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Trainsplit share of saving

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thomasheywood

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Trainsplit proudly declares ‘no booking fees’ and yet there’s nothing on the front page saying that not all of the saving is passed to you (which is in effect a booking fee). Am I the only one who finds this a little underhanded? Why not state that you charge this more prominently?
 
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Adam Williams

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It's pretty clear - there's an entire paragraph devoted to it on the About page (in the top section of content, after the banner), tooltips on the search results, a price breakdown, an FAQ question, and the fee is baked into all the prices from the first opportunity (no drip pricing):

When we find you a saving using our split ticketing technology, we charge you a small percentage of that saving. This is our “share of saving fee”. This fee is up to 15% of the saving we find for you. We only charge you if we're able to find you a saving by splitting tickets - so if we don't find you a saving, you don't pay us a penny more than you would have paid buying from a conventional online retailer (such as a train operating company), or a ticket office.

Don't pay a penny unless we save you money When we find you a saving using our split ticketing technology, we charge you a small percentage of that saving. This is our “share of saving fee”. This fee is up to 15% of the saving we find for you. We only charge you if we're able to find you a saving by splitting tickets - so if we don't find you a saving, you don't pay us a penny more than you would have paid buying from a conventional online retailer (such as a train operating company), or a ticket office. We say “up to 15%” because we do apply a cap to the fee if it would be particularly high. You can always see a breakdown of the fee applied to your journey and the total ticket cost on our Ticket Information page before purchase.

If we find you a saving by using split ticketing, we take a commission of up to 15% of that saving. If there's no saving, there's no fee.
 
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williamn

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I think the fee is pretty clearly displayed? I must admit that when it starts to get over £5 or so I tend to book the tickets separately.
 
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Kilopylae

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The share of saving never ends up putting you above what you (probably) wouldn't have found without their engine, so it seems fair enough to me.
 
ac6000cw

ac6000cw

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Also, in my experience, TrainSplit's customer service is excellent if you need it - well worth giving them a small amount of the split ticket saving for.
 
styles

styles

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Adam Williams said:
It's pretty clear - there's an entire paragraph devoted to it on the About page (in the top section of content, after the banner), tooltips on the search results, a price breakdown, an FAQ question, and the fee is baked into all the prices from the first opportunity (no drip pricing):

View attachment 183937

View attachment 183940

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If I understand @thomasheywood, they're not so concerned with the fee being hidden, but the way it's often described as 'no booking fees', which seems a bit misleading compared to 'only a booking fee when we save you money'.

E.g.:
1752590434136.png
I find it more of an issue on rail forums etc where for a long time Trainline has been slated for charging a (capped at £3.99) booking fee and in the same breath promoting sites like Trainsplit. Both sites sometimes charge no fee, and sometimes charge a fee, and both sites cap their fee.

(The main argument against Trainline imo is actually that their split ticket algorithm is poorer, but don't want to turn this into a Trainline post per se)

Sometimes Trainsplit sites save me more money than competitors; other time competitors win because they find the same splits with lower booking fees.
 
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