"Disc 02%" printed on ticket

[trainophile]

I've been putting off posting this as it's probably a stupid or obvious question, but on my Advance 1st with SNR railcard ticket for Dundee to London Terminals last week, between the Start Date and the ticket Number is printed "Disc 02%". I can't remember ever seeing this before. What does it mean?

I booked four tickets at the same time for this journey, so maybe it gives an automatic discount for a group? I didn't select anything to that effect when booking on the VTEC site back in July.

I haven't now got any of the other tickets, nor the outbound ones, so not sure if the same thing was on those.

 

[bb21]

2% is a typical discount offered on East Coast Advances if booked via their website., and can range from 2% to 11% (lowest tiers only nowadays I think).

It has always been printed on the ticket iirc.

There is an example in the ticket gallery from a while back.

 

[trainophile]

Well I've never noticed that before! This will be when some of the trains have a little symbol denoting "online price only" then? Thank you, I can throw it away now I know the answer .

 

[itsjamierawr]

I've seen the same thing with Southeastern's web only fares when they have a sale - sadly they stopped you putting a railcard on top of it (you used to be able to get up to 66% off sometimes!)

 

[bb21]

The discount field was always there, as shown in this and this example from the ticket gallery.

 

[trainophile]

I can't see it on the new style tickets, but they are such a jumble I can't read much of what's on there.

 

[yorkie]

Indeed. It's just a discount. It used to be 11% for all EC Advances bought on their own website a few years ago, but as bb21 says, 2% is more common now.

Nothing to worry about, except in the days of First Capital Connect when you had to be careful if using their services, as some FCC revenue protection inspectors were so badly trained and lacking common sense that they thought it meant a Railcard was held and would issue Penalty Fares! I don't know how many innocent people were persecuted by them, but one person found this forum and managed to successfully appeal (there are insufficient safeguards within the rail industry to prevent this happening and no proper ombudsman to take effective action).

 

[trainophile]

Good grief hock: . You'd think RPIs would be aware that railcard discounts are considerably more than 11%.