Does anybody know if Cross Country are offering any advance purchase discount tickets or not? I've been looking at their website and it only offers the same price for all seats from Plymouth to York for any date (whether one week away, two weeks or twelve). Their website suggests there are cheap tickets released, but even their support chat seems unclear how far in advance they are released (one said a week, another said a month).
For a journey such as Plymouth to York you'd be paying a huge premium to book direct with XC, compared to using a site such as Trainsplit.
Trainsplit will still offer seat selection, a single PDF containing all tickets, and a through itinerary, and they won't add a booking fee. If you do want paper tickets, Trainsplit won't charge you extra, whereas XC would.
I'm starting to wonder if they don't really want people to travel as they are clearly having difficulties providing anything like a reasonable service.
XC don't value your custom; their trains will be full to the rafters at most times through the core sections with people making shorter journeys and they get huge subsidies and don't have any particular need to encourage discretionary travel.
XC know that they can charge premium fares as some people will pay them; savvy people will use split ticket sites, and others will be put off travelling, which suits them as they need some people to be put off otherwise the trains will be too full at some parts of the journey.
But don't make the mistake of thinking XC value our custom; they certainly don't and they'd not be at all fussed if you drove, flew or didn't travel altogether.
