Avanti West Coast Booking

Hi
I have discovered today that for a journey on 11/08 1 adult 1 child with a family railcard Motherwell To Crewe that Avanti's website is showing different results and prices from GWR, LNER and even Scot rail.

I thought maybe mistakenly that all sites would show the same tickets and prices for a journey.

Can anyone advise what’s going on with Avanti?

Thanks

John

What prices are you seeing? Have you got a screenshot?

Hi
Screenshot from LNER attached, GWR and Scotrail are broadly similar.

The LNER ticket for the 06:45 is change at Carlisle. The Avanti ticket doesn't even offer that option its change at Wigan!

Thanks

John

Seems to be a problem with the supplier which Avanti's website uses, called Pico4UK. c2c uses the same system and has the same problem:



One of the benefits of multiple journey planning systems is that when one is at-fault, you're free to check another to see if it's offering a better deal.

In this case, the forum's ticketing site matches LNER's pricing too:

Good grief, is 1st Class really nearly 10 times the Standard class price? That’s getting silly.

Hi
So the question is are Avanti obliged to show you the lower fares?

For me i want to book with Avanti for the Club Avanti points but not to be ripped off.

I wonder if Avanti's best price guarantee would apply here?

Thanks

jmacp said:

Hi
So the question is are Avanti obliged to show you the lower fares?

For me i want to book with Avanti for the Club Avanti points but not to be ripped off.

I wonder if Avanti's best price guarantee would apply here?

Click to expand...

Awhile ago, Avanti wouldn't even sell me tickets on most of their services, at any price, claiming that no tickets were available. Whereas other TOC websites would not only sell me tickets but give me reservations on the exact same trains. However, like you, I wanted to book on the Avanti site for the club card points. As I recall, it was down to a bug in their booking system involving journeys involving change of trains with another operator. It looks like this may be a similar issue, so their website isn't finding the cheap route that other websites are finding. But in your case, it is finding a different, higher priced route.

I doubt that their price guarantee would apply, as you are comparing prices for different itineraries, so effectively different journeys.

You could always complain about it to Avanti Customer Services (chocolate teapot) department.