Changes to routing rules - do you need to be notified?

[Crithylum]

With the new NRCoT, a route is valid as long as an accredited retailer/NRE says so. I suspect that especially for edge cases, there is the possibility of the rules being changed such that the route is no longer offered for that ticket. If this is a regular journey, it is impractical to generate the itinerary every time you make the journey.

My question is: if you are travelling on a previously valid (but now invalid) route, and don't know it is invalid, what is the legal situation? Is there any requirement for you (or the general public) to be notified when they change the routeing validity?

 

[jfollows]

Nothing changes, from my perspective.
If I buy Wilmslow-Birmingham tickets, usually split tickets at Stafford from a ticket office at time of travel, just because routes used to be valid doesn’t mean that things haven’t changed. Stockport, Rugeley, Lichfield, Tamworth all used to be valid routes. Maybe Nuneaton. But it was always the case, and if I used a previously-valid route which was no longer valid, it’d be my fault. That said, the likelihood of encountering someone who knew that my previously-valid route was no longer valid is very low.

 

[redreni]

Now yes, if you are relying on a 'loophole' fare then I can understand it would be frustrating to suddenly find you can't generate the itinerary you want anymore. And if you buy your ticket through one of the limited methods that don't involve an itinerary, e.g. from a ticket office or via a "quick buy" function on a TVM or website/app, then I can see that you might get caught out. But I would consider that an occupational hazard of using such fares. Out of all of the things the industry does poorly, I think this barely even registers.

Take Dartford to [Anywhere west or north of London via London]. Dartford to Cambridge is the one that caught me out.

I found out about the routeing guide change preventing travel via Gravesend and Stratford International via this forum. How many passengers would do so?

It is a journey I make several times a year. I would turn up at the station, and if there was a Gravesend train due, I would check if it gave a convenient connection to a St Pancras train. If it did, I would take it. If it didn't, I would head to Kings Cross via Abbey Wood and Farringdon.

It is a turn-up and go service. You don't need to plan your journey in advance. The TVMs at Dartford were 'dumb'. The ticket office at Dartford would just sell you the ticket you asked for and would not offer to help you with routeing unless you asked. If not for this forum, I could have carried on travelling by an invalid route for months without being aware.

Southeastern made the change basically secretly: they didn't even tell the ticket office clerks at Dartford. When I complained, they said that step would have been "impractical".

That wasn't a loophole fare, at least, not obviously so. There may still be people taking the route via Gravesend and Stratford International to this day, unaware that they are committing a crime.

 

[Belperpete]

I got caught by this some years ago, when Derby to London tickets that used to be valid to travel to/via St Pancras, Euston, Marylebone or Paddington, ceased to be valid to Euston - if going via Birmingham. If there was trouble on MML, going via Euston was a useful standby - train to St Pancras unexpectedly cancelled, right I'll go to Euston, and still make my appointment. I only found out it was no longer valid by chance conversation with a ticket clerk, when he pointed out that there was engineering work that weekend on my outward journey, and I said I would be going out via Euston.

This was hardly a loop hole fare. And being something that I mainly used as a contingency, it wasn't something I thought to check every time I bought a ticket (I was making that trip two or three times each week back then).

As I had been occasionally travelling via that route for the best part of a decade, having been explicitly told by a booking clerk that Derby-London tickets were valid that way, it came as a bit of a shock that my tickets had not actually been valid for that for some time. And worse still, that there had been no publicity whatsoever of the change. Fortunately I hadn't been caught out!

We do seem to be moving ever more to an inflexible airline style, where you are expected to stick to the itinerary that you booked. A very retrograde state of affairs.