SaveMyFare

[redreni]

I can only assume, if there's a 10% platform fee, that the use case for this is either when the seller is accepting less than the face value of the ticket, or when it is an Advance and prices have risen since the ticket was originally purchased?

In which case one assumes this is almost certainly going to be used principally for Advances, otherwise why would the ticket holder not just amend or refund the ticket?

One can imagine in the case of an Advance, if you no longer wish to travel and you have no immediate plans to make the journey on another day, then you can't get a refund and there's little point getting an amendment. In that case, I can see the merit in a platform like this, because assuming you're a 'normie' and your friends aren't railway enthusiasts who might want to take a trip for the sheer pleasure of it, what are the chances that somebody you know is going to want to make a very specific journey on a particular date and at a particular time?

In these circumstances the ticket is just going to go to waste. Finding somebody who wants it requires an online platform. I imagine in most cases you'd have to be very reasonable in how much you asked for it. Unless, of course, a major event has been announced for the date of travel between the date you booked and the date you're looking to sell, in which case you might be holding a ticket that would fetch far more than the face value, if the NRCoT allowed it to be sold for more than that.

 

[LJA]

To me this just feels like a project by someone (probably a student) who’s come up with a business plan without really thinking it through

A ticket resale market could never work. Maybe I have an advance ticket that I can’t use - but what are the chances of finding someone who does want that (and vice versa)

 

[pokemonsuper9]

otherwise why would the ticket holder not just amend or refund the ticket?

Because the admin fee take enough that it'd be more useful to re-sell it.

The site would probably be better if it just listed all the tickets available in a big filterable list rather than having to individually search for any pair of ~2000 locations with any of 6 discount options (24 million combinations).
If tickets are being resold at a bargain price being able to see all of them might prompt some people do do journeys they otherwise had no need for

 

[Gaelan]

When I was at uni, students would regularly offer advances to and from London for resale on Facebook, having presumably changed their plans.

Obviously you'll never be able to find a ticket from Sugar Loaf to St Keyne Wishing Well Halt on a platform like this, but surely in any reasonably-sized settlement there'll be someone who's just cancelled a trip to London and someone who wants to go to London, or could be convinced to go to London with a good-enough value fare.

I'm not going to be first in line to try a platform like this, but if an established and trusted platform existed (and they found a solution to the fraud risks) I think it would be a useful thing to have.

 

[styles]

To me this just feels like a project by someone (probably a student) who’s come up with a business plan without really thinking it through

Probably.

A ticket resale market could never work. Maybe I have an advance ticket that I can’t use - but what are the chances of finding someone who does want that (and vice versa)

I think it could work, though it does require getting it to a critical mass where you can be confident there'll be a journey going roughly where you need when you need. It needn't necessarily be the exact time you want to get there, as there's clearly support for the likes of Avanti Superfare where you just specify a rough time of day for example, same as Eurostar Snap. People trying to save a few quid are likely to be more flexible.

The site would probably be better if it just listed all the tickets available in a big filterable list rather than having to individually search for any pair of ~2000 locations with any of 6 discount options (24 million combinations).
If tickets are being resold at a bargain price being able to see all of them might prompt some people do do journeys they otherwise had no need for

Agreed. If I could list all tickets for sale from Betws-y-Coed tomorrow, I might be tempted by an impromptu trip somewhere.

For now, as there are so few tickets on there, having to specify origin, destination, and date before seeing any results is just not good enough. It says there's 2 tickets from Newcastle to London King's Cross available (and 2 in the other direction), but you can't buy them without knowing the dates they're for, which involves trial and error on the search form.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Agreed. If I could list all tickets for sale from Betws-y-Coed tomorrow, I might be tempted by an impromptu trip somewhere.

I would say even beyond all from one station, maybe just until it grows too big (if ever) a giant list of all tickets (maybe ordered by distance from selected location).
E.g. London has at least (depending what you count) 8 major termini, so anyone living in Zone 1 or 2 looking for day trip ideas would probably want to see all of them.

 

[signed]

A ticket resale market could never work. Maybe I have an advance ticket that I can’t use - but what are the chances of finding someone who does want that (and vice versa)

For event tickets, resale market works great and in most cases a official is needed to limit scammers and black market reselling

For transport tickets, I agree with @styles that once you reach mass of offer, there will be a healthy market, especially with how artificially full some trains get

 

[styles]

For event tickets, resale market works great and in most cases a official is needed to limit scammers and black market reselling

And actually, with the legal framework the rail industry has, preventing people using it for ticket scalping would be quite straightforward. It seems the NRCoT already has rules regarding transferring for <= the original price for example.

 

[LJA]

For event tickets, resale market works great and in most cases a official is needed to limit scammers and black market reselling

For transport tickets, I agree with @styles that once you reach mass of offer, there will be a healthy market, especially with how artificially full some trains get

Yes - of course resale markets work with other things. But there’s a big difference in supply and demand for a concert and an advance ticket on the 19.11 from Leeds to Kings Cross.

Perhaps it could work but I think it would be a struggle for a new platform to get the volume of users and tickets to ever make it viable

 

[Haywain]

Perhaps it could work but I think it would be a struggle for a new platform to get the volume of users and tickets to ever make it viable

I suspect it's been set up by someone thinking they can earn a bit of easy commission on reselling tickets without considering the cost of providing support and having to deal with legal matters which will inevitably arise.

 

[styles]

I suspect it's been set up by someone thinking they can earn a bit of easy commission on reselling tickets without considering the cost of providing support and having to deal with legal matters which will inevitably arise.

The same reason I haven't set up my website idea for allowing Caledonian Sleeper service passengers to advertise the spare bed in their twin room and split the combined cost between two passengers. It might be possible within the rules (leaving it to the passengers in question to buy the tickets), but dealing with disputes between passengers, or indeed the inevitable fallout with CS themselves who clearly don't want people doing this, would become all-consuming.

 

[Tetchytyke]

It's one of those things that looks like it would be a good idea on paper but, in reality, probably won't be.

Even 25 years ago, my university bulletin board was full of people trying to sell on advance tickets that they'd bought and now weren't going to use. I imagine that university bulletin boards are still full of people trying to sell on tickets they were no longer going to use.

But my experience was back when advance tickets were non-amendable as well as non-refundable. Now that advances are partially amendable for a fee and now that booking horizons are longer, a certain chunk of that market will go. Even if you can't go from Durham to London this weekend, chances are you will be going from Durham to London at some point in the next 3-6 months.

But I can't see how you can make a website with a usable UX for people to list tickets or find tickets. I'd start by not being so rigid with dates, mind; let me search Durham to London for, say, the next month and then I can see what there is. I might go the day before if the price is good enough...

 

[Haywain]

But I can't see how you can make a website with a usable UX for people to list tickets or find tickets. I'd start by not being so rigid with dates, mind; let me search Durham to London for, say, the next month and then I can see what there is. I might go the day before if the price is good enough...

And let us search for tickets from wherever, to see what's on offer - we might choose to go somewhere because it's nice for a day/weekend out or because it's close to where we actually need to get to.

 

[Swedenorer]

Agreed advances and day out travel might be the core of such an offer but when you add the plethora of railcards now available to use with advance tickets the market gets even smaller since the railcard discounted ticket is linked explicitly to railcard type on the printed ticket irrespective of the fact that the discount is the same. Plus of course railcard tickets are strictly speaking non-transferable. Being a third party agent is not quite as simple as thus site thinsk.

 

[Stargull]

I don't quite buy that it's all that difficult in theory; a well-regulated and effective resale market exists for gig tickets, for example, where much of the same issues of fraud might be expected to apply. Most of the reputable venues and sellers (who make a decent living from mark up) restrict the price to that originally paid, too, so it's not technically impossible to handle.

Which isn't to say this particular attempt is set up to succeed. It works best when it's the original ticket vendor handling the resale, and the big players probably have the customer support in place. Would be great if someone wanted to take it on if inflexible tickets are going to become more common.

 

[redreni]

I don't quite buy that it's all that difficult in theory; a well-regulated and effective resale market exists for gig tickets, for example, where much of the same issues of fraud might be expected to apply. Most of the reputable venues and sellers (who make a decent living from mark up) restrict the price to that originally paid, too, so it's not technically impossible to handle.

Which isn't to say this particular attempt is set up to succeed. It works best when it's the original ticket vendor handling the resale, and the big players probably have the customer support in place. Would be great if someone wanted to take it on if inflexible tickets are going to become more common.

I wonder if part of the reason for the feeling that there can't possibly be a market for this, is some have believed the rail industry's rhetoric that people don't want flexibility.

Given we know people don't want flexibility, the thinking might go, there can't possibly be a significant number of people with inflexible tickets on their hands that are of no use to them.

It certainly can't be the case that people have ended up with less flexibility than they want and need simply because they've bought what TOCs and retailers have made overwhelmingly more prominent than anything else in journey planner search results, namely Advances.

People wanting flexibility is just an edge case, like everything else discussed on this section of the forum!

 

[blimmo]

Plus of course railcard tickets are strictly speaking non-transferable.

Is this true? I believe the conclusion further up the thread was that only tickets made out to a specific individual railcard (not just a type) were non-transferable. Certainly I would hope so since otherwise two together railcards are, I think, completely useless.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jan 2026 ==

The same reason I haven't set up my website idea for allowing Caledonian Sleeper service passengers to advertise the spare bed in their twin room and split the combined cost between two passengers. It might be possible within the rules (leaving it to the passengers in question to buy the tickets), but dealing with disputes between passengers, or indeed the inevitable fallout with CS themselves who clearly don't want people doing this, would become all-consuming.

Something like this would go a long way to filling the annoying gap left by CS insisting on not offering couchettes like every sleeper on the continent.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jan 2026 ==

I don't quite buy that it's all that difficult in theory; a well-regulated and effective resale market exists for gig tickets, for example, where much of the same issues of fraud might be expected to apply. Most of the reputable venues and sellers (who make a decent living from mark up) restrict the price to that originally paid, too, so it's not technically impossible to handle.

Which isn't to say this particular attempt is set up to succeed. It works best when it's the original ticket vendor handling the resale, and the big players probably have the customer support in place. Would be great if someone wanted to take it on if inflexible tickets are going to become more common.

I agree with this. In my expereince gig ticket resales generally provide mediation if the buyer finds the ticket doesn't work.

 

[fandroid]

There might be some danger in allowing such a setup to operate. As there's a handling fee, what's to stop the website owner buying up the very cheap advances that are on sale early and reselling them after the really low price tickets have apparently all gone? There's a risk if they aren't all sold, but there's plenty of similar enterprises that understand such a risk and price accordingly.

 

[Hadders]

One can imagine in the case of an Advance, if you no longer wish to travel and you have no immediate plans to make the journey on another day, then you can't get a refund and there's little point getting an amendment. In that case, I can see the merit in a platform like this, because assuming you're a 'normie' and your friends aren't railway enthusiasts who might want to take a trip for the sheer pleasure of it, what are the chances that somebody you know is going to want to make a very specific journey on a particular date and at a particular time?

In these circumstances the ticket is just going to go to waste. Finding somebody who wants it requires an online platform. I imagine in most cases you'd have to be very reasonable in how much you asked for it. Unless, of course, a major event has been announced for the date of travel between the date you booked and the date you're looking to sell, in which case you might be holding a ticket that would fetch far more than the face value, if the NRCoT allowed it to be sold for more than that.

Rightly or wrongly, as the railway moves to a more non-refundable Advance ticketing structure where to get a decent price passengers have to commit many weeks in advance this sort of thing becomes more of a problem.

Sometimes plans change, and if you've paid out for Advance tickets that are non-refundable you'd want to try and get some of the money back.

A ticket resale market could never work. Maybe I have an advance ticket that I can’t use - but what are the chances of finding someone who does want that (and vice versa)

I think it could work, it certainly works for things like concert tickets although not every ticket is going to sell but it does at least offer a route for someone whose plans change the opportunity to recover some of the money spent.

The issue is that there needs to be some proper rules and governance around this.

 

[Haywain]

As there's a handling fee, what's to stop the website owner buying up the very cheap advances that are on sale early and reselling them after the really low price tickets have apparently all gone?

The fact that selling tickets at more than face value is prohibited.

 

[fandroid]

The fact that selling tickets at more than face value is prohibited.

Well there would have to be some dodgy dealing so that the original purchaser appeared to be separate from the website manager plus a bit of hidden sharing of the handling fees.

 

[yorkie]

I understand there is an industry drive to replace off peak fares with non refundable quota controlled tickets, so the use case for websites of this nature is only going to grow, if the train companies get their way

 

[Robbouk]

What happens if I board at a station with open barriers and then when revenue scan a ticket purchased from this site it doesn't work and I get an MG11 written up and prosecution?

At least with gig tickets the worse that happens is you're not able to get into the venue.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

What happens if I board at a station with open barriers and then when revenue scan a ticket purchased from this site it doesn't work and I get an MG11 written up and prosecution?

For the concept to work, the intermediary needs to guarantee that the tickets they provide the marketplace for will be valid. If they can give that guarantee then your proposed problem will never arise.

To look at the matter in the round, this attempt to launch a marketplace looks doomed to failure: as lots of people have pointed out, it needs a (large) critical mass of tickets to be offered and an easy way for buyers to find them (not just A-B at 1400 next Thursday but near-A to near-B on Thursday afternoon) , and it needs to safely deliver what's promised, which means a lot of backroom validation. But it may provide a proof of concept for someone capable of growing such a product to deliver later.

 

[stwales]

When I was at uni, students would regularly offer advances to and from London for resale on Facebook, having presumably changed their plans.

Obviously you'll never be able to find a ticket from Sugar Loaf to St Keyne Wishing Well Halt on a platform like this, but surely in any reasonably-sized settlement there'll be someone who's just cancelled a trip to London and someone who wants to go to London, or could be convinced to go to London with a good-enough value fare.

I'm not going to be first in line to try a platform like this, but if an established and trusted platform existed (and they found a solution to the fraud risks) I think it would be a useful thing to have.

when i was at university in the late 1970s we had a travel notice board where people could advertise train tickets for sale, or lifts wanted/offered.

 

[OscarH]

For the concept to work, the intermediary needs to guarantee that the tickets they provide the marketplace for will be valid. If they can give that guarantee then your proposed problem will never arise

How can they do that without agreements with the original retailers - even if they did have access to the eTVD to validate if it's refunded at the point of sale, the seller could refund after the sale and the buyer would commit a strict liability offense

 

[Adam Williams]

You'd need a direct connection to the eTVD (and LSM..) and continually watch for after-sale/refund events. Ideally the retailer would be made aware of the transfer as well, in case the customer needs assistance.

Really the whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen without these steps. I have my doubts as to whether the service is even trying to decode the barcodes as it stands today, and do the most basic of checks to ensure that - at some point in time - the customer held a valid ticket.

 

[43010]

I'd start by not being so rigid with dates, mind; let me search Durham to London for, say, the next month and then I can see what there is. I might go the day before if the price is good enough...

And let us search for tickets from wherever, to see what's on offer - we might choose to go somewhere because it's nice for a day/weekend out or because it's close to where we actually need to get to.

It is now possible to search for all tickets with a given origin for a specific date, within the next 7 days, within the next 2 weeks or within the next month. Additionally, it is apparently possible to view a list of all available tickets, but at present there seem to be no tickets available: https://buy.savemyfare.co.uk/browse

 

[saismee]

It would be more reasonable for retailers to have a feature where you can re-sell your advance ticket, effectively refunding it, but only in the event that someone actually bought it. It sounds like a whole lot of overhead for little-to-no gain for the retailer though.

Edit: the site also appears to be gone.

 

[z444z]

Edit: the site also appears to be gone.

I can still see it, and there are some tickets up now