railcard their ticket requires.
Nice to know in future
This statement is correct in terms of the relevance of an itinerary where a fare would otherwise not be valid via a given route.
This statement is incorrect as a matter of law and should not be relied upon.
Yes, the context was a situation where a ticket was booked with an itinerary and the Routeing Guide was then changed to prohibit travel via that itinerary.
miklcct
Established Member
Using the context of Anytime tickets, doesn't the existence of an itinerary from an accredited retailer imply that the route is permitted for that ticket so I can take trains on the same route whenever the time is, as the ticket isn't time restricted?
If you are not following the exact itinerary, the ticket isn't guaranteed to be valid; if you want to take a route that may in any way be deemed to be unreasonable and/or a "loophole", I would urge you to follow the exact itinerary stated on the ticket or booking confirmation.
Although in this case that would require removing the shortest route qualification, which almost definitely won’t happen, so the routeing guide will always support this route on a ticket routed ‘any permitted’.
miklcct
Established Member
Apart from the direct train rule, what's the possibility that the ticket won't be valid?
There are 3 rules where a route is valid: direct train, shortest route, and routes from the Routeing Guide.
If an itinerary can be generated from a retailer which isn't a direct train nor the shortest route, by deduction that route must be valid in the Routeing Guide!
RJ
Established Member
The whole point is that the rules promoted by the rail industry permit the tickets to be used in this way. It’s railway staff who define the permitted routes, time restrictions, break of journey rights and so on and these are published in the National Routeing Guide, National Rail Enquires and the National Rail Conditions of Travel respectively.
Best of all, these are all public resources so there is a level playing field where it comes to checking validity for frontline staff and passengers.
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No, without more this would not follow as a matter of law in terms of determining validity of a fare on a route that would not otherwise be permitted by the NRCOT or the National Routeing Guide.
Agreed.
Have you not read posts where it has been stated that errors can occur?
Conversely, there are examples where a ticket should be valid under the direct train rule, but most journey planners (including NRE) still apply negative "easements" that prevent them from being shown.
For example: Chiltern normally run a 2311 from Marylebone to Banbury via Oxford on weekdays, but only Raileasy (including Trainsplit and the forum-badged version) and Worldline WebTIS acknowledge its existence for tickets to Banbury. Other journey planners will only show it for stations as far as Oxford.
This appears to be down to Circuitous Route "easement" 700913: "Customers travelling to Kings Sutton or Banbury from or via Oxford may not travel via Haddenham & Thame Parkway. This circuitous route easement applies in both directions."
Perfectly logical 99% of the time, but breaks for that one train.
For example: Chiltern normally run a 2311 from Marylebone to Banbury via Oxford on weekdays, but only Raileasy (including Trainsplit and the forum-badged version) and Worldline WebTIS acknowledge its existence for tickets to Banbury. Other journey planners will only show it for stations as far as Oxford.
This appears to be down to Circuitous Route "easement" 700913: "Customers travelling to Kings Sutton or Banbury from or via Oxford may not travel via Haddenham & Thame Parkway. This circuitous route easement applies in both directions."
Perfectly logical 99% of the time, but breaks for that one train.
miklcct
Established Member
So how can the customer be responsible for errors made by the retailer? If the train ticket is sold in conjunction with an itinerary, it naturally follows that the ticket is valid for itinerary. In addition, the terms of the ticket type Anytime Day Single means I am not tied to the times of the itinerary as well.
Yes, that's what we have said; if you are following the itinerary, you should be fine.
Of course following an itinerary that is not intended to be valid is unlikely to be hassle-free and could have all sorts of negative concequences, depending on the reasonableness of what you are doing and also how you interact with the staff.
Feel free to make that argument if you become embroiled in a dispute; I know of someone who got into such a dispute and chose not to let the matter go to court and so they paid a settlement to the company (the ticket was issued between two stations in the Midlands and was used via Aberdeen, if I recall correctly; the ticket was not being used fully in conjunction with the itinerary and the passenger initially made the argument that you are stating before giving up).
If you fought your ground and the matter went to court, I would strongly advise you do not represent yourself but instead pay for proper legal representation; it would be a matter for the court to decide if you are right or not but until then, I wouldn't take it for granted.
Providing you are happy to stump up the solicitors costs (which could be well into four figures), feel free to give it a go, but if you don't have a few grand spare, I would not be risking it! But this is straying well beyond the subject of this thread.
miklcct
Established Member
Has there been a precedent yet? It would be helpful if that passenger didn't pay the settlement and let the matter went to court instead.
Not that I am aware of.
Are you offering? Would you plan to represent yourself or would you pay for a solicitor? You may want to see if a solicitor would take such a case on before trying it! You could try Penman Sedgwick; I've heard positive things about them.
I highly doubt there will ever be a precedent, since as much as TOC customer service and management will claim it’s not valid, as soon as they take it to a lawyer who has the slightest idea how contract law works, theyll be told to settle sharpish.
And even if they didn't, a judgment of a county court, where such a claim would be made, does not set precedent.
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