If you put this to your average Jane on the street:
- the cost of A-B is £62,
- you can buy your ticket just before you hop on the train, no advance purchased required weeks ahead
- you can travel earlier or later on any off-peak train you like,
- or get a refund if you've already bought it for £10.
And asked them the question:
Would you like to save 50p-£1 for a non-refundable ticket fixed to one train, despite buying weeks in advance, if you miss it your cash is lost and you need to buy a new £62 ticket, if you want to change trains provided you do it in advance you can buy a new one and post in the old one at your own cost and receive the money back minus £10 fee?
Clearly a vanishingly small minority of sane people would take that deal.
Specifically my concern is that the highest band of Advance ticket pricing is specifically designed, almost with intent, to take advantage of the less-than-great user interface in booking engines by appearing as the cheapest ticket over the cheapest flexible fare (by a very slim margin) for the very convenient benefit to the TOC of people paying the £10 change fee and losing money on missed trains.
Looking at GWR for Plymouth to London for example, on many journeys an Advance fare of £61.20 is offered vs a flexible fare of £62.20. Whilst £1 is definitely a saving, the value proposition of a significant loss of product features for just £1 saving makes for a very poor is very poor.
This means the headline price and first-shown ticket price is the £61.20 ticket fare. Technically it does say one is "Standard Class Advance Single" vs "Super Off-Peak Single", but this is in much smaller letters than the price, is not in consistent or directly comparable terms (why does one say 'Standard Class' and the other does not?). There could be a different icon to show one is fixed and the other is flexible, a differentiation of flexible vs fixed could be shown, a buy-up user interface could be shown to say 'Would you like a flexible ticket for £1 more?' as some other TOCs do, many opportunities to be up-front and forthright with the purchaser are missed.
Yes we are all clued-up enough to easily see the difference, but how many average people on the street would fall into that trap?
By comparison when buying a coach ticket National Express show very clearly side-by-side the different price points and the flexibility/features in comparison.
I think TOCs should have to make it clear when selling a ticket the price difference between an Advance ticket and the cheapest flexible ticket - for an honest and customer-friendly business would there be any disadvantage to this?
I don't think price controls are appropriate but if it cannot be made clear to potential customers then perhaps Advance tickets should be capped at 90% or 100%-£10 of the equivalent flexible fare (as difficult as that would be to implement) to avoid this kind of deceptive practices?
- the cost of A-B is £62,
- you can buy your ticket just before you hop on the train, no advance purchased required weeks ahead
- you can travel earlier or later on any off-peak train you like,
- or get a refund if you've already bought it for £10.
And asked them the question:
Would you like to save 50p-£1 for a non-refundable ticket fixed to one train, despite buying weeks in advance, if you miss it your cash is lost and you need to buy a new £62 ticket, if you want to change trains provided you do it in advance you can buy a new one and post in the old one at your own cost and receive the money back minus £10 fee?
Clearly a vanishingly small minority of sane people would take that deal.
Specifically my concern is that the highest band of Advance ticket pricing is specifically designed, almost with intent, to take advantage of the less-than-great user interface in booking engines by appearing as the cheapest ticket over the cheapest flexible fare (by a very slim margin) for the very convenient benefit to the TOC of people paying the £10 change fee and losing money on missed trains.
Looking at GWR for Plymouth to London for example, on many journeys an Advance fare of £61.20 is offered vs a flexible fare of £62.20. Whilst £1 is definitely a saving, the value proposition of a significant loss of product features for just £1 saving makes for a very poor is very poor.
This means the headline price and first-shown ticket price is the £61.20 ticket fare. Technically it does say one is "Standard Class Advance Single" vs "Super Off-Peak Single", but this is in much smaller letters than the price, is not in consistent or directly comparable terms (why does one say 'Standard Class' and the other does not?). There could be a different icon to show one is fixed and the other is flexible, a differentiation of flexible vs fixed could be shown, a buy-up user interface could be shown to say 'Would you like a flexible ticket for £1 more?' as some other TOCs do, many opportunities to be up-front and forthright with the purchaser are missed.
Yes we are all clued-up enough to easily see the difference, but how many average people on the street would fall into that trap?
By comparison when buying a coach ticket National Express show very clearly side-by-side the different price points and the flexibility/features in comparison.
I think TOCs should have to make it clear when selling a ticket the price difference between an Advance ticket and the cheapest flexible ticket - for an honest and customer-friendly business would there be any disadvantage to this?
I don't think price controls are appropriate but if it cannot be made clear to potential customers then perhaps Advance tickets should be capped at 90% or 100%-£10 of the equivalent flexible fare (as difficult as that would be to implement) to avoid this kind of deceptive practices?
