Online purchase to LU destination

[SAPhil]

I'm attempting to buy a single ticket from St Albans City through to Stockwell for use this Friday afternoon. I know what I need - a ticket to LU zones 1 & 2. It doesn't seem straight forward to do this on the GTR booking engine. I happen to know that Earls Court is in the same zone and for some strange reason that is available so I'm ok . There doesn't seem to be an option to simply specify Zone U12 so how is someone who doesn't know the underground as well supposed to manage! Am I missing some clever trick with the booking engine?

 

[MikeWh]

Earls Court from Central London is only zone 1. The destination you need is "ZONE U12* LONDN"

 

[SAPhil]

Earls Court from Central London is only zone 1. The destination you need is "ZONE U12* LONDN"

In fact it doesn't matter what station in Zone 1 I select, the ticket I am offered is:
St Albans City to London Underground and DLR Zones 1-2 which as far as I can see is valid to Stockwell.

My question is really how can I specify a destination of Zone U12 or indeed any other LT zone using the GTR Booking Engine?

 

[swt_passenger]

In fact it doesn't matter what station in Zone 1 I select, the ticket I am offered is:
St Albans City to London Underground and DLR Zones 1-2 which as far as I can see is valid to Stockwell.

My question is really how can I specify a destination of Zone U12 or indeed any other LT zone using the GTR Booking Engine?

It’s quite likely that you can’t, because they haven’t given you that choice of destination. They aren’t the only TOC that makes this difficult or impossible...

 

[bb21]

The add-on for U1 and U12 are the same so I assume that if you are explicitly offered the latter, you should be fine.

Perhaps they were automatically offering the latter given the pointlessness of selling the former.

Edit:

In fact, St Albans - Zone U1 does not exist as a predefined fare but the Zone U12 fare does, so that is a better explanation why the former isn't offered. The U1 fare can only be created manually, hence sold at ticket offices only.

Having dug a bit more, I think what is actually happening here is that the add-on element for the U-zone validity is applied to the NR fare to West Hampstead TLK (Zone 2), as from there the route into central London is interavailable, hence covered by the U-zone element as far as Elephant & Castle in any case. Manually creating a U1 fare would entail the add-on being applied to the NR fare to London Thameslink, therefore more expensive and unnecessary.

 

[SAPhil]

The add-on for U1 and U12 are the same so I assume that if you are explicitly offered the latter, you should be fine.

Perhaps they were automatically offering the latter given the pointlessness of selling the former.

Edit:

In fact, St Albans - Zone U1 does not exist as a predefined fare but the Zone U12 fare does, so that is a better explanation why the former isn't offered. The U1 fare can only be created manually, hence sold at ticket offices only.

Having dug a bit more, I think what is actually happening here is that the add-on element for the U-zone validity is applied to the NR fare to West Hampstead TLK (Zone 2), as from there the route into central London is interavailable, hence covered by the U-zone element as far as Elephant & Castle in any case. Manually creating a U1 fare would entail the add-on being applied to the NR fare to London Thameslink, therefore more expensive and unnecessary.

Thanks for that explanation - sort of makes sense

Still not sure how I could purchase a U123 or a U1234 fare online though! I can get a U12345 by selecting Harrow on the Hill and U123456 by selecting Heathrow but I can't see a fiddle for the other ones! In the end I was so fed up with the GTR booking system that I took my custom elsewhere, GWR seem to offer a more usable system that allows me to get what I want!