Introducing RailUK Tickets - support the forum when booking your rail tickets!

[walkingsophie]

When unchecking the "Use same options for return", I think it would make sense for the website to automatically put in the via points in the reverse order rather in the same order for the return. This is because when the option is checked, the return goes through the via points in reverse order.

 

[yorkie]

2. Does the Forum site charge a Share of Savings fee?

Just to add that if anyone is keen to avoid the share of savings fee, you can add each ticket separately to the basket, and pay for all tickets in one transaction. You won't get a through itinerary, and you would need to take care to ensure all the tickets do match up and you have the correct date/time etc for each, but if you have the time to spare, you can do it.

 

[tumbledown]

In this search

Manchester Piccadilly, Victoria, Oxford Road or Deansgate > Chester - Search Results

The Split Ticketing Champions - Compare fares and get the best value for money through split tickets and booking cheap train tickets online and on our mobile app, E-Tickets to your phone, no booking fee, save up to 90%

tickets-classic.railforums.co.uk

it appears to be cheaper to leave MAN at 1051 on a through ticket and pick up the through train at SPT, than to leave MAN on the same through train at 1110. How does that work?

 

[MrJeeves]

it appears to be cheaper to leave MAN at 1051 on a through ticket and pick up the through train at SPT, than to leave MAN on the same through train at 1110. How does that work?

It'll be Northern playing games with Advance quotas from Manchester Picc (or between Manchester Picc and Stockport).

Either artificially inflating prices by removing availability of cheaper advance tiers where they know that a higher demand for the journey exists, or there are some passengers who are booked on the train as far as Stockport who have removed space from one or more Advance buckets such that the cheap advance isn't available from Manchester but is from Stockport.

 

[Coleridge]

Just a minor observation.

When selecting seats (specifically in 1st class on GWR, if that's relevant), the "direction of travel" shown on the seating diagram differs from the direction subsequently stated in the confirmation box that appears after you've selected a seat. I've noticed this on the last three occasions that I've booked tickets on the forum's site.

This isn't a huge inconvenience for me, as I'm either travelling alone, and don't care which way I'm facing, or with my partner, in which case we select facing seats. But some people are extremely picky about facing forward (with the understanding that a train can sometimes be in reverse formation).

I might take this opportunity to say that I really appreciate the ability to select seats on GWR, which is something that GWR itself doesn't offer, and always use this forum's site for booking on that operator. But I find the interface, especially the selection of ticket type, very clunky and unintuitive and revert to the TOCs' own website if they offer seat selection (e.g. Avanti) or when I'm travelling on services that don't require reservation (TfW).

 

[Adam Williams]

specifically in 1st class on GWR, if that's relevant

Yes, it's relevant - in fact the exact service is relevant, which is why we have integrated a feedback utility into the SeatSelector which will automatically send all of this diagnostics information. It's fine to post about it on the forum as well as using the feedback tool, we're not going to stop people discussing it, but it's frustrating not having any of the information to make it straightforward to investigate when it appears it's only been posted about here.

What stations were you booking between, on what date?

I find the interface, especially the selection of ticket type, very clunky and unintuitive

Do you have any specific, actionable suggestions for improvement?

 

[Coleridge]

Yes, it's relevant - in fact the exact service is relevant, which is why we have integrated a feedback utility into the SeatSelector which will automatically send all of this diagnostics information. It's fine to post about it on the forum as well as using the feedback tool, we're not going to stop people discussing it, but it's frustrating not having any of the information to make it straightforward to investigate when it appears it's only been posted about here.

What stations were you booking between, on what date?

The "Send feedback" button appears only on the Seat Selection diagram, and I had no reason to use it there because the seating plan looked as I expected it to look. (In fact, because I had no issues, I probably didn't even notice the button before pressing "Confirm selection", particularly as it appears to be greyed out on my screen even though it's enabled.)

It's only on the next pop-up box, which confirms the journey and selected seat, that the discrepancy appears, and there is no feedback button on that box. I know now, by playing around, that I can go back into the seat selection diagram from that box, but it wasn't obvious, and it seems like a lot of trouble for something that was only a minor irritation.

I just did a test booking, recreated the error and sent you feedback.

With regards to improvements, I don't think I do have any actionable suggestions. I'm bewildered by the sheer number of travel options being offered to me, and by the number of ticket options available for each of them when I click through, some of which have as many as 4 or 5 splits. Sometimes I choose a service and am told that some legs of the journey have no first class available - which turns out in some cases to be half the journey or more, such as Cardiff to Manchester. I know that this is due to the complexity and sheer ridiculousness of the rail ticketing system in the UK, that you have little choice and that there is probably very little you can do about it. I'll continue to use your site for my GWR bookings (which are frequent). Thanks.

 

[Adam Williams]

I just did a test booking, recreated the error and sent you feedback.

Cheers, passed on to the person responsible

With regards to improvements, I don't think I do have any actionable suggestions. I'm bewildered by the sheer number of travel options being offered to me, and by the number of ticket options available for each of them when I click through, some of which have as many as 4 or 5 splits. Sometimes I choose a service and am told that some legs of the journey have no first class available - which turns out in some cases to be half the journey or more, such as Cardiff to Manchester. I know that this is due to the complexity and sheer ridiculousness of the rail ticketing system in the UK, that you have little choice and that there is probably very little you can do about it. I'll continue to use your site for my GWR bookings (which are frequent). Thanks.

This is still useful feedback ("it's overwhelming"). We actually have some improvements planned around trimming useless itineraries, so it's quite possible things might improve as part of that.

 

[Railguy1]

Since the child disabled freedom pass is listed, I wonder whether it’s worth listing the discretionary disabled freedom pass as well?

It appears to confer the same benefits as a regular freedom pass, with the exception it does not permit free bus travel outside of London:

Am I eligible? | Freedom Pass

Find out if you are eligible for a Disabled Person's Freedom Pass

www.freedompass.org

 

[8ace]

The forum website recommends the TrainSplit app - does the forum still benefit from this financially if I book on the iPhone app as opposed to the website?

 

[Haywain]

The forum website recommends the TrainSplit app - does the forum still benefit from this financially if I book on the iPhone app as opposed to the website?

No.

 

[Adam Williams]

The TrainSplit iOS app, will however, pick up the details of journeys you book on the forum site (in other words, the account system is the same) - so you can use it for after-sales, displaying tickets, your Railcard etc.

 

[8ace]

The TrainSplit iOS app, will however, pick up the details of journeys you book on the forum site (in other words, the account system is the same) - so you can use it for after-sales, displaying tickets, your Railcard etc.

Yeah not moaning about the app man, it seems pretty bang on in terms of feature parity
Would just rather contribute where possible

 

[Adam Williams]

Yeah not moaning about the app man, it seems pretty bang on in terms of feature parity
Would just rather contribute where possible

No - totally get it! Just wanted to highlight that fact, as some people don't realise. Particularly for things like journey cancellation/delay push notifications, it's worth having the app logged in to your account even if you never buy a ticket using it (or ever open it - you might be completely happy with Google/Apple Wallet)

 

[Coleridge]

This is still useful feedback ("it's overwhelming"). We actually have some improvements planned around trimming useless itineraries, so it's quite possible things might improve as part of that.

As an illustration, I just used your site to book a return ticket to London for next Monday. The first 9 options were the same departure time, most of which would be of almost no interest to anyone simply wishing to get to London.



I had to scroll down to see the departure at 06:52, which not only gets me to London before any of these options (at 10:06) but also costs less than some of them.

I understand that not everyone will want the fastest, or cheapest, option, and that reducing this list is undoubtedly a tricky task (I have been a systems analyst and software developer, and know the challenges) but there must be scope here for rationalising the options presented to the customer.

Incidentally, you seem to have fixed the error with the direction of travel.

 

[Adam Williams]

Incidentally, you seem to have fixed the error with the direction of travel.

Glad to hear.

I can't take any credit though, you can thank @MrJeeves for sorting that!

The first 9 options were the same departure time, most of which would be of almost no interest to anyone simply wishing to get to London.

there must be scope here for rationalising the options presented to the customer

Yes, indeed - there is.

If I look at the internal tooling at the new trimming logic that's being implemented/rolled out, it would've binned off a large number of these as being fairly pointless (though some do have a purpose if you were e.g. filtering down to flexible tickets or first class tickets - the trimming will get re-evaluated based on the user's current view to optimise for relevance):



So the good news is, it's being looked at, the spec for the algorithm and a model implementation/test-cases already exist and I think the results are decent on your example. It does still keep a couple of the itineraries (such as 06:37 - 11:53) where there's a clear, obvious cost benefit for the view in question (cheapest, including Advances).

The bad news is, this work has not shipped on web yet.

 

[81A]

One suggestion I have is making two options (a bit like Realtime Trains simple/detailed mode) with the simple option being the default (hiding niche itineraries etc.) but with an option to go into "advanced mode" showing all possible tickets/itineraries (for enthusiasts, people wanting to compare all options, etc.).

 

[Adam Williams]

Yeah... I added the journey speed filters a while back but I'm not sure they get much use. Perhaps too blunt an instrument

 

[81A]

Yeah... I added the journey speed filters a while back but I'm not sure they get much use. Perhaps too blunt an instrument

View attachment 205446

Possibly because the "only fastest" option seems like it would hide, say, an itinerary that saves £100 and is only 5 min slower? Maybe, say, only showing overtaken results that saved more than 10% could be a compromise solution?

 

[Coleridge]

Yeah... I added the journey speed filters a while back but I'm not sure they get much use. Perhaps too blunt an instrument

View attachment 205446

I didn't know that option existed, and even though I now do, it still took me a while to find it. I was expecting it to be under Advanced options tab on the journey page, whereas it's under the Filters button on the results page.

One suggestion I might make is to replace the "Max changes" field on the Advanced options, which is a very blunt instrument, with "Max additional changes", to specify the number of changes you are willing to make beyond the minimum number of changes necessary. For example, if there are direct trains, setting this to 1 will only return direct journeys and journeys requiring 1 change. If there are no direct trains, but there are journeys involving one change of train, setting this to 1 will return journeys with 1 and 2 changes. A default value of 2 should filter out journeys with an unnecessarily high number of changes but still offer a decent number of options.

You could also consolidate some results such as these:



Two itineraries with the same departure time, route, number of changes and arrival time, but very different prices. The only material difference is that on one of them you change at Swindon and on the other at Didcot. (This is another DGL-PAD itinerary.)

 

[MrJeeves]

You could also consolidate some results such as these:

As per Adam's screenshot above, the more expensive option with the same journey times would be hidden with the work-in-progress logic.

It will be included at the moment for some reason such as being cheaper in terms of flexible tickets, 1st class or 1st class and flexible currently, but that's not very helpful when you're only looking at advance prices in standard, for example.

 

[Egg Centric]

Just taking advantage of the £10 free through Morrisons thing and bought some tickets for £8.40 so figured I'd try to put in £1.60 to donate to the forum courtesy of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice* to see if it worked. Didn't work (in the sense it wanted me to pay the 1.60) which I assume isn't a bug, so I then deleted the donation entirely and ended up with NaN in donations/total box which definitely is a bug. Restoring it to 0 sorted that, but I'm not sure how obvious it would be to someone with no familiarity with floating point to do that.

Very much an edge case I imagine!

(I'm well aware this screenshot has my voucher code in, but it doesn't matter cause I've used it!)

*me neither

 

[JoshD14]

Hah - interesting spot! You're right that the promo code won't apply to donations - the NaN is, as you say, a bug. I think I've got a fix (from my brain that can't sleep currently), but I'll do some more testing on it at a reasonable working hour.

 

[Adam Williams]

Didn't work (in the sense it wanted me to pay the 1.60) which I assume isn't a bug

If it had worked, there's no chance in hell they would've reimbursed that so it would've been a Raileasy donation

(There's a daily breakdown of purchases that you have to submit, indicating exactly which tickets you retailed as part of the promotion to make sure you don't start retailing Railcard-discounted tickets etc)

 

[ainsworth74]

it would've been a Raileasy donation

The forum is always ready and willing to receive

 

[Haywain]

Trying to book a journey and getting an error message at the reservations stage, with 3 split tickets - is this likely to be an availability issue?

Whoops - something went wrong​

Could not make mandatory reservations.
Correlation token: 0HNM8S4U72HPF:00009D5F

Edit: I have got round the problem by booking the splits separately, and using the seat selector.

 

[Adam Williams]

RARS was (consistently) reporting availability but then failing the request for the EUS->NUN and NUN->SPT pieces to be booked together. This will usually happen if the operator has configured the availability for distinct segments to depend on each other rather than be independently available. The supposed availability for both of these chunks was 1 (i.e. one ticket left at that price), but this was really a lie insofar as booking one of the chunks would have decremented availability for the other chunk and left it unavailable.

I'm glad you were able to work around it - you may have noticed that it's sold you a different Advance tier (V2S vs V2U) for the one leg than the other by booking separately in stages.

 

[Haywain]

you may have noticed that it's sold you a different Advance tier (V2S vs V2U) for the one leg than the other by booking separately in stages.

No, I didn't notice that. Mrs H is happy with the price I got for her, so that's the important thing!

Side issue: is there a way of diverting notifications to a third party when tickets are bought for someone else?

 

[Egg Centric]

RARS was (consistently) reporting availability but then failing the request for the EUS->NUN and NUN->SPT pieces to be booked together. This will usually happen if the operator has configured the availability for distinct segments to depend on each other rather than be independently available. The supposed availability for both of these chunks was 1 (i.e. one ticket left at that price), but this was really a lie insofar as booking one of the chunks would have decremented availability for the other chunk and left it unavailable.

Why do they do that? It almost seems designed to sabotage splitting.

 

[Watershed]

Why do they do that? It almost seems designed to sabotage splitting.

I think there's a good chance that is exactly what they are trying to do!

Euston to Nuneaton has to be competitive with WMT so relatively cheap Advance tiers are made available. They don't want Nuneaton to Stockport passengers (few of them as there are) to take XC/WMT so they make that cheap too.

But they don't want "high-margin" EUS-MAN passengers benefiting from either of the above (and certainly not both). Hence they might limit the availability of Advances in unexpected ways.

See also the imaginary "set down only" restrictions at Rugby and Stafford on northbound trains in the evening peak (and vie versa southbound in the morning). They are just there to stop automated splits.