Raileasy Problem

[Harlesden]

Registered address of
Ferries Trains Planes Ltd
who own/operate Raileasy
10 Station Parade
High Street
Wanstead
London
E11 1QF

 

[district]

Thetrainline already provide TVMs outside of railway stations. Some of their business customers have them.

I live near the BBC and there is one in their foyer.

 

[Greenback]

If it was me I would be taken steps to determine the legality of providing a 0906 number as the sole point of contact in this situation. 0906 numbers are used primarily to raise revenue to pay for a service (such as a computer techy giving detailed instructions over the phone). This does not apply in this case.
You have made a purchase and there is a complication with the transaction. No company should be allowed to derive revenue from a customer simply seeking assistance with a recent transaction that has gone awry.

They provide a geographical address to which customers can send complaints. End of, as far as legal requirements go. Of course I agree it isn't good at all from a customer service perspective.

I would never use Raileasy and would never recommend anyone else do so. Stick with RSH (unless they introduce booking fees) and the TOC websites (except XC).

I am not aware of any legislation that makes the use of these number sillegal, but if there is such a law, even if it is quite limited, I would love to hear about it.

 

[dvboy]

The only time I've ever used RailEasy was when BHM refused to sell me a RailSail ticket, and RailEasy was the only site I could get to do it.

Annoyingly, seat61.com promotes RailEasy and links through to it for these tickets (maybe others?) - it appears he gets a referral commission.

 

[Harlesden]

If anyone wants an ordinary 0208 number for the company, please PM me.
Everything is in the name of Ferries Trains Planes Ltd but the web domain www.ferries-trains-planes.co.uk automatically redirects to the familiar Raileasy website

 

[Starmill]

As to the enduring popularity of such sites as Raileasy, could another factor possibly be that non-enthusiasts are rather unlikely to know whose services they will be using and as such steer clear of all TOC websites? I don't think some travellers even note the names or realise that they are different until something goes wrong and they complain! Then there is the misnomer that this is actually nessecary; I haven't yet found a booking I can't make on the Southern site (for obvious reasons) despite my location!

Then there is confusion about who sells the cheapest fares; which is in most cases all of them, some just shout about it more! For the limited number of cases where this isn't the case (like the LM sale, or the TPE 50% off AP with 15-25 railcard) you lose all of these benefits using Raileasy anyway!

I would say, as others have, use RSH, but I don't like their new layout. So get a TopCashback account and use Southern!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

To that I think I would add that they can also offset any slight loss they might occasionally make from selling tickets from the fees they collect when tickets booked online from other TOCs and third parties are picked up from their ticket vending machines or booking offices.

What a confusing mechanism this is!

A few months ago, I bough advances from Manchester Stns to Leeds on the Southern website which were TPE only and collected them from a Northern TVM. Who pays who in THAT situation? I also collected my 6% from TCB.

 

[barrykas]

A few months ago, I bough advances from Manchester Stns to Leeds on the Southern website which were TPE only and collected them from a Northern TVM. Who pays who in THAT situation? I also collected my 6% from TCB.

Southern would get the commission for the sale, TPE get the remainder, and Northern would get a fee for issuing the ticket.

Looking at the Raileasy site, it occurs to me that there is no "National Rail accredited" logo anywhere immediately obvious, unlike Trainline and most WebTIS sites. Though a bit of digging reveals they are accredited.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Southern would get the commission for the sale, TPE get the remainder, and Northern would get a fee for issuing the ticket.

Do you know if the fee for issuing the ticket comes out of Southern's share, or out of TPE's share. Presumably Southern's, as they could also (for example) choose to post the ticket to the passenger, in which case the "ticket delivery" cost would be very obviously being paid by them.

 

[maniacmartin]

I believe that the ToD fee is paid for out of the commission the retailer gets, if they decide to issue the ticket via ToD rather than posting it out

 

[Greenback]

I believe that the ToD fee is paid for out of the commission the retailer gets, if they decide to issue the ticket via ToD rather than posting it out

That is my understanding too.

 

[cjp]

Do you know if the fee for issuing the ticket comes out of Southern's share, or out of TPE's share. Presumably Southern's, as they could also (for example) choose to post the ticket to the passenger, in which case the "ticket delivery" cost would be very obviously being paid by them.

Are all these various fees flat fees or percentage of fare fees?

 

[trevmonk]

Are all these various fees flat fees or percentage of fare fees?

I was told Southern collect a 5% commission for selling other operators tickets, but pay out 6% cashback. I suspect they make a loss on their no-fee refund policy too.

 

[bnm]

I would say, as others have, use RSH, but I don't like their new layout.

You can still use the existing layout.

Clear any cookies relating to RSH and try: http://tickets.redspottedhanky.com/rsh/en/journeyplanning/MixingDeck

 

[Starmill]

You can still use the existing layout.

Clear any cookies relating to RSH and try: http://tickets.redspottedhanky.com/rsh/en/journeyplanning/MixingDeck

You really do learn something new everyday on here! Thanks!

 

[sheff1]

takethetrain.co.uk also manage to get along without additional fees.

Indeed ... and they will sell tickets via some esoteric routings which Webtis/trainline interfaces will not.

Worryingly, however, it would appear their security certificate has now expired.

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

Hi Guys & Totorro,

I'd like to respond to the comments in this thread about why Raileasy uses a premium rate number for its call centre and charges a booking fee but for commercial reasons I cannot divulge actual Raileasy figures. I'd also like to thank the guys who have a deeper awareness of the "market forces" for their posts in this discussion.

So to progress this debate let's pretend that a group of individuals on this forum got together and decided they wanted to start selling tickets under the domain www.railforumretailer.com for instance.

Why bother (I can imagine a lot of people thinking) when TOC web sites (i.e Trainline/ATOS as you all know) are so good? Well someone might say surely there's a market for something more user friendly for online customers who can only too easily buy 2 x advance tickets that are (far) more expensive than a return fare on both those and by definition TOC sites eg London - Edinburgh for a Friday pm/Monday am journey. Don't forget the ORR research last year about 41% of travellers subsequently believe they could have travelled on a cheaper fare. From the guys I've met on this forum there's also a stack of knowledge about how to help customers get the best deal which Raileasy would love to be able to offer its customers.

OK founder members of railforumretailer.com, I hope you don't mind me offering you some pointers for your business plan.

1. You can find the prevailing commission rate on the ATOC site and I'd like to share with you our average transaction value which is around £58 so you can work out what you will earn per booking.

2. Something which I don't think is generally available is that under the terms of your license you will be obliged to spend £1 million per annum on "promotion". This can be split between £650K on marketing and the rest on development.

3. For the purposes of your first year business plan why not have a target of 650,000 transactions or about £38 million worth of ticket sales? That seems a reasonable sized small business for a bunch of entrepreneurs funding everything out of their own pockets to try to build. Of course it's nothing like what TTL sells but you've got to start somewhere!

4. If that seems like a reasonable target, the first thing to note is that £1m (license) stipulated spend is going to cost £1.54p per transaction (i.e £1m divided by 650K). But you're going to have to spend money on advertising to generate awareness for your new site and build the business.

Now I don't want to derail your plans at such an early stage but there are other costs/charges that you need to factor in which unfortunately are levied if you want to retail UK rail but, it should be noted, there are no equivalent costs applied for selling Eurotunnel, Eurostar, ferries or even (boo hiss) flights.

5. These additional costs/charges include:
access to live/test NRS
access to the CTR database and cost of inserting a CTR
cost of inserting a TOD record in Lennon
cost of timetable and fare data/licenses
dedicated data lines for connecting to these back end rail systems
charges for TOD issue
credit card authorisation
debit card authorisation
ATOC account management

6. Now for the bad news I'm afraid. With the cost/charges outlined in 4/5 you are likely to make a loss of about £0.25p per transaction if the customer uses a credit card but a profit of about £0.30p if the customer uses a debit card.

7. Sorry to pile on the bad news but unfortunately the above doesn't include any costs for hosting your site and, to bring this back to the subject of this thread, a call centre or any staff for that matter.

8. "What about the ORR's plans to "open up" access to data?" Certainly every bit helps and no charge for timetable and fare data/licenses would be good but I think they're looking at real time data charges.

8. "But RSH manage perfectly OK someone posted, how do they do it?" Yeah but railforumretailer.com are a bunch of guys who believe you can do things differently/better than TTL/ATOS, not a large supplier to the rail industry who can "offset" costs/losses.

9. "What about Takethetrain?" The good news is they're not really interested in the consumer market, their business/focus is in the TMC/corporate sector and IMO they "give away" rail retailing to keep or attract flight business. I'd just like to say Raileasy, as illustrated by Tripadvisor using our API to include rail in flight searches, tries to get people onto trains instead of flying so there's a planet left for the young guys I've met from this forum and their and our children.

10. But now for some good news my budding retailer buddies, you can have free access to the Raileasy API to build the "new mobile apps and search engines" the Govt hopes will result from opening up access to rail data. This will save you all the costs/charges outlined above, all you have to do is build your site! It'll even save you the £1K per day you'll be charged for accreditation by RSP. Raileasy is accredited and part of the accreditation process for its API enables Raileasy to self accredit API users.

Interested, confused or think these figures are incorrect or just want to discuss this further, please PM me or post, we'll be interested in your comments.

 

[maniacmartin]

Economics aside, this still doesn't explain why Raileasy didn't change the OP's ToD record to allow collection from the ticket office counter or from ToD with any card.

I am not a fan of premium rate customer service numbers, and think it would be more transparent if the booking fees were slightly higher, but customer services had a normal geographic telephone number.

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

Economics aside, this still doesn't explain why Raileasy didn't change the OP's ToD record to allow collection from the ticket office counter or from ToD with any card.

I am not a fan of premium rate customer service numbers, and think it would be more transparent if the booking fees were slightly higher, but customer services had a normal geographic telephone number.

Apologies for not answering that point. The relevant field in the CTR is not "amendable" but I can't think why. We're going to raise it with RSP to see if this can be changed. This would be a ideal solution, when there was a problem we could instantaneously change the requirement for the card to be shown.

Fair point about premium rate numbers but on our confirmation screen/email we do give a 0871 number specifically for customers who have issues collecting their tickets.

Back to economics for a moment, do you think non retailer free call centres are self funding or could some of those costs be being included in ticket prices? If the latter, the traveller ends up paying whether they book online (which is cheaper) or by phone but couldn't it be argued that like VAT the charge for a service should only be paid by those who choose to use it?

 

[bnm]

An admirable defence of your business model Mike@Raileasy, but surely Raileasy went into the market aware of all the charges they would be paying for the data. If the goalposts have moved or the charges are different for the big players then that is a matter for the OFT.

If they haven't then you of course are free to find your 'profit' how you wish. I, as a customer, am 'market forces' and I'll shop around for the best deal. And that is never going to be Raileasy with it's additional fees. I'm also not going to recommend Raileasy to anyone either. Sorry.

Thanks though for sticking your head above the parapet and responding. While we've got your attention perhaps you could address the issue where your site says that Credit Card payments will attract a fee of 4.5% of the ticket price, but on checkout it's actually 4.5% of the transaction including the other fees. And I notice some rounding (always up) of that fee. A test purchase just now with a total of £10.45 attracted a credit card fee of 50p. 4.5% of £10.45 is 47p.

You also say you charge a £1 booking fee, but if the ticket price is £10 or under I note that the booking fee is £2.

So if you have to have fees as part of the business model then they need to be clear and correct. They aren't at the moment. At least the optional insurance (£1) is cheaper on the booking page than advertised elsewhere on the website (£1.25). But that's still another example of conflicting information.

I do like the new website though!

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

An admirable defence of your business model Mike@Raileasy, but surely Raileasy went into the market aware of all the charges they would be paying for the data. If the goalposts have moved or the charges are different for the big players then that is a matter for the OFT.

When we were building our original web site and for a short period after we launched, the commission rate was 71% higher than it is now. As for charges, that is a moot point, can you find a "ratecard" anywhere official?

If they haven't then you of course are free to find your 'profit' how you wish. I, as a customer, am 'market forces' and I'll shop around for the best deal. And that is never going to be Raileasy with it's additional fees. I'm also not going to recommend Raileasy to anyone either. Sorry.

Fair enough. What about encouraging new players into the market though or do you reckon TTL/ATOS are all anyone could wish for?

You're also presumably a rail traveller so where do you think all the costs of web retailing are being charged? If you're not a rail traveller, you're still a taxpayer.

Thanks though for sticking your head above the parapet and responding. While we've got your attention perhaps you could address the issue where your site says that Credit Card payments will attract a fee of 4.5% of the ticket price, but on checkout it's actually 4.5% of the transaction including the other fees. And I notice some rounding (always up) of that fee. A test purchase just now with a total of £10.45 attracted a credit card fee of 50p. 4.5% of £10.45 is 47p.

You also say you charge a £1 booking fee, but if the ticket price is £10 or under I note that the booking fee is £2.

So if you have to have fees as part of the business model then they need to be clear and correct. They aren't at the moment. At least the optional insurance (£1) is cheaper on the booking page than advertised elsewhere on the website (£1.25). But that's still another example of conflicting information.

I do like the new website though!

Thanks for this. The commission on a £10 ticket pays about 50% of the cost of inserting it in the CTR dbase and the Lennon plus issuing cost and not a lot else.

We are addressing all the fees and how they are communicated as part of the OFT's "transparency" initiative which is partly what got me to "stick my head above the parapet". Transparency for one, transparency for all I say

Don't get me started on that review by the OFT though, who on this forum pays more for a Ryanair ticket with all the add on fees than they do for a BA ticket for the same journey?

 

[bnm]

You're also presumably a rail traveller so where do you think all the costs of web retailing are being charged? If you're not a rail traveller, you're still a taxpayer.

Ah, but I pay the same amount of tax regardless of whether I'm a rail traveller or not. I also have little say in how my tax contributions are divvied up, excepting by choosing between overarching policies at election time. I do have a choice though in where I spend my disposable income. And if I'd purchased all my rail tickets through Raileasy last year I reckon I'd be around £200-£300 worse off.

Fair enough. What about encouraging new players into the market though or do you reckon TTL/ATOS are all anyone could wish for?

Atos Origin came into the ticket retailing market as a new player in, I believe, 2006 with GNER, and they seem to have made a success of it, now being responsible for the majority of TOCs booking engines. They of course are a large multinational and had/have contracts in other parts of the rail industry.

I'm perfectly happy with the Atos offering and the TOCs using thetrainline (although not thetrainline itself because of fees). Sometimes there just isn't a place in the market for small independents unless they diversify. I wonder whether Raileasy have considered bidding for TOC contracts?

I'm all for choice, but ultimately my choice for a rail ticket retailer is the one that is cheapest.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Don't get me started on that review by the OFT though, who on this forum pays more for a Ryanair ticket with all the add on fees than they do for a BA ticket for the same journey?

Same origin and destination with different flight times surely? Not same journey. I'm unaware of any BA/Ryanair code-share flights.

 

[paulypaul]

Presumably the retailer would get some sort of recompense for providing this service?

Which begs further questions of how this would work? Would the customer pay a fee, or would it come from the supplier who sold the product in the first place?

If you bought the ticket from Tesco's website, would you only be able to collect from Tesco?

Perhaps you could flesh out your proposals with more details on how it would operate in practice?

I haven't thought the whole buiness model throught yet.

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

I'm perfectly happy with the Atos offering

I'd expect that from a follower of this forum who knows about fares. Our consumer feedback suggests it suits a "power user" but can be "complicated"
and we've always tried to make things as "easy" and simple as possible, particularly the fares. That's why we break them down into "cheapest" and "flexible".

Sometimes there just isn't a place in the market for small independents unless they diversify. I wonder whether Raileasy have considered bidding for TOC contracts?

To diversify is the reason we built the API. Any web developer/company can take that and build their own UI with however they choose to display journeys/fares without worrying about creating all the back end ticketing and fulfilment requirements, thus saving a huge amount of time to get to market.

But to be on a level playing field or better or diversify in terms of fares, there's only really one option.

I'm all for choice, but ultimately my choice for a rail ticket retailer is the one that is cheapest.

Fair enough each to their own. But lack of choice stifles innovation and ends up distorting markets. Rather like the monopoly TTL had before ATOS and we came along at the end of 2007. Do you remember the TTL IBE in those days, you had to provide your mail address before you could get any fares

 

[Goatboy]

I empathise with your situation Mike and beleive the fees you are charged by ATOC et al to operate are punative, anti-competitive and look specifically designed to stifle competition and keep innovators such as yourself out of the market.

But presumably its never been an easy market - a business model which relies on charging for something which is widely available and widely advertised elsewhere for free (ie, TOC sites) seems a little flawed and from a customer perspective it's difficult to see why they might want to use you - and pay a credit card fee and £1 a minute if something goes wrong - when they could use Southern and pay zero fee, next to nothing to phone them and potentially earn 6% Cashback via Quidco.

The system sucks but sadly it makes it difficult to see the benefit in purchasing from anyone other than a TOC.

How does RSH manage? They don't seem to charge a fee and seem to give out £10 vouchers like sweeties. That cannot be sustainable, surely?

 

[bb21]

How does RSH manage? They don't seem to charge a fee and seem to give out £10 vouchers like sweeties. That cannot be sustainable, surely?

Don't forget that ATOS charge the TOCs for using WebTIS therefore their costs can be drastically reduced compared to other retailers.

 

[Goatboy]

Ah, I didn't realise RSH was ATOS

 

[yorkie]

How does RSH manage? They don't seem to charge a fee and seem to give out £10 vouchers like sweeties. That cannot be sustainable, surely?

As I said before, the market isn't a level playing field. It's a shame you can't make it to some of our forum meals, as this matter crops up in more detail than I could say on here sometimes!

Oh, and another reason to support smaller retailers: Sometimes they sell tickets that should be available but aren't on Atos Avantix WebTIS sites.

This is because WebTIS appears to have secret negative easement-style rules that are not in the public domain. Thetrainline isn't quite as bad but they're in cahoots with certain 'powers' to some extent too, so bookings over permitted routes get rejected. Hmm!

For example the ticket some of us get to obtain a reasonable price to Manchester is only available with reservations from one of the independent booking engine providers, despite being a permitted route.

 

[bnm]

There's a ticket I regularly use that I can only get through WebTIS, again with a seat reservation if required. Can't even get it at a station.

 

[LexyBoy]

The last time I booked a ticket online was at least a year ago, and I found it a very stressful experience. I regularly use websites to check prices and availability though.

 

[sheff1]

Fair enough. What about encouraging new players into the market though ....

Take the Train was flagged earlier as not imposing all these additional fees. The security certificate issue I mentioned appears to be sorted now as well.

You think they 'give away' rail retailing but, even if that is the case, it is of no concern to me as a rail ticket buyer.