Remember Your Railcard!

[jon0844]

Buying online triggers a renewal email a few weeks prior to expiry.

Or, you could wait for a renewal reminder from the TOC if you did it at a station perhaps? Take FCC, who sent me a reminder in the second week of January that my annual season was going to expire on the 3rd Jan 2011!

With hindsight, FCC might have wanted to remind me, say, a month in advance - not a fortnight after I've actually renewed it!

I never ask to see Senior railcards, figuring that my boss has such a hard time dealing with complaints about me charging people that if I charged up a pensioner, the resulting bad publicity in the Daily Mail would hasten him to an early grave and I wouldn't want that on my conscience (much).

It's a shame OAPs are supposed to be let off everything because they're, well, old.

I mean all the scum of today will be the OAPs of tomorrow, so how can there be a date where they are suddenly meant to be given special treatment?

HSBC are both a bank and a ROSCO. If I opened an account with HSBC, would I be able to obtain 1/3rd off on purchases of surplus 442s and brand new 390s bought on a finance plan?

Even with the discount, I have a feeling it would still be quite a hefty monthly payment.

 

[Flamingo]

I was told many years ago that a nasty old person was probably a nasty young person. Which is true.

However, society says that they deserve special treatment, and I can do without the ear-ache from my manager, and being told (yet again) I need to be more "flexible".

 

[swt_passenger]

Do the forces now have to buy their railcard ? Before the forces railcard was introduced (free, if I remember correctly) you just showed your ID card and asked for "forces rate". More b****y pen pushers, I suppose !

There were no 'forces rate' tickets available by about 1970. The forces railcard didn't become available straightaway, but in the mid to late 70s IIRC.

I'm not sure if they were ever actually free - there was initially a pretty trivial 'admin charge' for a forces railcard, whether for a serviceman or an entitled spouse or child, but the price has increased gradually over teh years and is currently £15 per year, although no money changes hands, it's deducted from pay.

 

[moonrakerz]

There were no 'forces rate' tickets available by about 1970. The forces railcard didn't become available straightaway, but in the mid to late 70s IIRC.

I'm not sure if they were ever actually free - there was initially a pretty trivial 'admin charge' for a forces railcard, whether for a serviceman or an entitled spouse or child, but the price has increased gradually over teh years and is currently £15 per year, although no money changes hands, it's deducted from pay.

Sorry to disagree there, but I must ! I was in the RN and was serving on a Plymouth based ship (I, of course lived in Southampton !!) 1980 - 1982 and am fairly certain that I was buying "forces rate" tickets, on my ID card, then. The discounts were the same as on "civilian" railcards. The "Forces Railcard" was introduced after this date and was "free". I don't think I ever paid for my railcard up until I left the RN in 1986.
I can also remember in 1985/6 the ludicrous situation where the Heathrow-Woking rail/air coach wouldn't accept an RN rail warrant (as it was a coach) nor would it accept a coach warrant as it had a BR sign on the bus !!!! The Navy had to pay us "car" mileage instead !

(Earlier than these dates, special "port to port" tickets were also available to RN personnel: in 1966/67 I could get a return from Plymouth to Portsmouth for £2 2s {2 guineas}).
Gosh - the milk train from Salisbury to Keyham at about 0300 on a Monday morning ...........hauled by a WC/BB..............memories !

 

[swt_passenger]

Sorry to disagree there, but I must ! I was in the RN and was serving on a Plymouth based ship (I, of course lived in Southampton !!) 1980 - 1982 and am fairly certain that I was buying "forces rate" tickets, on my ID card, then.

I think you are still misremembering, because I joined the RN in Jan 72, and there were no discounts available to me by then with an ID card, (althought the old paybooks, (long gone now of course) did include an out of date instruction that discounts were available with an ID card).

I suspect the forces discount might have been given up around the time the pay rates all changed with the 'military salary' introduction - 1970 was it?

I too was on a Plymouth based ship 1980 - 82, and used my 'free' railcard at that time. There was an admin charge introduced sometime but certainly by the 90s, I really can't remember exactly when it started, but it was trivial at the time, maybe £2. But it was £10 shortly after my son joined in 2000, and as I say £15 now...

If there really were discounts available in the seventies, does anyone know how I get my refund?

 

[Crossover]

Or, you could wait for a renewal reminder from the TOC if you did it at a station perhaps? Take FCC, who sent me a reminder in the second week of January that my annual season was going to expire on the 3rd Jan 2011!

With hindsight, FCC might have wanted to remind me, say, a month in advance - not a fortnight after I've actually renewed it!

If that was post, possibly the weather/Christmas rush delayed it (I've seen Christmas cards delivered a week after Christmas, and 4 weeks after being sent this year)

If it was email - blame computers
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
There was a lad on a train I was travelling on the other week sat next to me who was asked by the guard for his railcard when ticket checks were done. He claimed it was somewhere in his bag, so the guard gave him a chance to find it and said he would check it on his way back down the train.

Lo and behold, after scrabbling in his bag for a short while he told the guard he couldn't find it. After a short discussion the guard gave him the benefit of the doubt but personally, the whole thing sounded very dodgy to me for some reason.

 

[bnm]

That said, HSBC are both a bank and a ROSCO. If I opened an account with HSBC, would I be able to obtain 1/3rd off on purchases of surplus 442s and brand new 390s bought on a finance plan?

HSBC are no longer a ROSCO. They divested themselves of Eversholt Rail Group (formerly HSBC Rail) in November 2010. There are now no UK Banks owning or part owning ROSCOs. Llloyds TSB pulled out of the Porterbrook consortium in October 2010. RBS sold Angel Trains in 2008.