Advances More Expensive Than Flexible Tickets?

[Amaranthe]

I just came across something I found a bit weird, looking to book Newcastle - Durham as the final leg of a trip on Thursday and I notice the 22:23 Northern service is offering an Advance Single for £6 but an Off-Peak Day Single is only £4.80.

Does this happen often where an Advance is more expensive than a Flexible ticket?

I'm going to go with the 22:45 LNER service for £3.20 though.

 

[800Travel]

I just came across something I found a bit weird, looking to book Newcastle - Durham as the final leg of a trip on Thursday and I notice the 22:23 Northern service is offering an Advance Single for £6 but an Off-Peak Day Single is only £4.80.

Does this happen often where an Advance is more expensive than a Flexible ticket?

I'm going to go with the 22:45 LNER service for £3.20 though.

Don't know re frequency, but looking on the fares data (https://www.brfares.com/!fares?orig=NCL&dest=DHM&period=20240928), £6 is the most expensive advance standard fare on that route. Ridiculous that Northern charge it, given the inferiority of their service compared to LNER for example.

 

[mad_rich]

I’ve seen this sort of thing on several operators.

My natural assumption is that it’s done deliberately, in bad faith, to catch out people who only check advance fares on the assumption they’ll be cheapest - or corporate travel policies that insist on them.

I can’t think of any circumstances in which the Advance would be the logical choice?

 

[MrJeeves]

Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

I doubt the pricing is intentional. It's even higher than the Anytime Day Single too!

If I were to hypothesise, I might suggest that perhaps the pricing made more sense before LNER's Single Leg Pricing was rolled out, when the single may have been over £6 (or whatever the Advances cost then), but pricing the singles down to (around) half the return may have converted it into a seemingly terrible value option.

 

[kieron]

If I were to hypothesise, I might suggest that perhaps the pricing made more sense before LNER's Single Leg Pricing was rolled out, when the single may have been over £6 (or whatever the Advances cost then), but pricing the singles down to (around) half the return may have converted it into a seemingly terrible value option.

That's not the reason. Northern's highest tier went up from £3.20 to £6.00 at the start of June, about a year after LNER scrapped the "any permitted" return fares.

The highest tier may exist for railcard users, as I know some have a minimum fare which applies to flexible tickets but not advance ones.

I wouldn't blame Northern for any of this, though. If a retailer doesn't make it easy for a customer to select the fare which is best for him or her, that's down to the retailer.

 

[MrJeeves]

That's not the reason. Northern's highest tier went up from £3.20 to £6.00 at the start of June, about a year after LNER scrapped the "any permitted" return fares.

So it did! I had browsed previous fares data dates but was only looking at the flexible pricing rather than the Northern advance.

 

[redreni]

I don't do much rail travel for work, but when I last did so I was quite surprised to be told off for travelling first class despite having a screenshot of the official booking engine they insist we use showing that the 1st Advance Single I chose was cheaper than the cheapest available standard class fare. It's not about the money, it's about public perception, apparently, and first class travel is not allowed.

I suspect mad_rich may be correct that there will be organisations with similarly absurd and self-defeating travel expenses policies about Advance tickets, whereby it doesn't matter if the flexible ticket is cheaper, you still can't have it because we want to be able to say we always use Advances where available.

If that's correct and TOCs aren't exploiting it, maybe they should be?

 

[Cantab26]

I don't do much rail travel for work, but when I last did so I was quite surprised to be told off for travelling first class despite having a screenshot of the official booking engine they insist we use showing that the 1st Advance Single I chose was cheaper than the cheapest available standard class fare. It's not about the money, it's about public perception, apparently, and first class travel is not allowed.

I suspect mad_rich may be correct that there will be organisations with similarly absurd and self-defeating travel expenses policies about Advance tickets, whereby it doesn't matter if the flexible ticket is cheaper, you still can't have it because we want to be able to say we always use Advances where available.

My employer is a case in point: we are not allowed to travel First Class at all and are (in theory) required to use Advance fares if available.

Madness!

 

[OscarH]

These insane policies is why the TrainSplit expense receipts make a point of marking that something is the cheapest fare/cheapest walkup/cheapest 1st/cheapest walkup first, to try and show that a walkup/1st class ticket was actually the cheapest thing available for std class travel.

Obviously it only goes so far, and many of these companies with ridiculous rules still won't have enough common sense to read that and accept it.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Northern's highest tier went up from £3.20 to £6.00 at the start of June, about a year after LNER scrapped the "any permitted" return fares.

The highest tier may exist for railcard users, as I know some have a minimum fare which applies to flexible tickets but not advance ones.

Are you saying that the £6.00 route "AP Northern" advance single fare exists solely so that when is it is railcard discounted to £3.95, it appears cheaper than an undiscounted walk up fare? But Northern only operate the one direct, late evening, Newcastle->Durham service, which runs at a time of the day when the minimum fare wouldn't apply anyway?

 

[jawr256]

Are you saying that the £6.00 route "AP Northern" advance single fare exists solely so that when is it is railcard discounted to £3.95, it appears cheaper than an undiscounted walk up fare? But Northern only operate the one direct, late evening, Newcastle->Durham service, which runs at a time of the day when the minimum fare wouldn't apply anyway?

They do run three Durham-Newcastle services before 9am though, and it seems plausible that the fare tier would be defined in both directions by default.

 

[plugwash]

Or that the people setting the fares didn't bother to look at what trains northern actually run.

 

[Amaranthe]

Found another one...

Tuesday 18th Feb - 1647 & 1746 Plymouth - Penzance

£18.50 for an Advance Single or £14 for an Off-Peak Day Single.

£19 for a First Class Advance single though which is pretty good especially if the comp alcohol from 5pm - 7pm is still on the go.