Feeling annoyed with LNER advance ticket

[Traintripper]

Am I being unreasonable? I bought an advance ticket from LNER on the 9th April the day of release. Doncaster to Dundee first class for £83. I notice today, the same ticket is £67. I understood that the sooner you bought a ticket the cheaper it would be. I'm pretty annoyed that the price is lower ten days after the ticket was released. I believe as its an advance, I can't cancel the ticket either to repurchase at the lower cost without paying a fee either? Thoughts please. Many thanks

 

[yorkie]

What date/time is it for?

There's not much you can do, unless the company states that it is cheaper the earlier you book; it really depends on what they are advertising at the time the ticket is sold.

Edit: I think you may a case under consumer law; LNER state this:

Advance tickets | LNER

Cheaper tickets, same great journey. Book further in advance on the LNER website and app than anywhere else.

www.lner.co.uk

An Advance ticket is a single ticket for a specific train that you book in advance. There's a limited number of these tickets on any given train and the earlier you book, the cheaper the tickets will be!

Which is very clear that your price should not be going down.

But when you continue reading, they go on to contradict themselves:

What are the advantages?

• They’re usually our cheapest fares*
• You can combine different types of single tickets to save money
• You get an automatic seat reservation
• You can book at least 12 weeks before you travel for most dates and routes (see current exclusions)
• Or you can buy Advance tickets up to 5 minutes before the train starts its journey, meaning you can bag a bargain on the day.

*Prices normally increase closer to travel, however, occasionally prices may go down, for a variety of reasons. An example of this is if there is a seat sale.

It's not clear to me what the position should be, where such a contradiction occurs, though in general any contradiction should be resolved in favour of the consumer, not the company.

Do we have any lawyers here who are experts on contract & consumer law?

 

[Traintripper]

Hi, thanks for the reply. The date of travel is the 30th June.

 

[yorkie]

Looks like the journey involves a change of train; what time is the departure? Has the train been retimed at all?

 

[Haywain]

Unfortunately, availability can be impacted by someone else selecting tickets from the same quota and placing them in their basket while you were searching and subsequently not completing the purchase so that, when you had completed your purchase at £83, tickets were later released back into the quota at the cheaper price. I don't see that there's much that can be done about that.

 

[Traintripper]

I'm not aware that the journey has been retimed. Train leaves Doncaster at 11.10 and then I change at York, then direct to Dundee.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Apr 2021 ==

Thank you for your very detailed relpy Yorkie. You can obviously can see where my annoyance has come from.

I bought the ticket at 17.53, they were only released at 4pm. I can't really see that the whole cheaper allocation was sold before then on a random date almost three months in advance!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not aware that the journey has been retimed. Train leaves Doncaster at 11.10 and then I change at York, then direct to Dundee.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Apr 2021 ==

Thank you for your very detailed relpy Yorkie. You can obviously can see where my annoyance has come from.

I bought the ticket at 17.53, they were only released at 4pm. I can't really see that the whole cheaper allocation was sold before then on a random date almost three months in advance!

A lot of people are watching for release of Advances, and typically the number of tickets at the lowest price is small, so it's totally feasible that that happened.

 

[Haywain]

I bought the ticket at 17.53, they were only released at 4pm. I can't really see that the whole cheaper allocation was sold before then on a random date almost three months in advance!

The quotas in first class will not be in significant numbers due to social distancing measures, and it didn't need to be sold, just 'reserved'. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

[Traintripper]

OK, I'd better calm down then and chalk this one down to experience. I still am a bit annoyed though!! Many thanks for the advice.

 

[island]

It's not clear to me what the position should be, where such a contradiction occurs, though in general any contradiction should be resolved in favour of the consumer, not the company.

Section 50 (2) (a) of the Consumer Rights Act:

2)Anything taken into account by the consumer as mentioned in subsection (1)(a) or (b) is subject to

(a)anything that qualified it and was said or written to the consumer by the trader on the same occasion

So assuming the above are all on the one page, I think LNER are on safe ground.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Apr 2021 ==

A lot of people are watching for release of Advances, and typically the number of tickets at the lowest price is small, so it's totally feasible that that happened.

Not only that, there is no guarantee the lowest (or any) advance tier will be released at all.

 

[gray1404]

You could try your luck and fire off an email to LNER Customer Service. They might issue a goodwill gesture.

 

[Haywain]

You could try your luck and fire off an email to LNER Customer Service. They might issue a goodwill gesture.

There would certainly be nothing to lose by doing this.

 

[Traintripper]

Thanks, I might just do that. Thank you!