East Coast Mainline Christmas Booking

[Failed Unit]

Nationalised Express have done some real strange issues of quotas this year if you are travelling at Christmas.

At the point of posting approx 19:30 on 2nd October if you look up the Edinburgh - London you get some trains that are not offering a quota of advanced purchase tickets. The 10:30 Edinburgh - Kings Cross is one. If however you ask for Haymarket the 10:17 Haymarket - Kings Cross is on offer. For some strange reason the quota system is blocking you booking this at Waverley.

There are many examples of the same thing where trains have quotas from some stations, but others where the trains stops have no quota.

Not sure if the a gremlin or done delibrately by national express. When I tried booking earlier I was only offered one train, I phoned them up and they said all the others had sold out!

Anyone got any ideas what they are upto? If you are wanting to book national express over christmas try booking the station before, you might get a better deal!

 

[John @ home]

if you look up the Edinburgh - London you get some trains that are not offering a quota of advanced purchase tickets. The 10:30 Edinburgh - Kings Cross is one. If however you ask for Haymarket the 10:17 Haymarket - Kings Cross is on offer.

Yes, I have often found that Advance ticket availability to/from Haymarket is better than to/from Edinburgh. This applies on NXEC, Virgin and, I think, TPE. I have saved several tens of pounds on several occasions by booking to or from Haymarket. My assumption has been that there are separate Advance quotas for different stations, or groups of stations.

There is also a restriction on Superbreak mini-holidays where Standard Class tickets are not valid for travel from King's Cross or Edinburgh on any serivces timed to depart 1344 or later on Sundays (except for passengers travelling to stations north of Edinburgh). I have found that, in the railway world, Haymarket (55.945 degrees north) is regarded as north of Edinburgh (55.952 degrees north) despite being very marginally south of it.

John

 

[harz99]

Nationalised Express have done some real strange issues of quotas this year if you are travelling at Christmas.

At the point of posting approx 19:30 on 2nd October if you look up the Edinburgh - London you get some trains that are not offering a quota of advanced purchase tickets. The 10:30 Edinburgh - Kings Cross is one. If however you ask for Haymarket the 10:17 Haymarket - Kings Cross is on offer. For some strange reason the quota system is blocking you booking this at Waverley.

There are many examples of the same thing where trains have quotas from some stations, but others where the trains stops have no quota.

Not sure if the a gremlin or done delibrately by national express. When I tried booking earlier I was only offered one train, I phoned them up and they said all the others had sold out!

Anyone got any ideas what they are upto? If you are wanting to book national express over christmas try booking the station before, you might get a better deal!

I reckon you have answered your own question - it's a quota system, when seats at that price from that station for that journey have all sold (and there are few to start with) thats it, either travel on a different day/departure or from a different station or pay a higher fare. You cannot "borrow" from another stations quota.

Similarly, despite the proximity of Haymarket to Waverley they are separate stations on the network and one enjoys more departures to London than the other with many more users, and so the quotas on each train sell quicker.

 

[LondonLarry]

It's all about demand management. If you were asked to maximise your sales for a particular service, you wouldn't offer lots of cheap tickets from your busiest stations. It's no different from TOCs reducing their availability of cheaper tickets to and from London around the morning and evening peak.

 

[Failed Unit]

I am not so sure it wasn't a Gremlin now, I have just had a look today and all trains to London now have a quota of AP tickets from Edinburgh Waverley, including the 10:30 at the lowest price of £16.50 (on Monday 21st Dec). When I booked earlier from Haymarket the 10:30 was not avialable at all with any form of AP ticket from Waverley. If you wanted to use it you needed to by a walk-on ticket.

Even if the quota's of the lowest priced tickets were not on offer, I would never expect to see no AP tickets on offer at all for any train. It is in the operators benefit to have AP tickets on offer. For example National Express will get more money from a £90 AP ticket combo rather than selling the £108.80 off-peak return. Mainly because the get 100% of the revenue from the AP whereas the off-peak return will give shares of the revenue to Virgin, Arriva XC, Grand Central, Hull Trains and First Capital connect. Using XC to York and GC to London is allowed as long as you don't leave York station so a portion of the fare is allocated to someone doing it! Not sure if Scotrail gets a share for people that may buy a berth suppliment for the sleeper.

I digress, all trains are on offer now, but I wonder if people have booked flights as a result of the problems last week?

 

[Sleepy]

I think this is a system issue when booking is opened - noticed similar thing on Advance tickets London to Cornwall in August, some stations had availability while others did not for same train until the next day !