Upgrading a student rail ticket

[atyke]

Hi again,

I have another question I would like help with please. Can a full paying rail passenger upgrade an Advance ticket bought by a student with a rail card or do they have to get a new ticket with the original ticket being written off. The background being the student can no longer make the intended journey.

 

[LexyBoy]

It is possible to 'excess' an Advance ticket purchased with a railcard to the equivalent non-railcard fare, though opinions differ on whether this is strictly allowed (and some staff may not know the tricks to use to do so). However, rail tickets (with few exceptions) are not transferable, so a ticket bought by student A may not be used by person B, unless it was originally bought for person B. (Again, it's debatable how enforceable this is, especially for single tickets where there's no way of telling whom it was originally bought for. The rule is designed primarily to stop re-use of tickets such as Travelcards and return tickets; obviously an Advance single can only be used once on the specified train)

 

[RJ]

It is possible to 'excess' an Advance ticket purchased with a railcard to the equivalent non-railcard fare, though opinions differ on whether this is strictly allowed (and some staff may not know the tricks to use to do so). However, rail tickets (with few exceptions) are not transferable, so a ticket bought by student A may not be used by person B, unless it was originally bought for person B. (Again, it's debatable how enforceable this is, especially for single tickets where there's no way of telling whom it was originally bought for. The rule is designed primarily to stop re-use of tickets such as Travelcards and return tickets; obviously an Advance single can only be used once on the specified train)

The rule is that it is permitted so long as the origin, destination and route all stay the same. That's the official rule, wheter retail staff misinterpret it or depart from that rule is down to pot luck.

 

[LexyBoy]

The rule is that it is permitted so long as the origin, destination and route all stay the same. That's the official rule, wheter retail staff misinterpret it or depart from that rule is down to pot luck.

Do you mean excessing a Railcard discounted AP fare to the "same" AP fare (i.e. to the fare costing 1.50 x the Railcard fare)? I thought that this wasn't so clear and that some staff would excess to the cheapest available fare when the excess was done (as you would if the customer wanted to change train for example).

 

[AlterEgo]

A rather similar discussion was had here, recently:

http://railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=49836