Quote from Modern Railways on advance fares

[junglejames]

I don't have your confidence that it would go down as easily as you say. What does anybody else think?

It should make your life easier!! No excuses (or not as many) for being on the wrong train

 

[WestCoast]

I don't have your confidence that it would go down as easily as you say. What does anybody else think?

I've often said the UK has the cheapest and most expensive fares in Europe on longer-distance journeys. If Advance tickets were to be increased in price, it should only be for the reason of reducing certain walk-on fares. However, since this latter proposal will probably never happen, I wouldn't be supporting it!

When the spokesperson for ATOC was asked about ludicrous walk-on fares in a recent BBC interview (the Manchester - London Anytime Return of £296.00 being a prime example) - they simply responded by saying "that is the way it is for travelling at peak times". Clearly not as many other networks don't exactly charge that much for longer-distance journeys!

*and yes, I realise that it's mostly going to be employers picking up the tab for the £296 ticket*

 

[MarkyMarkD]

I don't really understand why some of the TOCs - particularly those who do not offer reservations and hence don't sell their own advances - agree to the selling of VERY cheap advances by other operators. Or do they simply have no say in the matter?

For example, Southeastern - my local TOC - must get virtually no share of the revenue on a ticket from any of its stations to (say) Birmingham on a "VWC + Connections" advance. So, its share (of fares which can be as cheap as £10.50) must represent a massive reduction on the standard fare for the journey conducted on its trains (e.g. my local station for a not-very-long journey to London normal anytime single fare £16.30). Even worse - and I know Southeastern hate this - most (all?) long-distance advances from many stations in Kent permit travel via HS1 at no additional cost (normal anytime single fare £19.50). Almost every long-distance "advance" journey my family make involves HS1 and we certainly wouldn't choose to pay the supplement if that was applied to advances.

 

[Flamingo]

It should make your life easier!! No excuses (or not as many) for being on the wrong train

Agreed. See the new thread I started... http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59810

 

[DaveNewcastle]

I'm happy that Advance Fares exist as a strategy for managing passenger demand throughout the day, and meanwhile, they provide a lower cost of travel for those who can travel at those times.

But I have been consistently critical of 4 elements of the Advance system:
1. The Advance prices are used to increase demand on quiet services in much the same way as Off-Peak and Super-Off-Peak prices aim do the same thing; but the difference in T&Cs between Advances and Off-Peaks are unhelpfully different (e.g. it shouldn't matter to the TOC which of their few very quiet services a passenger has chosen if they have chosen one of them).

2. The gap between lowest tier Advance price and walk-up price is too wide. It can be around a tenfold difference. Flamingo's understanding that some pax would be shocked to learn the difference if travelling on the wrong service illustrates this. A narrower spread of prices doesn't seem to have any downside (if priced to achieve the same or better demand as at present) but does reduce the 'headline' prices and reduces the impact of silly errors (which seems to result in as much ill-will as Advances marketing aims to generate good-will !).

3. The fact that a passenger travelling on almost, but not exactly, the booked service on an Advance ticket will find that their ticket has no residual value offends my sense of an equitable transaction. The passenger paid for a ticket, the TOC is running its quiet-time-of-day services, there's really no need to charge a walk-up fare IN ADDITION to the cost of the unused Advance.

4. The promotional use of Advance prices has reached misleading proprtions (as I've often remarked on here). The widespread marketing of £15 Advancce tickets Newcastle-London can have escaped few people's attention in the catchment area. Perhaps it generates good business. The only 'small print / conditions' on those billboards, bus ad etc is (when you buy in advance). That's a small 'a'. The innocent buyer is not alerted to the distinction between the 'a' and an 'A', and nowhere, absolutely nowhere in the booking process is the buyer warned that if the travel on a similar but different train then they will be asked to pay more; that 'more' is likely to be 10 times the amount paid; that the amount paid will not be offset against their cost of travel. I have other concerns about misleading advertising, just 2 of them are the claim '£nn from A to B' which may not in fact be available from B to A on the same day as those A to B fares are released, and the '£nn from A to B 10,000 tickets released every week' when those two statements have no connection in fact.

In short, Advances have a useful function for the TOCs and offer a useful benefit to passengers; but I abhor the excesses of their marketing and am unpersuaded that their regulatory framework is the most appropriate to achieve their purpose.

 

[neilmc]

I'm happy that Advance Fares exist as a strategy for managing passenger demand throughout the day, and meanwhile, they provide a lower cost of travel for those who can travel at those times.

But I have been consistently critical of 4 elements of the Advance system:
1. The Advance prices are used to increase demand on quiet services in much the same way as Off-Peak and Super-Off-Peak prices aim do the same thing; but the difference in T&Cs between Advances and Off-Peaks are unhelpfully different (e.g. it shouldn't matter to the TOC which of their few very quiet services a passenger has chosen if they have chosen one of them).

2. The gap between lowest tier Advance price and walk-up price is too wide. It can be around a tenfold difference. Flamingo's understanding that some pax would be shocked to learn the difference if travelling on the wrong service illustrates this. A narrower spread of prices doesn't seem to have any downside (if priced to achieve the same or better demand as at present) but does reduce the 'headline' prices and reduces the impact of silly errors (which seems to result in as much ill-will as Advances marketing aims to generate good-will !).

3. The fact that a passenger travelling on almost, but not exactly, the booked service on an Advance ticket will find that their ticket has no residual value offends my sense of an equitable transaction. The passenger paid for a ticket, the TOC is running its quiet-time-of-day services, there's really no need to charge a walk-up fare IN ADDITION to the cost of the unused Advance.

4. The promotional use of Advance prices has reached misleading proprtions (as I've often remarked on here). The widespread marketing of £15 Advancce tickets Newcastle-London can have escaped few people's attention in the catchment area. Perhaps it generates good business. The only 'small print / conditions' on those billboards, bus ad etc is (when you buy in advance). That's a small 'a'. The innocent buyer is not alerted to the distinction between the 'a' and an 'A', and nowhere, absolutely nowhere in the booking process is the buyer warned that if the travel on a similar but different train then they will be asked to pay more; that 'more' is likely to be 10 times the amount paid; that the amount paid will not be offset against their cost of travel. I have other concerns about misleading advertising, just 2 of them are the claim '£nn from A to B' which may not in fact be available from B to A on the same day as those A to B fares are released, and the '£nn from A to B 10,000 tickets released every week' when those two statements have no connection in fact.

In short, Advances have a useful function for the TOCs and offer a useful benefit to passengers; but I abhor the excesses of their marketing and am unpersuaded that their regulatory framework is the most appropriate to achieve their purpose.

This is an excellent summary of what is wrong with the current fare structure - I know people don't like airline comparisons but EasyJet offer flexible tickets to attract business passengers who may not be sure of the precise flight they will be able to catch, and these are nothing like ten times as expensive as the cheapo non-refundable option.

Basically "anytime" fares are being used to punish the gullible, the non-train savvy, the walk-up customer and anyone whose plans change, who gets stuck in traffic, wants to get off a stop early or just happens to board the wrong train even if it's an off-peak train which is scheduled twenty minutes before their booked train and happens to be running a bit late. And the caught-out potential fraudster, of course, which is fair game, but in most of the scandals we read about it's some poor soul who's paid ten or twenty quid for a "bargain" ticket and ends up paying one to two hundred for a delay or an honest mistake. Nothing will persuade these people that they haven't been scammed, and I'm afraid that myself, the media, and a considerable number of people here who aren't actually in hock to the rail industry have to agree.

 

[Terrafire]

I don't particularly think abolishing or drastically cutting back on Advance fares, with a corresponding reduction in walk-up fares, would result in much of an outcry at all. Nearly everyone I speak to who doesn't take an interest in fares (sane people) are surprised at the cheap price they get with Advances, and certainly don't expect the railway to be that cheap. If they went we would have the huge advantage of genuinely having simple fares. As many people have said here already, current Anytimes are just silly, and they're being used as punitive tools by TOCs; fines by the back door, to the average Joe who's been foolish enough to apply common sense to railway tickets.