Hatfield to Canterbury

[jon0844]

I'm thinking of going to Canterbury on Saturday for a day out, and going via HS1.

I have a Z1-6 card, but know I can't get an extension on HS1 so must still pay from St Pancras.

Any idea why a off-peak day return from London Terminals to Canterbury Stations (it will be Canterbury West) costs £19.95 with a Gold Card, yet a ticket from Hatfield to Canterbury Stations, any permitted, costs £17.55?

The latter includes another 25-30 mile journey on top, but is cheaper.

 

[philjo]

I think it is because SET added a HS1 premium to the St Pancras fare & they have applied some odd pricing to that route. The fare from Hatfield is an "any permitted" ticket so is still valid via HS1. (FCC also set a lower "not HS1" fare)

 

[extendedpaul]

I live on the route of the High Speed line in Kent and make regular cross London journeys. I have noticed that for some destinations there are two fares with a supplement for HS1 but for others one fare is quoted and includes HS1.

It just seems to depend who sets the fares.

 

[yorkie]

Any idea why a off-peak day return from London Terminals to Canterbury Stations (it will be Canterbury West) costs £19.95 with a Gold Card, yet a ticket from Hatfield to Canterbury Stations, any permitted, costs £17.55?

Because it's not uncommon for a longer distance ticket to be cheaper than a shorter distance ticket. The TOCs are sometimes so obsessed with ripping us off for a certain route that they perhaps forget to increase the price of the further tickets!

The latter includes another 25-30 mile journey on top, but is cheaper.

HS1 is a total rip-off to/from London but beyond London it usually makes sense to use it, both time-wise and price-wise.

I live on the route of the High Speed line in Kent and make regular cross London journeys. I have noticed that for some destinations there are two fares with a supplement for HS1 but for others one fare is quoted and includes HS1.

In general:

For tickets to London (or short of London) the fares that should be called Any Permitted fares are, confusingly, called "Plus High Speed". There is no need for that at all (I don't buy a York to Middlesbrough "Plus High Speed" ticket to use a HST via Darlington!) everywhere else uses "Any Permitted". If "Any Permitted" is good enough for everyone else then it's good enough for SET.

Once you go beyond London, you then have the normal +Any Permitted fares, but also have +Not valid on HS1 fares that are a little cheaper (and generally not worth bothering with, depending on the final destination and the saving), but once you go beyond the 'Network Area' (former NSE area) ie. as far as Peterborough, Rugby, Swindon etc, the only routes available are +Any Permitted (plus any other routeings historically available) and there is no cheaper option to avoid HS1.

As for supplements, to clarify what normally happens for a change of route is an excess fare is charged. For some bizarre reason (I suspect it is a time-saving measure for guards, as excesses are a faff) the excess is not calculated and charged according to the usual formula (ie, half the difference in fares) but instead a standard supplement is charged, this means some people pay more than they should pay under the excess system while some people pay less.

Of course this talk of "supplements" and "Plus High Speed" routeings causes confusion as it means for local journeys on SET use terminology that is out of synch with the rest of the UK rail network, every so often someone gets confused when they are used to these fares and wants to go further.

As usual the TOCs (whether this is down to ATOC or SET I do not know) make ticketing as complicated (don't believe their lies over fares being "simple") as possible and confusing people.

I do wonder if the pricing manager at SET had something to do with this. I don't get the impression that he is pro-customer at all.

 

[jon0844]

Well I certainly know for next time. When I used HS1 for the first time, shortly after it opened, I got an extension from BZ6 and paid at St Pancras for the HS1 supplement.

On the train I was told I couldn't travel with an extension as St Pancras to Stratford International didn't count within the Travelcard zones - so I was charged the excess to London Terminals.

Now it seems I was better off paying for a new ticket from Hatfield (in this case to Ebbsfleet) and travelling part of the way with TWO tickets. Stupid really.

 

[Paul Kelly]

The fare from Hatfield is an "any permitted" ticket so is still valid via HS1. (FCC also set a lower "not HS1" fare)

Note that the NOT VALID ON HS1 fares are exactly the same as the *old* ANY PERMITTED fares (which were then set by FCC) before domestic services on HS1 were introduced (in fact, none of these fares have increased at all between NFM02 and NFM08!!). Now, the ANY PERMITTED fares are newly introduced at a higher rate and there is no reason why Southeastern could not hike them up a bit more if it felt like it. I really think it must just be a case of

The TOCs are sometimes so obsessed with ripping us off for a certain route that they perhaps forget to increase the price of the further tickets!

which I think hits the nail on the head!

Another interesting point here is that the fares from Hatfield to Canterbury are exactly the same and between the same pair of clusters in the fares database as the Hertford to Tunbridge Wells fares discussed in another recent thread. In that case though the routeings are very confusing as HS1 is not a permitted route for Hertford to Tunbridge Wells, and the ANY PERMITTED fare would be better off named PLUS HIGH SPEED and the NOT VALID ON HS1 renamed to ANY PERMITTED, which would make the more expensive fare actually meaningful and useable. The fact that the same fares and routeing are used between multiple stations for which some of them HS1 is a permitted route between them and some of them it isn't, is incredibly confusing. It's both Southeastern's and ATOC's fault IMHO - the former for adding the confusing fares and routeing options to the fares database and the latter for allowing the database to be polluted with such a mess.

 

[yorkie]

It's a nationwide problem with the current system, that the Routeing Guide and pricing policies are not perfectly aligned. e.g. a TOC will price a ticket with the assumption that it is only valid a certain route. Of course, this generally benefits the customer, because we can take advantage of it. In a small number of cases some unusable tickets may be sold that are priced as if they have extra validity that they don't really have, however in these cases guards tend to accept them as they are reasonable (e.g. there were tickets routed Any Permitted as opposed to Not Doncaster, that were not valid via Doncaster in the Routeing Guide, but clearly intended for travel via Doncaster).

So I am reluctant to want the system to be properly overhauled as it would make rail travel far too expensive for me, I'd have to look for an alternative mode of transport or abandon journeys that were not very short or planned at least 2 months in advance.