Unable to exchange Advance single booked through this site - what did I do wrong?

We had two gwr Advance singles booked on the 15:03 departure from Paddington this morning, however we decided early this morning to call off our trip.

An Advanced single cannot be cancelled before travel; the ticket states ""This ticket is not refundable, but it is exchangeable for a fee before travel."

This can be done at any time up until the scheduled departure time.

To do so one has to contact the Vendor, in the case that was this site - RailUKforums.

Accordingly I made several attempts throughout the morning and earlier this afternoon to raise the matter with them using the provided entry point, giving my name, email address and Booking reference. I also gave details of the train I wished to travel on with my exchanged ticket.

In every case i got the same auto response:

"Your message has been sent. Thanks for reaching out to us. Our support team will review your message and get back to you as soon as possible."

No response whatsoever. I have not been able to exchange my ticket. I have lost my original fare.

What did I do wrong?

How do I exchange the tickets for the return journey on Thursday?

You book new tickets for the new journey (ensuring that the passengers, origin and destination are exactly the same) then you apply for a refund for the old ones using the refunds link quoting the new booking reference when asked. The refund request must be submitted before the departure of the original booked train (or before 2359 the day before in the case of flexible tickets).

The refunds link is here: https://refunds.trainsplit.com/

On Trainsplit there's an equally baffling non-offer, that upon completing your purchase says something like "Made a mistake? You can cancel this booking for the next 59 minutes". However when you click on the link to do so, firstly it asks which of your several tickets you wish to cancel, not permitting you to chose more than one, and then it asks for details of your replacement booking, which obviously you haven't yet done as you've only just completed the initial one and the counting down from 59 minutes has commenced.

I'm sure it's a software issue as I doubt Trainsplit are deliberately being unhelpful, but if it did what it says on the tin it would be really useful on occasions. I tried to cancel a multi-ticket journey when I realised I'd accidentally selected e-tickets, but had to resort to emailing them, upon which they were straight onto it and changed them for paper tickets, but the system should really do as it says and let you cancel within the first hour of making your booking.

Bletchleyite is correct as to the flow to use currently (we realise there's optimisations we can make here in the medium term!)

@trainophile - We've been doing some testing internally around the 'undo' functionality and we don't think there's a functional issue here; if you click continue you'll find we won't ask for a replacement booking if inside the grace period. We're working to change the wording on that to make it clearer.

Mike395 said:

Bletchleyite is correct as to the flow to use currently (we realise there's optimisations we can make here in the medium term!)

@trainophile - We've been doing some testing internally around the 'undo' functionality and we don't think there's a functional issue here; if you click continue you'll find we won't ask for a replacement booking if inside the grace period. We're working to change the wording on that to make it clearer.

Click to expand...

Ah thanks, I'll try that next time if I need to.

Thinking of the weather this week, if someone like @strawbrick had an outward advance single for yesterday, when there was no travel advice in place, though they possibly decided it might be sensible not to travel because of the forecast exceptionally high temperatures later in the week, and @strawbrick was due to come back this Thursday, again on an advance single, on a day when there is advice not to travel, even though for them it's part of the same break or holiday probably, they would lose their money from the tickets purchased for Monday and be able to claim a full refund for the tickets bought for Thursday?

Bletchleyite said:

You book new tickets for the new journey (ensuring that the passengers, origin and destination are exactly the same) then you apply for a refund for the old ones using the refunds link quoting the new booking reference when asked. The refund request must be submitted before the departure of the original booked train (or before 2359 the day before in the case of flexible tickets).

The refunds link is here:

Click to expand...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2026 ==

Good morning all and thanks for your comments.
A special thank you to TrainSplit Customer Support who sorted out all my problems for me – 5 stars for Customer Service!