Booking through different operator

[mbreckers]

Quick question, mainly cause I'm curious.

If I book a ticket with, for example, East Coast, but book through the Scotrail website, who gets the money in that situation? scotrail or ec?

 

[yorkie]

Assuming it's an Advance ticket for travel on East Coast only, then other than the commission, East Coast get all the revenue. If it's not then see ORCATS for an idea of how the revenues are distributed.

As for how much the commission is exactly, it varies. In the current TSA (9.9) it would appear to be, in your example:

Operator: Any Operator
Location of Sale: Internet Site that is an Impartial Point of Sale
Product Sold: Basic Product that is not a Season Ticket
Rate of commission: 5.0% on all sales from 01 April 2013 until 31 March 2019.

 

[cool110]

The ticket seller gets a small percentage of the cost as commission which is reduced by 40p if the tickets are collected from another operator’s machine or 90p at a ticket office. For walk up tickets the remainder is divided up between all the operators on the route according to ORCATS.

 

[yorkie]

If you book a very cheap ticket, and collect from another operators machine (e.g. a Lichfield City to Trent Valley ticket bought from your least favourite Train Company's website and collected at your favourite Train Company's ticket machine) the retailer will actually make a loss!

 

[causton]

If you book a very cheap ticket, and collect from another operators machine (e.g. a Lichfield City to Trent Valley ticket bought from your least favourite Train Company's website and collected at your favourite Train Company's ticket machine) the retailer will actually make a loss!

Especially if you pick them up from a station ticket office instead of a ticket machine

 

[yorkie]

There's also a small charge to add an entry into LENNON, as well as bank fees (which will vary, in particular I believe credit card transactions will be more costly to process than debit card transactions)

 

[button_boxer]

There's also a small charge to add an entry into LENNON, as well as bank fees (which will vary, in particular I believe credit card transactions will be more costly to process than debit card transactions)

Most card acceptance setups I'm familiar with charge a percentage of the transaction value for credit cards but a fixed fee per transaction (regardless of value) for debit cards. So for low value transactions credit is cheaper, but above a certain threshold (maybe £20-30) the debit card flat rate is cheaper, and the difference is more pronounced the higher the value.

 

[talldave]

There's also a small charge to add an entry into LENNON, as well as bank fees (which will vary, in particular I believe credit card transactions will be more costly to process than debit card transactions)

..and my Quidco cashback has to come from somewhere