Northern Advances Timing Out?

Hi All - May be coincidence but I’ve had 2 Northern Advances become unavailable today within 10-20 minutes of the service so was wondering if there is a “time out”?

Firsly, I needed to make sure my bus was going to get to Doncaster Interchange with enough time for me to get to Platform 0. It landed with 10 minutes to go so plenty of time but the Advance became unavailable (I just got the next one 15 mins later on an Advance).

Secondly, I needed to make sure my daughter got a cab safely from Hull and again the Advance became unavailable with 15-20 minutes to go so I had to pay nearly double for an off peak or wait for the next hourly service.

I believe advances are available up until 15 minutes before departure (if I've understood you correctly). See:

Ticket office staff whined, so it got set to 15 minutes just for Northern and just for APOD. I don't think any other operators play this game.

In the previous thread it's been suggested that this only occurs on the Northern website and app. Does this mean that the cutoff may not happen on other ticketing sites, such as the forum's?

Farigiraf said:

In the previous thread it's been suggested that this only occurs on the Northern website and app. Does this mean that the cutoff may not happen on other ticketing sites, such as the forum's?

Click to expand...

It applies to all retailers, including the forum's ticketing site.

It doesn't fail very gracefully, because the reservation system doesn't actually tell you that the tariff is going to disappear off-sale in this way 15 minutes out, it'll just fail to add to the basket.

Adam Williams said:

Ticket office staff whined, so it got set to 15 minutes just for Northern and just for APOD. I don't think any other operators play this game.

Click to expand...

All ticket office staff asked for was the same cutoff as online be that 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or the day before. Having websites/apps selling APOD whilst blocking ticket offices from doing so was a customer service headache.

If you had to regularly deal with the “ticket to X please”, ”£20 please”, “the app says it’s £12” conversation (for a customer paying cash) you would be “whining” too.

janb said:

All ticket office staff asked for was the same cutoff as online be that 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or the day before. Having websites/apps selling APOD whilst blocking ticket offices from doing so was a customer service headache.

If you had to regularly deal with the “ticket to X please”, ”£20 please”, “the app says it’s £12” conversation (for a customer paying cash) you would be “whining” too.

Click to expand...

I've read the written complaints that were sent by ticket office staff; I'm afraid "whining" is entirely accurate and I have quite limited sympathy. They weren't advocating for 5 minutes across the board, either.

One of them was written immediately after the member of ticket office staff used a Raileasy site to find split combinations (which they readily admitted to doing regularly) to sell via their own mTIS!

I'm not even against the principle of having the same fares available at every sales channel consistently, I think it's sensible, but in every other part of the country today that isn't the case (there are many fares that only ticket office staff can sell, for example, putting e.g. wheelchair-using passengers at a disadvantage) and staff and passengers just get on with it. Online retailers don't advocate for things to be removed from sale for a "lowest common denominator" approach to fix the problem.

Perhaps GBR will put an end to this nonsense and standardise on a configuration for APOD, but I won't hold my breath.

Adam Williams said:

I'm not even against the principle of having the same fares available at every sales channel consistently, I think it's sensible, but in every other part of the country today that isn't the case (there are many fares that only ticket office staff can sell, for example, putting e.g. wheelchair-using passengers at a disadvantage) and staff and passengers just get on with it. Online retailers don't advocate for things to be removed from sale for a "lowest common denominator" approach to fix the problem.

Click to expand...

There is important context which I probably shouldn’t get into publicly that would explain the emphasis on removal in this instance. But we are in agreement that there should be consistency across sales channels.