Southampton - London route validity

[setdown]

I'm currently in an email thread with Southern railway about ticket validity between Southampton and London via Brighton.

I can get journey planners to show the Any Permitted route fare whilst adding a via-point of Brighton, and if I'm reading this website correctly, this indicates that it's valid as well? https://vaildata.uk/routeing?orp=G26&drp=G01&map=CW+LB

Southern are claiming that the Any Permitted ticket is not valid via Brighton (but is valid via Angmering). Who is correct here?

Thanks!

 

[MrJeeves]

Southern are claiming that the Any Permitted ticket is not valid via Brighton (but is valid via Angmering). Who is correct here?

How would you get from Angmering to London? Are they trying to say it's valid via Hove, but not Brighton? If so, that's absurd.

If not, then are they implying you'd go Southampton to Angmering, then back to Ford/Barnham, then up towards Horsham?

In any case, Southampton to London, route Any Permitted, is valid via:

• Southampton - Brighton - London
• Southampton - Brighton - Lewes - London
• Southampton - Hove - Preston Park - London
• Southampton - Hove - Preston Park - Brighton - Lewes - London
• Southampton - Barnham/Ford - Horsham - Three Bridges - London
  • But not Horsham - Dorking - London
• Southampton - Havant - Guildford - (Woking/Effingham Junction) - London
• Southampton - Basingstoke - Farnborough Main - London
• Southampton - Baskingstoke - Reading - Slough - Paddington
• Southampton - Baskingstoke - Reading - Ascot - Paddington

There's also some variations to each of these routes, too, but they're not important enough to mention explicitly.

You can verify each of these with a journey planner, including Southern's own site. The easiest way to evidence how silly they're being is probably a screenshot of their own site selling the ticket for a journey via Brighton.

 

[JB_B]

I'm currently in an email thread with Southern railway about ticket validity between Southampton and London via Brighton.

I can get journey planners to show the Any Permitted route fare whilst adding a via-point of Brighton, and if I'm reading this website correctly, this indicates that it's valid as well? https://vaildata.uk/routeing?orp=G26&drp=G01&map=CW+LB

Southern are claiming that the Any Permitted ticket is not valid via Brighton (but is valid via Angmering). Who is correct here?

Thanks!

As @MrJeeves says, Southern have got it hopelessly wrong here. It would interesting to see what their 'thinking' on this might be if you're able to share any of their emails (with names redacted.)

 

[Surreytraveller]

Its been the case for donkeys years, even before the Routeing Guide was invented, that tickets valid along the coast to London are valid via Brighton, Hove and Lewes, and tickets to Brighton are valid via Lewes or Hove.
Southern don't really train their staff, and have a tendency to just make things up

 

[setdown]

As @MrJeeves says, Southern have got it hopelessly wrong here. It would interesting to see what their 'thinking' on this might be if you're able to share any of their emails (with names redacted.)

Here's the email they sent, if you're interested:

"I'm sorry to learn your weekly season ticket from Southampton Central and London Terminals won't work at certain Southern Rail stations when it should and you'd like the gates updating from our side.

If your trying to use this season ticket at Brighton, because Southampton Central to London via Brighton isn't a recognised route of travel, your season ticket won't be valid to/from this station and we won't be able to update the ticket barrier at this station to accept this ticket.

However, both Chichester & Angmering should accept this station on route between Southampton and London, for which I apologise wasn't the case. As such, please respond the next time this happens with your key smartcard number, date and time you travel and the error message/code you receive when trying to enter/exit these stations and we can look into this further for you.

Once again, thank you for getting in touch and apologies for the inconvenience caused."

 

[MrJeeves]

If your trying to use this season ticket at Brighton, because Southampton Central to London via Brighton isn't a recognised route of travel, your season ticket won't be valid to/from this station and we won't be able to update the ticket barrier at this station to accept this ticket.

This is very poor.

I've had very good luck persuing an issue identical to this via their Twitter team's DMs. I had issues with a Burgess Hill to Lewes season not working at Brighton or Haywards Heath, but they somehow managed to get that resolved at Brighton within a few days, and Haywards Heath in about 1-2 weeks.

In that case, validity was only permitted through easements, and they were liasing between their Fares and Retail teams to check the validity and get the barrier data amended.

If you continue to encounter issues, that might be another path to go down.