Railcard minimum fares incorrectly applying over Summer

Mr T · 27 Jun 2026

I'm planning to travel on the 05:33 Carnforth - Morecambe next week. When planning my journey to check the ticket prices on the Northern website I am only offered the full price adult anytime day return, costing £6.30, with no railcard discount applied. As I will be travelling in July, surely the railcard discount should be applied as there is no minimum fare and I should be able to purchase the ticket for £4.15? Does anyone know if this likely to be corrected once we get to July?

BR fares also seems to suggest the restriction code R1 applies Mon-Fri through to 30 August, with no relaxation of the minimum fare over the summer. I would link a screenshot but can't seem to be able to attach the file.

Thanks for any insight as to what might be going on here!

RailUK Forums

Snow1964 · 27 Jun 2026

It sounds wrong, the 16-25 railcard does not have the minimum £12 in July or August for travel between 04:30 and 09:59

Clearly there is something wrong if buying a ticket for date in July and won't apply the discount. But maybe it will change on 1st July as seasonal changes might be manual and system can't cope with forward changes to terms if bought now

But it really shouldn't be selling a higher price ticket in error

Mcr Warrior · 27 Jun 2026

Getting the same issue when using both Southern's and TPE's websites. No discount applied. Something doesn't look right.

Crithylum · 27 Jun 2026

I was having the same issue with TrainSplit when I looked a few weeks ago at tickets for an upcoming journey

yorkie · 27 Jun 2026

The minimum fare data doesn't currently omit July/August

Outward Journey
Summary:
MINIMUM FARES MAY APPLY BEFORE 1000 MONDAY-FRIDAY

Time Restrictions
From
Until
Restriction(s) below apply on these days only:
Sat 27 Jun 2026
further notice
Every Day
Minimum fare applies departing
any location
0430–0959
on any TOC

RDG are effectively overcharging any such Railcard holders who have booked a journey for July/August under £12.

TOCs are very keen to threaten passengers who make mistakes, but yet consider their own behaviour perfectly acceptable when they (and their trade association RDG) make mistakes.

Snow1964 said:
It sounds wrong, the 16-25 railcard does not have the minimum £12 in July or August for travel between 04:30 and 09:59

Clearly there is something wrong if buying a ticket for date in July and won't apply the discount. But maybe it will change on 1st July as seasonal changes might be manual and system can't cope with forward changes to terms if bought now

But it really shouldn't be selling a higher price ticket in error

Any decent retailer can cope, if the data is right. Certainly, the forum's ticketing site would offer it, if the data allowed it.

Adam Williams · 27 Jun 2026

Yes, and it would normally be in the data by now (looking at last year, I can see plenty of purchases made in April with YNG discount travelling at e.g. 8am and getting the discount in July for e.g. £7 fares). It's an omission this year. Presumably it's an entirely manual process every year, which is nuts (so who has retired in the last year who would've ordinarily done it? :lol:

)

I have raised a PMS ticket.

This is going to be a complete pain because all the customers who've bought walk-ups for the affected dates ought to refund and replace their tickets once it gets fixed. These customers will need to be identified and then contacted.

blimmo · 27 Jun 2026

Adam Williams said:
Yes, and it would normally be in the data by now (looking at last year, I can see plenty of purchases made in April with YNG discount travelling at e.g. 8am and getting the discount in July for e.g. £7 fares). It's an omission this year. Presumably it's an entirely manual process every year, which is nuts (so who has retired in the last year who would've ordinarily done it? )

I have raised a PMS ticket.

This is going to be a complete pain because all the customers who've bought walk-ups for the affected dates ought to refund and replace their tickets once it gets fixed. These customers will need to be identified and then contacted.

You are doing god's work fighting RDG incompetentence, thank you!

MrJeeves · 27 Jun 2026

blimmo said:
You are doing god's work fighting RDG incompetentence, thank you!

These pesky third parties leeching from the industry once again... :lol:

Paul Kelly · 27 Jun 2026

As far as I remember, in the fares data the restriction dates don't include a year, only day and month. And since the start of July and end of August fall on the same dates each year

it's actually surprising that it needs to be updated. Maybe the records have been accidentally deleted?

Adam Williams · 27 Jun 2026

Paul Kelly said:
As far as I remember, in the fares data the restriction dates don't include a year, only day and month. And since the start of July and end of August fall on the same dates each year it's actually surprising that it needs to be updated. Maybe the records have been accidentally deleted?

I've always gotten the impression that the data PMS actually maintains internally is rather different to what we see in the RSPS5045 feeds (Sqills seem to have been given the actual XML), so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of abstraction in place that did need maintenance - purely speculation, though. I don't get how you'd accidentally delete something like this!

fandroid · 28 Jun 2026

The work round until the problem is fixed would be to artificially enter a later journey for the same date, or buy from BR Fares where no itinerary is required.

Adam Williams · 29 Jun 2026

This will be fixed for new purchases from tomorrow.

Mr T · 29 Jun 2026

Thank you for all the responses. Good to hear that the issue will be fixed overnight.

Speed43125 · 29 Jun 2026

Adam Williams said:
This will be fixed for new purchases from tomorrow.

Amazing to hear this has been sorted moving forwards!

Do we know if it is a manual entry every year to implement this rule?

Adam Williams · 29 Jun 2026

I didn't get any additional context on what had happened or why.

Affected Raileasy customers who have been overcharged as a result of this should get an email later this week.

The Quincunx · 30 Jun 2026

As far as I remember, it's a manual intervention for which there is a set reminder (and another to put it back for September).

yorkie · 30 Jun 2026

Mr T said:
I'm planning to travel on the 05:33 Carnforth - Morecambe next week. When planning my journey to check the ticket prices on the Northern website I am only offered the full price adult anytime day return, costing £6.30, with no railcard discount applied. As I will be travelling in July, surely the railcard discount should be applied as there is no minimum fare and I should be able to purchase the ticket for £4.15? Does anyone know if this likely to be corrected once we get to July?

BR fares also seems to suggest the restriction code R1 applies Mon-Fri through to 30 August, with no relaxation of the minimum fare over the summer. I would link a screenshot but can't seem to be able to attach the file.

Thanks for any insight as to what might be going on here!

It's working now (at least on the forum site; I've not checked Northern)

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

Mcr Warrior · 30 Jun 2026

yorkie said:
It's working now (at least on the forum site; I've not checked Northern)

Northern website asking for £4.15 for an Anytime Day Return with 16-25 Railcard discount applied and travelling on the 05:33 from Carnforth to Morecambe tomorrow (and returning the same day).

OscarH · 30 Jun 2026

Adam Williams said:
Affected Raileasy customers who have been overcharged as a result of this should get an email later this week.

Anyone who booked with Raileasy/TrainSplit (or any site powered by us) has now received refunds of the amount they overpaid due to this.

walkingsophie · 1 Jul 2026

I have gotten a £12 cap ticket from a ticket machine today, I wonder what the appeals process is like to get the extra £3 I paid back.

Paul Kelly · 1 Jul 2026

BR Fares is selling at the correct price today (the data was finally updated last night), though as fandroid noted above you could always just deselect the minimum fare with a toggle. I suspect many ticket vending machines might not have overnight data updates to avoid accidental failures from data errors and that sort of thing.

Edit: RDG have implemented it a rather confusing way. The restriction data still says the minimum fare applies from Monday to Friday (you see that on BR Fares if you scroll down to the Unpublished Restrictions for a YNG-discounted fare). But for every single ticket type, the record that says it has a minimum fare of £12 with a 16-25 Railcard has been deleted for the duration of July and August. This is a bit of a brute force way of doing it, considering that the restriction data has a much more sophisticated mechanism of overlapping time bands that could be (and I think has in some previous years) used to describe the lifting for July and August exactly.

OscarH · 1 Jul 2026

Paul Kelly said:
I suspect many ticket vending machines might not have overnight data updates to avoid accidental failures from data errors and that sort of thing.

We've seen many cases of TVMs not updating their data for far longer than the acceptable period according to accreditation requirements, but there's no interest in taking action against them in my experience.

To be honest, I'm somewhat surprised they're using the data at all, I'd expected them to use custom time bands.

Paul Kelly said:
RDG have implemented it a rather confusing way. The restriction data still says the minimum fare applies from Monday to Friday (you see that on BR Fares if you scroll down to the Unpublished Restrictions for a YNG-discounted fare). But for every single ticket type, the record that says it has a minimum fare of £12 with a 16-25 Railcard has been deleted for the duration of July and August. This is a bit of a brute force way of doing it, considering that the restriction data has a much more sophisticated mechanism of overlapping time bands that could be (and I think has in some previous years) used to describe the lifting for July and August exactly.

That's absolutely bizarre. I am absolutely sure they simply made the R1 time band end 30/06 and start again 01/09 in previous years

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Jul 2026 ==

The same issue applied to the Veterans Railcard and HM Forces Railcard. We're working on the refunds for those now

Adam Williams · 1 Jul 2026

I understand affected Raileasy VET/HMF customers have now been refunded for amounts overcharged, too.

RDG have sent an email round so hopefully other retailers will be following suit.

Outward Journey
Summary:	MINIMUM FARES MAY APPLY BEFORE 1000 MONDAY-FRIDAY
Time Restrictions
From	Until	Restriction(s) below apply on these days only:
Sat 27 Jun 2026	further notice	Every Day
Minimum fare applies departing	any location	0430–0959	on any TOC

Railcard minimum fares incorrectly applying over Summer

Member

RailUK Forums

Established Member

Veteran Member

Member

Forum Staff

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Verified Rep - BR Fares

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Established Member

Member

Forum Staff

Veteran Member

Established Member

Member

Verified Rep - BR Fares

Established Member

Established Member