advance tickets confusion

[yamahawrz]

I wait for the advance tickets to be released by various toc, why do they have different advance price tickets, one recent one through cc website was advance ticket price £47.50, yet the advance ticket price for the week before was £30.00 (thats the same journey one week apart costing £17.50 more) what is going on?

 

[ainsworth74]

There are different price bands of advance tickets, and with in each band there is a limited number of tickets available for sale. So as the tickets in one band (the cheapest first) run out the tickets in the next band become available. So the closer to the day of travel the fewer cheap tickets there are available. So for instance next Tuesday a ticket from York to Kings Cross is £21 but on the same train on the 24th May it costs £8 as the cheapest tickets have yet to be sold.

 

[SS4]

Without knowing the date and route we can only guess. Usually it's because it's a bank holiday or a special event is happening.

Advance tickets are only available in limited numbers so it's also possible they sold out of the super cheap ones which is more likely if the date is soon

 

[CliveJones]

I wait for the advance tickets to be released by various toc, why do they have different advance price tickets, one recent one through cc website was advance ticket price £47.50, yet the advance ticket price for the week before was £30.00 (thats the same journey one week apart costing £17.50 more) what is going on?

There is more than one 'level' of advance ticket. An fictional example could be

£10
£15
£25
£50

Once all the £10 tickets are sold, the next one up (£15) is then sold. When they are all gone it will be £25. and so on.

 

[Greenback]

Yes, if there is higher demand for the route on the day in question, and it may be a football match or some other event that has increased the demand for travel, then it may be very hard indeed to find any of the cheapest priced advance tickets.

 

[island]

Right. And there may be times when the lower bands are not sold at all or are limited to very few tickets (fewer than normal) if they are expecting high traveller volumes.

If you're posting around now then are you looking at a bank holiday weekend? The late May bank holiday weekend tickets are going on sale around now and so if that's the weekend you're looking at travel is likely to be in higher demand.

 

[yamahawrz]

Thanks guys for your responses, the muddy waters are clearing

 

[317 forever]

Sometimes some train tickets are cheaper on the TOC's own website than elsewhere. A few weeks ago I saved £1 by booking an Advance ticket on East Midlands Trains' website (for am EMT journey) rather than an alternative website. OK it was only £1 but I figured why pay anyone else a £1 booking fee for the identical booking facility?

 

[moonrakerz]

Just to "re-muddy" the water - some routes/TOCs do not always have the cheapest tickets available first, they seem to wait (perhaps to see how other sales are going) before they release the very cheapest tickets - if they do at all ! Makes it difficult to decide when to actually take the plunge and buy your tickets.

 

[Greenback]

That seems to be when the TOC thinks that demand for a certain train(s) on particular days will be busier than normal, then sales are slow and need a boost! This means that the lower priced tickets get released, meaning that cheaper fares might be avialable 9 weeks before departure than they were 12 weeks before!

It's not that common, but it does happen!