East Coast Advance Tickets

[Yorkswatcher]

Now I travel a lot via Doncaster or Wakefield to London either using Hull Trains or East Coast. 99% of the time travelling back up north I use East coast as they are the cheapest option. And some times I travel East Coast down if there are the cheap advance tickets.

I always book my trains on the Thursday morning release time.

But since the 22nd May timetable I have noticed that rather than paying my £6.75 as I have a rail card the fares have gone up to £22.50 and these are for off peak services.

Anyone know why the sudden hike in fares? I would expect to pay this a few weeks into advance booking not the first day.

 

[cuccir]

I've also noticed that East Coast have stopped releasing tickets for their later trains, or at least are releasing very few, from the end of May. I suspect that some of this is to cover the cost of free food to first class passengers

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Do we know the number of tickets released for sale within each price band?

The advertised claims for any given point-to-point journey boast the cheapest tier of AP tickets and the total quantities over ALL price tiers. (eg
Edinburgh to London: First Class AP from £47.50 (11,000 one-way tickets released every week) or, Glasgow to London: Standard Class AP from £6.50 ).
But in that example, only a few of the First Class APs will be available at that price, and apparently not on every service.

Elsewhere, East Coast claim : ". . . as part of the Miniature Prices campaign, at least 10% of which will be available at the advertised fare. e.g. York to London from £10.00 one-way has 80,000 tickets released every week (of which at least 8,000 will be available at the advertised fare)."
But that statement is confined to the 11 week 'Minature Prices' advertising campaign and of course many of these lowest price tickets appear on the under-used services.

In my experience, I have consistently failed to find the advertised lowest tier of some tickets to be available in both directions of a journey.

I find these claims to be misleading if not downright disingenuous.

Does anyone here have the actual figures?

 

[barrykas]

In my experience, I have consistently failed to find the advertised lowest tier of some tickets to be available in both directions of a journey.

I find these claims to be misleading if not downright disingenuous.

Does anyone here have the actual figures?

East Coast's Pricing Manager should do. However, such information would be regarded as commercially sensitive, so you're not going to be able to get it easily. Even in the days of CRS all you'd see is whether there were at least 9 seats available for a given quota, or less than that.

You could try the Fare Finder on the National Rail site to see if there's any availability, but generally the cheapest fares are only available at really "unpopular" times. (After all, why sell £5 tickets for a train that you know you could fill with £50 tickets?).

Another approach would be to complain to the ASA, and get them to look into it. Though as long as East Coast can show that a certain percentage (around 10% IIRC) throughout the day are available for that price, there's not a lot they can do.

Cheers,

Barry

 

[island]

East Coast's Pricing Manager should do. However, such information would be regarded as commercially sensitive, so you're not going to be able to get it easily.

How about the Freedom of Information Act?

 

[DaveNewcastle]

How about the Freedom of Information Act?

The FoI Act has robust exclusions in respect of commercially sensitive information. I acknowledge that there have been FoI applications made to EC (who among other TOCs are uniquely captured by the Act) and were contested but ultimately answered, but, in my opinion this request would be legitimately declined.

 

[yorkie]

A member of this forum complained to the Advertising Agency about these tactics, sadly they refused to take action. (I believe the discussion got a bit 'heated'!) however perhaps someone else can try. I certainly agree their advertisements appear to be misleading.