South Bucks to Tottenham Hale

[redreni]

Would be nice if the TVM sold the cheap fare.

Have you tried both the National Rail and the London Underground TVMs at Tottenham Hale?

Not saying the latter will sell that ticket, necessarily, but it wouldn't surprise me either way.

 

[7db]

I tried the TVM at Langley this morning. It sold me an Anytime ticket to LU123 for 6.70.

Which I checked with the kiosk as it was too cheap and got told I would need to change to Underground at Ealing Broadway on that ticket so I then paid an excess fare of 2.55 to get back to 9.25 expected Anytime Day Single.

Missed my train. He told me that they are upgrading the machines to make this more obvious.

I completely missed that for an extra 3.50 I could have taken a 1-6 travelcard with it to get me to Moor Park, which I could have done, but that would have been a mistake as I forgot the offpeak Oyster discounted fare would be 2.40.

I do find this system very complicated!

 

[Hadders]

I do find this system very complicated!

It is complicated!

The thing is, the fare the railway really wants you to pay is the contactless fare between Langley and Tottenham Hale which is £14.00 pean of £9.40 off-peak. To be fair that's nice and simple to pay and understand.

As you know there are ways of making this cheaper but that involves a fair bit of research, understanding how the fares system works, and how you can make it work to your advantage.

Arguably it shouldn't have to be like this but it happens everywhere in life from supermarket discounts to air fares to utility prices to mobile phone contracts. Trust me, if it was simplified the only fares that would be left are those the railway thinks you should pay.

 

[7db]

Have you tried both the National Rail and the London Underground TVMs at Tottenham Hale?

Not saying the latter will sell that ticket, necessarily, but it wouldn't surprise me either way.

Thank-you for the homework assignment.

I arrived this morning in off-peak and tried both sets of machines in Tottenham.
National Rail machines: First result was realising that I while I couldn't change the origin station on start, once I had got the machine to quote for a ticket so I could on the second lap select LU123-LNY. This came up as 9.25 as expected. Great. I have a way to buy tickets without online or kiosk.
The London Underground machine can't change origin, but showed 9.10 as the Gold discounted fare from TOM to LNY, discounted from 13.90.

I can't make this make sense as a fare. Does LU use a different percentage discount to National Rail for the Gold Card? It is too high to be the "restricted to Ealing Common" fare that I accidentally bought this morning. It is not high enough to be the contactless fare (9.40, no Gold discount) or the standard paper ticket (13.90). I'm afraid I chickened out of making the purchase but may try this tomorrow...unless I opt for a cheeky offpeak return.

 

[redreni]

After the last round of fare increases some users posted about LU ticket vending machines still selling tickets at the old prices.

Maybe it's the more expensive TOM>LNY fare, but at the 2023-24 rate? I wouldn't hesitate to buy it. It might not be available very long if it's wrong.

I am a bit surprised a LU ticket machine doesn't sell the U-zone ticket by default - that was why I suggested it. But maybe they only sell national rail tickets from shared LU/NR stations, and can therefore sell from the named station by default?

 

[7db]

It got me home and was 15p cheaper but didn't open any gates!