Advance Fare East Midlands Trains Sun 3rd April

[cpowell]

I am spending the weekend in london with my family and managed to book advance fare seats from market harborough to London for 2nd April. However no advance fares have been released for Sun 3rd April 9 - this has been confirmed by east Mids Trains. See the messages below. Does anyone have any idea if and when they will be released and why they haven't?

Thanks
C

Dear Catherine,

Thank you for your response.

We are sorry to inform, we are unable to provide the exact date when the tickets will be released for 3rd April 2011.

Kind regards

Teressina
Customer By Email (Catherine Noonan) 01/02/2011 05:43 PM
Yes BUT will any be released for that day and when
Thanks
Catherine
Sent from my iPhone
On 1 Feb 2011, at 16:39, "East Midlands Trains Customer Support" <sales.support.eastmidlands@trainsfares.co.uk> wrote:
Response Via Email (Teressina Desilva) 01/02/2011 04:39 PM
Dear Catherine,

Thank you for your response.

We are sorry to inform tickets for 3rd April 2011 are not released, since 3rd April 2011 is a Sunday and Engineering work mostly takes place on weekends.

Engineering works for 3rd April 2011 are not yet planned yet, once they are planed tickets will be released for that day.

Also, you can check the planned engineering works and other service alterations from the following link:
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards

Teressina
Customer By Email (Catherine Noonan) 01/02/2011 04:16 PM
Hi,
But I have checked every day since the 2nd April tickets were made available and the Booking Horizons' Page has the following info:
Does the 'excluding April 3' mean that no advance fares are available for that day? I booked one way advance fare tickets for 2nd April for 4 adults and 2 children on the understanding (told by EM Trains) that the 3rd April will be made available later. I have checked every day and no advance fares are available.

Ticket release dates

The latest
ticket releases for Advance fares are now available in order for you to book early and get great value fares.

On our London route tickets are now available on the following dates:

Monday to Friday- 21 April 2011
Saturdays- 16 April 2011
Sundays- 10 April 2011 (excluding 3 April 2011)

On our Liverpool-Norwich route tickets are now available on the following dates:

Monday to Friday- 22 April 2011
Saturdays- 16 April 2011
Sundays- 17 April 2011


From:
sales.support.eastmidlands@trainsfares.co.uk
To: cathnoonan@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 15:45:53 +0000
Subject: 3rd April [Incident: 110201-002129]


You can update your message at any time by replying to this email.


Response Via Email (Teressina Desilva)
01/02/2011 03:45 PM
Dear CatheriTne,
Thank you for your email.
We have checked and confirmed, tickets for the month of April 2011, for the journey from are released. We request you to please book these tickets
as soon as possible, since Advance Single tickets are subject to availability.
If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind regards
Teressina


Dear Catherine,

Thank you for your email.

We have checked and confirmed, tickets for the month of April 2011, for the journey from are released. We request you to please book these tickets as soon as possible, since Advance Single tickets are subject to availability.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards



Will you be releasing any advance fare tickets for 3rd April from london to Market Harborough? I have been waiting for a month.

Regards

Catherine

[---001:004464:46488---]

 

[John @ home]

Does anyone have any idea if and when they will be released and why they haven't?

if they will be released
Probably.

when they will be released
Don't know.

why they haven't been released
The usual reason is that the company which owns the track (Network Rail) is late informing the company which runs the trains (in this case, East Midlands Trains) what work is to take place and therefore where and when trains can be run. This is quite common.

 

[cpowell]

Thanks John. They do make it very difficult to plan ahead! I can't afford the return cost they are quoting for the Sunday, so if they don't offer advance fares then it will be train there bus back!

 

[142094]

Any ideas of what times you are travelling on those dates, as someone might be able to find you an alternative ticket?

 

[MCR247]

Thanks John. They do make it very difficult to plan ahead! I can't afford the return cost they are quoting for the Sunday, so if they don't offer advance fares then it will be train there bus back!

I would be very surprised if they didn't release any advance fares!

 

[ashworth]

I've regularly found this a problem with EMT at weekends (especially Sundays) and at Bank Holidays. It usually ends up with me travelling from Nottingham to London Kings Cross via Grantham instead. Often at a far cheaper price than to St Pancras

I used to wait and wait and let all the tickets via Grantham go and then find that when EMT tickets were finally released the very cheap tickets were not available and it was almost cheaper to buy an Off Peak Return.

If East Coast Tickets are available I get them now and don't wait for EMT, but that's from Nottingham and doesn't help from stations further down the line.