Rail Voucher

[Lddex]

Mods, please move to correct forum if this is in the wrong place.

Hello all, I have received a £20 Rail Voucher from Virgin, but it is not clear on how I can spend it. What I mean is do I have to use it all in one go. As the cost of the rail fare for the routes or services i most use is only £7. So will the ticket office give me rail vouchers as change like they use to do with gift vouchers where they use to round up the total and give you gift vouchers for change (As it says no change will be issued on the back)

i also take it that I can use as a gift voucher in the way of using it with cash payment to pay for a season ticket etc at the ticket office.

Any advice or help on this matter would be greatly received.

 

[yorkie]

As mentioned a few days ago in What can Rail Travel Vouchers (RTV) be spent on?, you can use them for anything (they're a valid payment method) but change is not given.

You could...

• Buy several tickets in one go; or
• Ask them to convert it into smaller denominations.

 

[Lddex]

[*] Ask them to convert it into smaller denominations.
[/LIST]

Thanks Yorkie. I couldn't find any posts when I did a search, must have missed it. Thanks for the link.

So in theory a station may convert it into smaller amounts, but there is nothing to say they have to.

thanks.

 

[transportphoto]

Thanks Yorkie. I couldn't find any posts when I did a search, must have missed it. Thanks for the link.

So in theory a station may convert it into smaller amounts, but there is nothing to say they have to.

thanks.

You'd have to send the voucher back to Virgin and ask them to swap it for you, a ticket office wouldn't be able to do this. Give them a ring before hand to double check they can do it for you!

TP

 

[Merseysider]

Do you ever go on journeys a little farther afield by train? If so, as the voucher is valid for twelve months, you could quite conceivably save it for a rainy day.

 

[Crossover]

As an aside, in hindsight I should have asked ScotRail for a couple of smaller ones when they lumped me with a £34 RTV. I wonder if a few months later they'd be amicable to a request to get it swapped...

 

[Starmill]

I recently managed to use a £35 RTV. I had to buy 6 tickets in one transaction to ge that high. Very satisfying!

 

[causton]

I had a lady who had 4 RTVs which totalled over £200 from one claim!

She then bought a £130 1st Advance and a £200 First Anytime Single with those vouchers, so I can see how she got such a high value of vouchers

Me? I spent £90 of vouchers on a trip to Doncaster, 2 berths to Aberdeen, a return to Leeds, a couple of day rovers and topped up my Oyster!
(PRIV discount, if you wonder how I managed to do it all!)

 

[ScotGG]

Can advance tickets be bought at stations with vouchers? I always thought advances were online only and of course cannot use rail vouchers there but I was wondering if the same advance tickets are on ticket offices systems?

 

[Merseysider]

Can advance tickets be bought at stations with vouchers? I always thought advances were online only and of course cannot use rail vouchers there but I was wondering if the same advance tickets are on ticket offices systems?

Yep, 99% of all advance fares you see online can be picked up at the station for the same price.

 

[ScotGG]

Excellent. Thanks for that.

 

[DeeGee]

Can advance tickets be bought at stations with vouchers? I always thought advances were online only and of course cannot use rail vouchers there but I was wondering if the same advance tickets are on ticket offices systems?

I've bought Advances in stations with RTVs. It was fine. On both occasions it's caused the computer to crash, apparently, and made a huge queue behind me. Probably better to wait for a quieter time rather than doing it at 7:30 on a Monday.

It's easiest if you go online first, find the itinerary you want with the prices from NRE or your preferred booking site, then print that out and take it straight to the station.

 

[fairysdad]

How timely, will save me having to start a new thread!

I'd imagine they are, but thought I'd best check beforehand as I'm quite cash-light at the moment: can RTVs be used to get tickets on the train from the guard? (The back of the voucher says that it can be used 'at any station or rail-appointed Travel Agent' so just want to check for certain!)

 

[bb21]

How timely, will save me having to start a new thread!

I'd imagine they are, but thought I'd best check beforehand as I'm quite cash-light at the moment: can RTVs be used to get tickets on the train from the guard? (The back of the voucher says that it can be used 'at any station or rail-appointed Travel Agent' so just want to check for certain!)

Yes, but some guards can get funny if not familiar with them.

Which TOC will you be using?

 

[Merseysider]

How timely, will save me having to start a new thread!

I'd imagine they are, but thought I'd best check beforehand as I'm quite cash-light at the moment: can RTVs be used to get tickets on the train from the guard? (The back of the voucher says that it can be used 'at any station or rail-appointed Travel Agent' so just want to check for certain!)

Yes, guards can accept it just as they would cash or card. Some prefer not to but as long as you haven't just walked past an open ticket office there shouldn't be any issues.

 

[fairysdad]

Yes, but some guards can get funny if not familiar with them.

Which TOC will you be using?

Will be on FGW, boarding at an unstaffed mostly-request stop. I'd expect they'll be familiar with them - I've seen some guards on that route (the North Devon Line) (and other unstaffed-station routes) deal with some seemingly odd ticket requests with no complaint and a smile I will be using vouchers issued by SWT, but I know they're not TOC-specific.

As I said, I was pretty certain they would be acceptable, just wanted to check for certain!

 

[Crossover]

I recently managed to use a £35 RTV. I had to buy 6 tickets in one transaction to ge that high. Very satisfying!

Indeed - however that presumes one has a stack of tickets to buy in the first place. Getting shut of a £17 one at a station took enough doing, eventually managing to use it in Glasgow on a Roundabout and Daytripper

 

[LowLevel]

I'm a guard and I just rack up a few tickets for different dates for some of our regulars. I've only once refused to do it - that was when someone turned up with 3 vouchers wanting me to do 8 tickets on a full commuter train stopping entirely at unmanned stations into a city. I declined on the grounds it was wrong to deprive half the train of the ability to not queue at the barriers to do an overly complicated request for one person and sent him to the ticket office with a note, and suggested the guard on quieter (for tickets) evening trains would be better placed to oblige.

 

[tsr]

I'm a guard and I just rack up a few tickets for different dates for some of our regulars. I've only once refused to do it - that was when someone turned up with 3 vouchers wanting me to do 8 tickets on a full commuter train stopping entirely at unmanned stations into a city. I declined on the grounds it was wrong to deprive half the train of the ability to not queue at the barriers to do an overly complicated request for one person and sent him to the ticket office with a note, and suggested the guard on quieter (for tickets) evening trains would be better placed to oblige.

You're lucky you can issue tickets for multiple different dates in the future. At least one TOC restricts conductors' Avantix machines to only issuing tickets for the next day or weekend, depending on type. (In fact, I believe this can be bypassed anyway with skipping back and forth through menu options, but I can't remember how.)

 

[headshot119]

You're lucky you can issue tickets for multiple different dates in the future. At least one TOC restricts conductors' Avantix machines to only issuing tickets for the next day or weekend, depending on type. (In fact, I believe this can be bypassed anyway with skipping back and forth through menu options, but I can't remember how.)

That's a bit of a pain for both the staff and the customer isn't it!

For example I used to commute between upto five days a week from Wrexham - Birkenhead for work. As I mostly traveled after 10:00 it was cheaper to buy daily tickets with my railcard rather than a season. To save me waiting at the ticket office in a morning, I'd bulk buy next weeks batch of tickets on my last day of work the week before on the train home from Chester.

 

[dvboy]

If anyone has RTVs that are of too high a value to them to make use of and can't get the TOC to change them, I'll happily take them off your hands for face value. PM me if interested.

 

[DeeGee]

Can I buy a Network Railcard with RTVs?

 

[ainsworth74]

Yes I can't see why not. They can basically be used to buy any rail product. I believe trolleys and and buffets will accept them even (though it might not be a popular move with the staff!).

 

[Be3G]

If anyone has RTVs that are of too high a value to them to make use of and can't get the TOC to change them, I'll happily take them off your hands for face value. PM me if interested.

Whilst I applaud your altruism, this would unfortunately be against the vouchers' terms as they're non-transferable.

 

[Tom B]

Whilst I applaud your altruism, this would unfortunately be against the vouchers' terms as they're non-transferable.

I'm sure I've seen some which have stated clearly "This voucher is transferable, so you may choose to give it to a friend". Are there variations between TOCs?

 

[Be3G]

Interesting. The one from AGA that I used recently definitely said in the bottom-right-hand corner that it wasn't transferable.

 

[Merseysider]

Interesting. The one from AGA that I used recently definitely said in the bottom-right-hand corner that it wasn't transferable.

As did RTVs I received from TPE and ATW.

Whether it's right or wrong is debatable but it's certainly not something the TOCs would be actively policing.

 

[bb21]

I'm sure I've seen some which have stated clearly "This voucher is transferable, so you may choose to give it to a friend". Are there variations between TOCs?

LU refund vouchers are, I believe, but not RTVs.

 

[DeeGee]

I'm sure I've seen some which have stated clearly "This voucher is transferable, so you may choose to give it to a friend". Are there variations between TOCs?

Here's a VWC one.

 

[mbreckers]

Here's a VWC one.

Can confirm that both my VWC ones state the same, these ones are not transferrable