Good to know! What is the absolute cap, out of interest?For the avoidance of doubt, there is both a fixed cap and a ticket-price-linked cap (so the fee can't exceed some proportion of the ticket cost) - it has been this way for a number of years.
I suspect the complaint is more about the value at which the caps are set, than whether there is one at all, but I thought I'd mention it for completeness
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Which sites to purchase train tickets?
- Thread starter Mal75756
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Maybe, but do many people only use it because some of the fares are spectacularly cheaper than from TOCs? If they are still cheaper, then given it has features like a seat selector and nice interface, and advanced options, I suspect very few people would switch away just on the basis that some results aren't quite as good.
That is RDG's intention, and I have no doubt they will be increasing the price of the cheaper fares wherever they can, but ultimately it is not possible to achieve a system where it is never cheaper, or required, to "split". If anyone thinks otherwise, please do create a new thread and link to it from here!
I think the experience is pretty good, but it's not affordable to provide a system that has a good interface, finds the cheapest splits, a free seat selector, excellent customer support, and pass on 100% of the savings while also offering cashback. That's pure economic reality.
Sites such as Uber can offer cashback because they have wealthy backers and they see the ticketing site as a way to hook people into the wider Uber app, while TfW/LNER are taxpayer funded/subsidised, so that's how they can afford to give cashback.
Can you clarify what you mean by this, and what you are actually doing?
CrossCountry is able to offer fee-free changes because they have taxpayer subsidy and, again, the customer service isn't so good. Furthermore, they charge hefty premium fares for some journeys, so you're paying more in the long-run (unless you only ever buy short distance fares which don't attract the infamous XC premium). If you think it's possible to create a retailer that ticks all boxes and is financially viable, then go ahead and form one!
The people doing this know well it is not all one "railway" and the entire reason they are leaching off Trainsplit to buy elsewhere is because they know that if they just used the site they buy from, and searched for their overall actual journey, they'd be paying much more money!
alistairlees
Established Member
- Joined
- 29 Dec 2016
- Messages
- 4,410
TOC websites can offer more features and deeper discounts than third party retailers because they don't have to operate within the same 4.5% commission that retailers do. Instead they spend money that could (and, arguably, should) have been spent on drivers, guards, trains, track and stations (for example) on their own retailing channels. It would be better value for the entire rail industry if all online sales of train tickets were through third party retailers.
Adam Williams
Established Member
Absolute cap is set at 25, I think. People do pay this quite happily, but it tends to be multi-passenger journeys (often in first class) where the saving by splitting is genuinely massive (we're talking hundreds of pounds) and I think it's more justified, e.g. this one has found 6 split points to secure the saving quoted:
Same journey is £622.69 on Trainline, which really illustrates how different the various split ticketing algorithms are.
We've actually got a new feature where you can emulate Trainline's current behaviour, if for some reason you wanted that:
vs the default behaviour:
Last edited:
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
I mostly use the forum site for journeys with advanced notice, or the trainsplit app for on the day, using Northern's app for my season ticket (no real reason in particular, it's just the one I had and I have no reason to switch).
When booking for other people if they have multiple railcards I'll usually go to the TOC if they over reservations on their trains (e.g. used Avanti recently) since being able to get all of them set up in 1 go is much easier (no need for split tickets, just the off-peak return).
I pay no attention to cashback (or other schemes like Club Avanti, or credit card points), obviously that might be more important to others.
One time a few years ago I evaded the share of savings fee (of ~£0.60) by using Northern's app, but that's becuase I just didn't think of booking them separetely on trainsplit (which I would have done had I thought of it).
When booking for other people if they have multiple railcards I'll usually go to the TOC if they over reservations on their trains (e.g. used Avanti recently) since being able to get all of them set up in 1 go is much easier (no need for split tickets, just the off-peak return).
I pay no attention to cashback (or other schemes like Club Avanti, or credit card points), obviously that might be more important to others.
One time a few years ago I evaded the share of savings fee (of ~£0.60) by using Northern's app, but that's becuase I just didn't think of booking them separetely on trainsplit (which I would have done had I thought of it).
Last edited:
Well, learn something new every day!
1 adult £19.85 share of savings fee
Results | RailUK Tickets
TrainSplit is a free service that makes it easy to find the cheapest train tickets for your journey.
tickets.railforums.co.uk
2 adults £25.00 share of savings fee, same journey
Results | RailUK Tickets
TrainSplit is a free service that makes it easy to find the cheapest train tickets for your journey.
tickets.railforums.co.uk
So it does seem like a cap across the entire booking, not per ticket/person.
That is possibly where I've gone wrong with a few larger bookings - I've queried per person pricing and myself done calculations on whether things like GroupSave or certain Railcard combinations would be cheaper, and then subsequently booked elsewhere. Part of this is because I'm calculating per person costs to devise budgets for events.
There is still an element of having to do that mental calculation of GroupSave and Two Together/Friends and Family Railcards for group bookings, as well as some TOC-specific group booking discounts (not GroupSave).
But I certainly would've booked a few fares and paid probably a couple of hundred pound extra to the forum's ticketing website over the past couple of years if I'd noticed there was an absolute cap.
I suppose this is where transparency in fees can actually help retailers, as I just naively assumed that £19.85 saving would apply to each adult passenger I had (excluding Railcard discounts which I'd add).
Anyway, thanks for the info. The forum booking site may get more money from me going forwards!
Adam Williams
Established Member
Yeah, it could all be better explained - even the way the 15% share-of-saving is explained causes confusion and people to write in thinking that it's calculated incorrectly (it's not, the "saving" figure just takes into account the fees to avoid misleading people and therefore quotes a real saving amount that reflects how much you will actually save when buying the quoted tickets from the site). There are also circumstances where the Change of Journey fees get automatically waived in the customer's favour that aren't written anywhere customer-facing either. We haven't discussed the other cap here and I can't even remember how it works off the top of my head.Well, learn something new every day!
1 adult £19.85 share of savings fee
Results | RailUK Tickets
TrainSplit is a free service that makes it easy to find the cheapest train tickets for your journey.
2 adults £25.00 share of savings fee, same journey
Results | RailUK Tickets
TrainSplit is a free service that makes it easy to find the cheapest train tickets for your journey.
So it does seem like a cap across the entire booking, not per ticket/person.
That is possibly where I've gone wrong with a few larger bookings - I've queried per person pricing and myself done calculations on whether things like GroupSave or certain Railcard combinations would be cheaper, and then subsequently booked elsewhere. Part of this is because I'm calculating per person costs to devise budgets for events.
There is still an element of having to do that mental calculation of GroupSave and Two Together/Friends and Family Railcards for group bookings, as well as some TOC-specific group booking discounts (not GroupSave).
But I certainly would've booked a few fares and paid probably a couple of hundred pound extra to the forum's ticketing website over the past couple of years if I'd noticed there was an absolute cap.
I suppose this is where transparency in fees can actually help retailers, as I just naively assumed that £19.85 saving would apply to each adult passenger I had (excluding Railcard discounts which I'd add).
Anyway, thanks for the info. The forum booking site may get more money from me going forwards!
I wouldn't say any of this is deliberate or done out of a desire to keep things hidden/opaque instead of transparent, it's just kinda ended up this way
Agreed.
LNER must be one of the worst offenders for this!
Their booking site is very much 'style over substance', and tries to look flashy, so no doubt wasn't cheap. They give their booking site loads of free - and misleading - advertising, both on trains and at stations. Even if they had not been able to fill the spaces with paid adverts from any other companies, there's the cost of producing them, and it gives their site an unfair advantage and is arguably an abuse of their dominant market position on the East Coast Mainline route.
To top it all off, they give taxpayers money to customers who use Amex in the form of cashback.
Multiple Railcard support (including GroupSave and small group discounts wherever possible) is coming; I don't know how soon, but it can't be too far off now...
Good to hear!... The forum booking site may get more money from me going forwards!
Yeah I didn't want to get into the other caps as I've already determined that it's a bit more complicated.
Oh sure, I don't doubt it's incidental. I have previously criticised Trainsplit's use of phrases similar to 'no booking fees', because I think the average customer would see a share of split savings as a fee, but I haven't seen this used by Trainsplit in a while
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Some of it is still quite complicated, because e.g. LNER offer their own discounts for group bookings (not GroupSave), which I assume is only available via the LNER website?
This is actually an example of a journey I'm planning on booking in a couple of months time and currently trying to get rough fares for. But I need to work it out, as some are of 'child' age. LNER small group discount is 20%, but it may be cheaper to buy Two Together or Friends and Family Railcards. It's for a charity without a great deal of funds, so small savings can make a good difference. But £25 (using the forum site) across a booking for say 8 people is not an issue.
Last edited:
At present, you need to select the discount as if it's a Railcard. (This might change when multi Railcard support is added, but that would be a question for Trainsplit themselves.)
e.g. 1110 Leeds to London next Weds:
LNER £164.10 inc. small group discount (one through fare charged at a premium price as per current LNER policy)
Trainsplit £155.43 with small group discount (combination of 3 fares, which are priced lower than the through fare, as LNER can charge premiums for some longer journeys)
(I remember a while back it was a higher percentage, and people could get the discount for 1 passenger, by initially adding 3 to the basket, and the modifying the passenger count to 1. This was probably under East Coast before it became LNER)
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
For anyone who is recommending the LNER site, be warned, they don't even issue Travelcards:
It's often the way with these companies who desperately lure people in with cashback offers; there's often a catch...
Last edited:
Yeah I hadn't got as far as checking if non-LNER retailers offered the LNER Small Group Discount. It was on my research list. They say something like 'selected third party retailers' on their website for this, but that's obviously vague.
For the journeys I'm looking to book, I think a combination of TT/F&F Railcards will offer the greatest discount. I don't have everybody's ages confirmed yet to know how many are on child vs adult fares though.
Well, over all my years of buying train tickets in Finland, I've never found splitting my ticket to be cheaper...
I know it's not affordable. But the retailer which does it the best (out of all the retailers) will get the most sales.
I like split tickets, so I often use Trainsplit to do research. However, it doesn't allow you (as far as I can tell, anyway) to search for railcard passengers and non-railcard passengers simultaneously, which is the vast majority of my searches, so sometimes I'll go search somewhere else (and the app used to not work so well on my phone). When it comes to purchasing, XC offers Advance changes (and none of my tickets have activated the XC premium before), so I go with them for e-tickets (so all my e-tickets are in one place) and I generally use Trainsplit for my paper tickets. This is what has worked for me for a few years now and suits my personal needs for train tickets.
I know that's not possible, but I know that it's possible to tick quite a lot of those boxes. I'd argue that Trainsplit is actually one of the best retailers out there overall, but it doesn't always meet my specific needs, which I know are different to most people's.If you think it's possible to create a retailer that ticks all boxes and is financially viable, then go ahead and form one!
On a related note, why is it that third-party retailers can sell train tickets in the UK, anyway? Aren't 20-odd TOC sites enough?
Do you look at splitting opportunities every time?
It's possible that longer distance journeys are priced at the opposite of the premium charged in GB, but I doubt that it's never cheaper to split, or that every potential itinerary is valid on a through fare.
If anyone thinks that it's possible to achieve this in GB, please do post your proposals in a new thread.
Not true; Trainline have the most sales because they have a vast marketing budget .
They also made a slick site/app without advanced options that appeals to people who want a dumbed down interface.
That's not acceptable unless you also buy from them.
If you just use it for research and buy elsewhere, that's leaching and it's immoral.
See above.
You are going to be adding multiple journeys to your basket either way. Is it really easier to search for each segment of the journey on the XC site, rather than search for each type of discount, for the same journey, on Trainsplit?
Do you have an actual example of that?
Then you should be using XC to do your research, not Trainsplit
Trainsplit doesn't have access to taxpayer funds to be able to do what XC does. XC is very heavily subsidised. It's not fair to incur costs on Trainsplit before buying through XC.
Why do you use it all, then?
That's the wrong question. See the post above by @alistairlees
Also, if TOC sites are "enough", why are you not just simply using them? Why are you leaching from a third party that you don't appear to think should exist?
They were also first to market (as Virgin Trainline), founded in 1997 and starting online sales in 1999, giving them plenty of time to build a significant market share.
Yes; that's very true and how they became dominant initially. They also bought their main rival at the time, "QJump" (that name would not be very apt these days; there is almost never a queue at my local ticket office, which was downgraded from massive to tiny, and frequently no-one there at all)
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
They do, it's the same as trainsplit (just a different look)
I use a mixture of sites, apps and the ticket office. Main app I use is Virgin Trains Ticketing for Virgin Red Points, though its split ticketing facility is rudimentary at best. I also use Hull Trains but only to obtain the Hull Leisure Return, which they’ve annoyingly limited to their own retail channels.
There’s also LNER solely when I need to use my perks.
Finally there’s the ticket office for rangers, rovers etc and splits I know off by heart I find it easier just to request them here than making multiple bookings…
Trivia: Are there any sites or apps other than Virgin Ticketing that provide a loyalty scheme for all TOCs any more? That and no booking fees are the only reasons it’s my go to app.
There’s also LNER solely when I need to use my perks.
Finally there’s the ticket office for rangers, rovers etc and splits I know off by heart I find it easier just to request them here than making multiple bookings…
Trivia: Are there any sites or apps other than Virgin Ticketing that provide a loyalty scheme for all TOCs any more? That and no booking fees are the only reasons it’s my go to app.
Joe Paxton
Established Member
- Joined
- 12 Jan 2017
- Messages
- 2,959
How useful are Virgin Red Points, and what do you use them for? I'm aware of the scheme, but it's not one I'm familiar with.
Can be used for cheap flights with Virgin and partner airlines (Air France and KLM typically feature) or indeed against bookings for train tickets (not sure this is the best value use though or what the reward percentage is) along with a lot of other things. The website can be browsed easily if you want an idea.
I’m personally saving them for a cheap flight somewhere.
redreni
Established Member
I use a variety of retailers depending on a few different criteria.
Category 1: Regular or simple journeys
Where I already know what ticket or combination I need, or it is obvious from research on brfares without needing to query a split ticketing engine, then I use:
1(a): a retailer that offers some sort of discount or cashback (e.g. LNER). I used Ticketyboo for the first time recently as there was a one-time £5 discount. This also includes irregular commuting (full-time, 60% office-based), which is the bulk of my spend, for which I don't need a journey planner at all and minimising the cost is important to me.
1(b): I sometimes get Rail Travel Vouchers and will buy from ticket offices for this type of journey in order to get rid of them.
1(c): There are certain ticket offices that I wouldn't want to close, so I sometimes buy from them anyway, if there's no strong reason to buy elsewhere.
Category 2: Long-distance journeys where I need to search for the optimum itinerary and fare:
I normally end up looking on the forum's site for these, and if I look and find a split then I always buy from the forum's site as I agree with @yorkie that if you don't, it's like browsing for furniture or electrical goods in John Lewis and then buying from Amazon. It's just going to put John Lewis out of business in the end. The forum's site's customer service is at least as good as, if not better than, John Lewis's in my personal experience, which cannot be said of some of the retailers that offer cashback.
But if the forum's site doesn't find a split that saves money, or doesn't find one that I hadn't already thought of and found elsewhere (like splitting at Kings Cross to go north from London, or splitting at Leeds to get to Halifax), then I might use another site either for a discount or because they offer fee-free changes if that's important to me (for example football away days in the winter where postponements are a real possibility). I favour RedSpottedHankey over CrossCountry these days for that, because CrossCountry charges for ToD even on cross-London tickets that cannot be fulfilled as e-tickets.
There are a few more complex journeys involving starting or ending short, non-stop splits involving day rangers or Travelcards, splits with overlapping validity, non-obvious routes etc where other considerations come into it. Ticket offices can be good for some of these, as can buying from a TOC as a way of shutting down any potential argument about validity. Equally, sometimes the forum's site is the best or only option because it allows multiple via points.
So it really is horses for courses. I wouldn't use the same site for everything, because not only do different sites suggest different itineraries and/or unearth different tickets for a given journey and have very different search interfaces, but they also have different levels of aftersales care and different policies on changes and refunds (albeit the refund policies are soon to be levelled down to something worse than the lowest common denominator in many respects - fees will still be a differentiator where refunds or changes are allowed).
None of the above alters my belief that for most passengers, the ideal scenario is to give them no choice whatsoever and just have one state-run retailer. People don't want choice.
Markets generally don't work. If they did, sites that make their money by offering very simple user interfaces that often fail to find the cheapest fares and thus overcharge people, wouldn't be dominant in terms of market share, but they are. In such a scenario, making fares cheaper would then become a political issue, rather than a matter of studying to advanced technical college level in order to work out how to pay much less than the average passenger for the journeys you want to make.
Category 1: Regular or simple journeys
Where I already know what ticket or combination I need, or it is obvious from research on brfares without needing to query a split ticketing engine, then I use:
1(a): a retailer that offers some sort of discount or cashback (e.g. LNER). I used Ticketyboo for the first time recently as there was a one-time £5 discount. This also includes irregular commuting (full-time, 60% office-based), which is the bulk of my spend, for which I don't need a journey planner at all and minimising the cost is important to me.
1(b): I sometimes get Rail Travel Vouchers and will buy from ticket offices for this type of journey in order to get rid of them.
1(c): There are certain ticket offices that I wouldn't want to close, so I sometimes buy from them anyway, if there's no strong reason to buy elsewhere.
Category 2: Long-distance journeys where I need to search for the optimum itinerary and fare:
I normally end up looking on the forum's site for these, and if I look and find a split then I always buy from the forum's site as I agree with @yorkie that if you don't, it's like browsing for furniture or electrical goods in John Lewis and then buying from Amazon. It's just going to put John Lewis out of business in the end. The forum's site's customer service is at least as good as, if not better than, John Lewis's in my personal experience, which cannot be said of some of the retailers that offer cashback.
But if the forum's site doesn't find a split that saves money, or doesn't find one that I hadn't already thought of and found elsewhere (like splitting at Kings Cross to go north from London, or splitting at Leeds to get to Halifax), then I might use another site either for a discount or because they offer fee-free changes if that's important to me (for example football away days in the winter where postponements are a real possibility). I favour RedSpottedHankey over CrossCountry these days for that, because CrossCountry charges for ToD even on cross-London tickets that cannot be fulfilled as e-tickets.
There are a few more complex journeys involving starting or ending short, non-stop splits involving day rangers or Travelcards, splits with overlapping validity, non-obvious routes etc where other considerations come into it. Ticket offices can be good for some of these, as can buying from a TOC as a way of shutting down any potential argument about validity. Equally, sometimes the forum's site is the best or only option because it allows multiple via points.
So it really is horses for courses. I wouldn't use the same site for everything, because not only do different sites suggest different itineraries and/or unearth different tickets for a given journey and have very different search interfaces, but they also have different levels of aftersales care and different policies on changes and refunds (albeit the refund policies are soon to be levelled down to something worse than the lowest common denominator in many respects - fees will still be a differentiator where refunds or changes are allowed).
None of the above alters my belief that for most passengers, the ideal scenario is to give them no choice whatsoever and just have one state-run retailer. People don't want choice.
Markets generally don't work. If they did, sites that make their money by offering very simple user interfaces that often fail to find the cheapest fares and thus overcharge people, wouldn't be dominant in terms of market share, but they are. In such a scenario, making fares cheaper would then become a political issue, rather than a matter of studying to advanced technical college level in order to work out how to pay much less than the average passenger for the journeys you want to make.
Just to clarify, does the forum's ticket supplier get charged for every ticketing enquiry, such that a change of time, railcard etc will generate a second charge? In which case, is it best to go the TOC site, check out the times, fares etc, then go to the forum's ticketing site to buy them?
Adam Williams
Established Member
There are financial charges for so-called "excess" availability enquiries applied by Sqills (who supply the current reservation system to Rail Delivery Group) to retailers, because fare availability data is rationed and retailers are expected to conform to a very low ratio of queried availability segments to bookings. This part of the rail industry unfortunately does not benefit from Open Data or a "push-port" style feed of information - which would be a far more effective and efficient (computationally) distribution method.
Unfortunately, use of the forum ticketing site (and TrainSplit in general) by ticket office staff (who then benefit from selling exactly the individual fares they picked out via their own ticket-issuing system at a much higher commission than any online retailer would ever get) and other individuals with no intention of purchasing anything does not help with this.
I appreciate you probably can't release specifics due to commercial sensitivity, but so you have any rough numbers on absolute or percentage values of what this costs the forum's booking site relative to the revenue?
I don't want to diminish these sorts of planning queries using split ticket engines with no intention to buy, but I'm trying to get an idea of exactly how much of an issue it is?
trainophile
Established Member
I'm feeling guilty now, as although I almost always (99.9% of the time) buy from Trainsplit, I do spend a lot of time idly planning where I might go next, and utilising Trainsplit's interface to check out different routes, prices and destinations. Also I frequently do this for future tickets that haven't been released yet, using the previous month's or week's data. I honestly had no idea that this racks up a charge per enquiry. Possibly explains why I'm always getting Captcha puzzles during my searches. I quite enjoy solving them actually, but it obviously thinks I'm not genuine! I must change my ways.
I too spend some time checking prices for trips I hope to make in the future but are by no means definite. If this is causing problems as has been suggested by people who know more than me. My question would be. What is the best site to check prices that do not cost a company money, if any exist
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
You won't find any that do splitting with no fee, but trainsplit is great in the other regards or if you don't need splits.
Also with trainsplit you can buy them on the website (including the reskins like the forum one) and have the tickets in the app.
I'll use the Forum's site for longer journeys, and in doing so 2 weeks ago, I avoided an Anytime Single between Kings Cross (departing 17.05) and Wakefield with a big saving that I was happy to share with them.
Sadly, my preferred fulfilment method for my most frequent ticket purchase, an outboundary Offpeak Day Travelcard, is on smartcard, which the Forum site and Trainsplit do not support. I shifted to GWR Touch because I had had too many wiped magstripe incidents when I bought the CCST versions.
Sadly, my preferred fulfilment method for my most frequent ticket purchase, an outboundary Offpeak Day Travelcard, is on smartcard, which the Forum site and Trainsplit do not support. I shifted to GWR Touch because I had had too many wiped magstripe incidents when I bought the CCST versions.
redreni
Established Member
If the interests of passengers entered into the thinking a all on GBR fares and retailing reform, you'd think getting rid of the ridiculous TOC monopolies on online retailing for Smartcard fulfilment would be somewhere on the list of priorities, wouldn't you?
- Status