"No tickets available", but only on some booking sites

[125Spotter]

I'm trying to book Exeter St Davids to London Liverpool Street, outbound on 14 May in the afternoon. I've historically booked this journey many times, and I believe it normally gets fulfilled by a ticket from EXD to London Underground Zone 1 (from memory, I don't have any old ones to hand to check).

I enter my search parameters as the exact stations in the from/to and these are now my results over various sites:

1. The forum's site offers a through ticket (as an advance single, routed to LU Zone 1) for the outward journey.
2. GWR and my employer's travel booking portal (Travelperk; tickets indicate they're issued by OpenRail) report being unable to find any available tickets.
3. I don't use Trainline, but as I know it powers many booking systems, I checked it. It's also willing to sell an advance ticket for this journey. It says it's routed to Liv St, but I suspect if I book it, I might get a ticket issued to Zone 1 too.
4. Raileasy also lists tickets as available.

I also travel often from Exeter to Stratford. As expected, I'm still able to book this journey.

I'm surprised to find different ticket availability across different retailers. I would have assumed they look up available fares in a common database, to have a single source of truth, although perhaps certain journeys are being filtered based on retailer policy?

I recall reading on this forum something about sales of tickets to LU Zone 1 no longer being possible in some circumstances, although I forget the exact details and now cannot find the thread. Has some policy changed regarding booking tickets whose destination is in the Crossrail core/Zone 1?

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== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Apr 2025 ==

Edited to add, I think this was what I read before:

Each TOC now needs to manually define these add-ons.

but in that case, why are some retailers willing to sell these tickets and not others? I assume if GWR haven't set this up, nobody would be able to sell the tickets?

 

[yorkie]

I'm trying to book Exeter St Davids to London Liverpool Street, outbound on 14 May in the afternoon. I've historically booked this journey many times, and I believe it normally gets fulfilled by a ticket from EXD to London Underground Zone 1.

I enter my search parameters as the exact stations in the from/to and these are now my results over various sites:

1. The forum's site offers a through ticket (as an advance single, routed to LU Zone 1) for the outward journey.
2. GWR and my employer's travel booking portal (Travelperk; tickets indicate they're issued by OpenRail) report being unable to find any available tickets.
3. I don't use Trainline, but as I know it powers many booking systems, I checked it. It's also willing to sell an advance ticket for this journey. It says it's routed to Liv St, but I suspect if I book it, I might get a ticket issued to Zone 1 too.
4. Raileasy will sell tickets, although the pricing is much higher than for the other sites that will sell them.

I also travel often from Exeter to Stratford. As expected, I'm still able to book this journey.

I'm trying to book Exeter St Davids to London Liverpool Street, outbound on 14 May in the afternoon. I've historically booked this journey many times, and I believe it normally gets fulfilled by a ticket from EXD to London Underground Zone 1 (from memory, I don't have any old ones to hand to check).

I enter my search parameters as the exact stations in the from/to and these are now my results over various sites:

1. The forum's site offers a through ticket (as an advance single, routed to LU Zone 1) for the outward journey.
2. GWR and my employer's travel booking portal (Travelperk; tickets indicate they're issued by OpenRail) report being unable to find any available tickets.
3. I don't use Trainline, but as I know it powers many booking systems, I checked it. It's also willing to sell an advance ticket for this journey. It says it's routed to Liv St, but I suspect if I book it, I might get a ticket issued to Zone 1 too.
4. Raileasy also lists tickets as available.

I also travel often from Exeter to Stratford. As expected, I'm still able to book this journey.

I'm surprised to find different ticket availability across different retailers. I would have assumed they look up available fares in a common database, to have a single source of truth, although perhaps certain journeys are being filtered based on retailer policy?

I recall reading on this forum something about sales of tickets to LU Zone 1 no longer being possible in some circumstances, although I forget the exact details and now cannot find the thread. Has some policy changed regarding booking tickets whose destination is in the Crossrail core/Zone 1?

---

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Apr 2025 ==

Edited to add, I think this was what I read before:

but in that case, why are some retailers willing to sell these tickets and not others? I assume if GWR haven't set this up, nobody would be able to sell the tickets?

I'm surprised to find different ticket availability across different retailers. I would have assumed they look up available fares in a common database, to have a single source of truth, although perhaps certain journeys are being filtered based on retailer policy?

I recall reading on this forum something about sales of tickets to LU Zone 1 no longer being possible in some circumstances, although I forget the exact details and now cannot find the thread. Has some policy changed regarding booking tickets whose destination is in the Crossrail core/Zone 1?

---

Retailers and/or data providers have to do a lot of work for itineraries involving Crossrail, as it's not in the standard data feed.

The forum's site probably can't be beaten in terms of the implementation of Crossrail validity, LU inter-availability, etc. It's not quite perfect, however it can't be made perfect until a re-write of the fares engine takes place, which is a huge piece of work.

If you want to look at other retailers, by all means do so, but they may not give results that are as good as the forum's site.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Apr 2025 ==


Edited to add, I think this was what I read before:

but in that case, why are some retailers willing to sell these tickets and not others? I assume if GWR haven't set this up, nobody would be able to sell the tickets?

They do exist:

https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=EXD&dest=0785&rte=411&tkt=W2S

​ Standard​ SINGLE​	​ ADVANCE [IS] W2S​
Fares Period​	From 1 Apr 25​
From​	EXETER ST DAVIDS​	​	​
To​	ZONE U1* LONDN​	​	​
Route​	AP SLOUGH​

 

[125Spotter]

Retailers and/or data providers have to do a lot of work for itneraries involving Crossrail, as it's not in the standard data feed.

Thanks yorkie, that's good to know. I'm booking for work, where sadly I have to use Travelperk for booking travel, so regrettably for this trip I don't have any choice. I'd otherwise be using exclusively the forum's site for any leisure travel.

I'll either book to Paddington and a separate XR ticket, or just book a through (non-advance) ticket to somewhere else to force it to give me an itinerary, and exercise break of journey rights in order to get around this.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thanks yorkie, that's good to know. I'm booking for work, where sadly I have to use Travelperk for booking travel, so regrettably for this trip I don't have any choice. I'd otherwise be using exclusively the forum's site for any leisure travel.

I'll either book to Paddington and a separate XR ticket, or just book a through (non-advance) ticket to somewhere else to force it to give me an itinerary, and exercise break of journey rights in order to get around this.

Please do note though that Break of Journey is not permitted on Advance fares. There are probably stations you could book to where this would be undetectable, though.

 

[Watershed]

Thanks yorkie, that's good to know. I'm booking for work, where sadly I have to use Travelperk for booking travel, so regrettably for this trip I don't have any choice. I'd otherwise be using exclusively the forum's site for any leisure travel.

I'll either book to Paddington and a separate XR ticket, or just book a through (non-advance) ticket to somewhere else to force it to give me an itinerary, and exercise break of journey rights in order to get around this.

You could try booking to an intermediate station in the 'core'? That may trigger it to offer a ticket to Underground Zone 1.

Retailers work from a common set of feeds* with data for fares, schedules, Routeing Guide rules etc. but that is about as far as the commonality goes. Every retailer has to implement the downstream processes themselves - i.e. generating journeys, filtering out ones that don't follow permitted routes, and identifying valid fares for the journeys that remain.

TfL's fares policy re: the Elizabeth line 'core' isn't backed up by anything in the fares data (or indeed the NRCoT), so it relies on retailers implementing their own bodges.

*Except for Trainline when it comes to fulfilment options but that's another story...

 

[yorkie]

You could try booking to an intermediate station in the 'core'? That may trigger it to offer a ticket to Underground Zone 1.

Yes, that may work; some sites also allow "London Underground Zone 1" (or similar wording) to be chosen.

Another possibility is to book to somewhere like Stratford; as stated above, finishing "short" isn't technically permitted, but Liverpool Street is a recognised interchange for such journeys and the ticket would be accepted at the gateline with no problems.

 

[125Spotter]

Please do note though that Break of Journey is not permitted on Advance fares. There are probably stations you could book to where this would be undetectable, though.

Indeed, thanks.

Liverpool Street is a recognised interchange for such journeys and the ticket would be accepted at the gateline with no problems

Even if I came off an XR train from Paddington at Liverpool Street, so the gateline could plausibly just tell me to go back down to the XR platforms to complete my journey?

 

[Sleepy]

It's a single gateline so you could have come off circle line tube.

 

[kieron]

[*]GWR and my employer's travel booking portal (Travelperk; tickets indicate they're issued by OpenRail) report being unable to find any available tickets.

GWR (or their supplier) may have changed something, as it offered tickets to London Underground Zone 1 for an Exeter-London Liverpool Street journey when I tried it just now. It offered an advance, but it was only slightly cheaper than a super off peak single.