Day-Flex Single tickets

[tumbledown]

Sounds like more discrimination against the computerless. You find out whether you can afford to travel when you turn up at the station.

 

[MrJeeves]

Sounds like more discrimination against the computerless. You find out whether you can afford to travel when you turn up at the station.

Or you call telesales...

 

[Watershed]

Sounds like more discrimination against the computerless. You find out whether you can afford to travel when you turn up at the station.

It remains to be seen whether these would even be sold on the day of travel or whether, as is now the case for Advances in the GMPTE area, they are only sold before that.

 

[yorksrob]

Ultimately dynamic pricing is a con trick that shouldn't be allowed - without a reasonably priced off-peak fare that people can rely on.

I hope this isn't heading in that direction.

 

[yorkie]

Ultimately dynamic pricing is a con trick that shouldn't be allowed - without a reasonably priced off-peak fare that people can rely on.

I hope this isn't heading in that direction.

It absolutely is dynamic pricing. The price goes up with demand and they may even sell out completely, leaving you to pay the Anytime price.

This is all about abolishing Off Peak and making people pay more during major events, busy summer days, Christmas markets etc.

 

[mmh]

I think 'novel' would be a rather generous way of describing such a concept!

British Rail did it decades ago - the blue day / white day era.

 

[yorksrob]

It absolutely is dynamic pricing. The price goes up with demand and they may even sell out completely, leaving you to pay the Anytime price.

This is all about abolishing Off Peak and making people pay more during major events, busy summer days, Christmas markets etc.

This is as I suspect.

It amazes me that just because an algorithm engages in sharp practice, some people see it as ok.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 15:33 ==

British Rail did it decades ago - the blue day / white day era.

At least you knew when the blue/white day was - and of course, you always had the option of off-peak.

 

[yorkie]

British Rail did it decades ago - the blue day / white day era.

But that was entirely predictable, and was a relatively small difference between guaranteed levels of flexible fares.

Day Flex tickets are absolutely nothing like Savers / SuperSavers in terms of the pricing and availability.

 

[cool110]

I wonder wether this is the accompanying ticket that will be sold as part of the package.

The 5p ITX tickets are used for that

 

[OscarH]

However, the fact this flag is set will mean that the E-Ticket will tell the customer there are "Mandatory Reservations", because the RDG spec requires that retailers state that!
Unless every TIS supplier does work to add bespoke data and logic to handle these tickets, and ensure they're treated as flexible....

It also requires work from everyone to actually treat the availability response for a single service as reflecting the whole day, to avoid excessive load on the reservation system which is widely known to not have enough capacity

Aside from the fact without bespoke work to implement availability for this properly, the bodge they'll do will inevitably mean someone messes up configurations frequently and different services will get different prices for the same day when they shouldn't

 

[Farigiraf]

Of course there are benefits to using yield management strategies. But a quick poll on here: how many of you would rely on the railway for a flexible journey if the price is completely random by the day? I certainly don't check if there are football games or concerts or school holiday days when travelling, I travel when it suits me, as trains generally run every half-hour/hour so why shouldn't I? So on any random Saturday a typical day out to London could end up costing significantly more than now just because it's a particularly busy train.

Yes, there are less busy trains which would be cheaper, but even with the current super-off peak offers these trains are typically lightly loaded, which shows just how many people actually want to travel at these times if it was up to them and not the DfT.

It's particularly frustrating as the vast majority of railway users outside of the devolved commuter network regions (which presumably would still keep an affordable flexible option, even if it's only PAYG) do have a car which they could take, so something as simple as a switch to day-flex could seriously hurt regional rail demand and clog up regional roads/towns even more. But as we've seen from a number of nearby countries - namely France and Spain - this is nothing new, it seems like most governments at the moment are working towards a stealth-Beeching on regional rail as it's so 'unprofitable' in their eyes. Surely it won't come back to bite us?