London Overground - advance tickets

[ronmanager]

Hi all,

Does anyone know why London Overground do not sell advance tickets? My friend just went to Shepherd's Bush station to get us some train tickets from St Pancras to Leicester, and they said they don't sell advance tickets.

Are they the only TOC that don't/won't sell them?

Ah Shepherds Bush... How we despair at your amateur, knowledge free ticket office staff.

 

[dmncf]

Forget buying advances at Kensington Olympia. Even though they have the means, last time I tried there, they did not have the knowledge to work out how to sell me an Advance starting a different station.

Sadly London Overground's retail training appears to be very inwards looking and they are not very good at selling products relating to the wider National Rail network.

In their defence though, I was at London Overground's Hackney Central Station last week, and the ticket vending machines there sell rover tickets including the All Line Rover, which was a surprise to me.

 

[bicbasher]

In their defence though, I was at London Overground's Hackney Central Station last week, and the ticket vending machines there sell rover tickets including the All Line Rover, which was a surprise to me.

Are LOROL still using the ex AGA S&B TVM's?

 

[redbutton]

None of this surprises me. In their minds, LO as an organisation operate in their own little world where they are like the Tube or DLR, running on private infrastructure. The branding doesn't reflect that they're part of the NR network because in their minds they're not.

Several times, they've made modifications to "their" stations without consulting the other operators that call there. Even safety-critical things like blocking platform-mounted dispatch CCTV cams with their signage (their trains don't need them) or moving/deleting stop car marks for formations they don't run.

I've had many experiences where I've had to argue to be let through their gatelines with my staff pass or buy Priv tickets starting from a different station.

 

[Starmill]

I'm very cynical of this attitudes benefits. All of this overstaffing is good for passengers - but is it the best use of money? Especially given the ridiculously cheap PAYG fares on a lot of LO journeys - they're cheaper than suburban fares would be in Manchester or Yorkshire. A lot of people forget that when going on about how many people use it! TfL have decided they have all this money to spend on their vision of 'better'. Fundamentally I can't say that it is anything but good to spend money on making things better for passengers, and there is no denying it is better, but is their blinkered approach value for money? They recently segmented the AGA suburban fleet and have had to take on more trains to run the same number of services - why? Because smaller fleets are less efficient!