To be honest, I think the rail industry is a unique beast. At the risk of getting flamed. Customer service and ease of booking is at the bottom of the list. Certainly the style of the differing and competing companies within it doesn't lend itself to illustrating customer focus and service. Whereas airlines know you have a choice and can make that choice easily.
Example, when you get off a train at a terminus, is there a tannoy message thanking you for choosing that TOC? There is on a plane, thanking you for choosing that airline.
Granted there is not the choice of TOCs on same routes. But there is still a need to put the customer first. Certainly the framework of the industry with over regulation, too many chiefs and not enough injuns, fighting between the various parties, layers of cost on cost, punitive performance regimes that take money out of service delivery are all contributors to the mess and complexity of fares and bookings.
I also think their is a degree of 'don't care less' with some TOCs taking the captive customer base of commuters for granted.
Even if comparison is drawn with, say Ryanair in the airline industry. At least with Ryanair you know low price drives their poor service and that anything beyond basic has a tariff that makes it poor value for money.
In my comparisons I am using trainline.com directly, and the TOC direct websites. I must admit to being surprised at the lack of difference in this morning's comparison, maybe things are improving!!
Having spent a frustrating time this monring booking tickets for October, I fully agree that the process is not customer friendly, and I pretty much know what I'm doing! If Iw as startin g out as a relative nvoice, and wanting to book two tickets from A to B, I doubt I;d really know where to start. (I'm a bit like that with airlines, as I'm not at all familiar with who serves where, so it takes me ages to go through every airline site I cna think of!).
A lot of my furstration with the booking process is the requirment to log in or register, the extra security checks put in by the banks (Verisign), and the difficulty of finding the exact ticket I want to buy, even though i know what it;s called and where it;s routed via!
As an example, Iw as trying to get £31 FC advance fares from Swansea to Gatwick via Guidlford and Reading, but the via London route at £35 comes up automatically because it happens to be 4 minutes quicker according to the journey planners! then you go and answer the phone and get timed out, so you have tos tart the whole performance all over again...I just had to answer the phone again, and it's delayed me for 20 minutes, fortunately the forums don;t time out!
In regard to the comparisons, in the vast majority of cases the actual fares quoted will be exactly the same. Differences can be accounted for by either by TOC only discounts, or differences betweeen WebTIS engies and the trainline powered ones. These can cause different routes to appear by default, and it's important to try various options - this applies whatever site you are on!
In general, for most things, it's as you say - you can often get the best deals by going directly to the website of the supplier. If that's not the case, they will often match or beat the quote from a competitior, particularly insurance, hotels, car hire and the like.
