Southeastern advances not available on other TOCs’ websites

[James H]

I’m used to some promotional fares only being available on a TOC’s own site. Fair enough, up to a point.

I regularly travel from London to Tonbridge.

I buy most of my rail tickets from GWR or SWR (for the Nectar points).

Because of this, I wasn’t aware that I could have saved a considerable amount over the past three months because Advance tickets are only available from Govia websites.

Given that Advance tickets are generally sold across the board on any TOC’s site, how is this a reasonable state of affairs?

 

[Paul Kelly]

It's not reasonable and is very dubious behaviour by Southeastern to attempt to ban other TOCs and 3rd party retailers from selling these fares, which appear to be permanent fares and so should be available everywhere. You should complain to Southeastern.

 

[Starmill]

Trainline powered sites are selling them:



Althought GWR and other Atos sites are not, as you say - I don't think they ever have? I haven't checked others.

 

[paul1609]

Ive bought them from train split recently.

 

[Joe Paxton]

My understanding is that the Trainline and other sites that do sell them are essentially overlooking an instruction not to sell said tickets, which kinda explains the varied availability.

Not that I can see how that instruction from Southeastern can continue to exist. It's not something any of the other Govia TOCs have attempted.

(Though arguably Megatrain on EMT, and formerly on SWT and VT, is/was a way of achieving a similar outcome, i.e. retail exclusivity.)

 

[Paul Kelly]

My understanding is that the Trainline and other sites that do sell them are essentially overlooking an instruction not to sell said tickets, which kinda explains the varied availability.

Correct. There's a whole big grey area there about the quality of the data provided to retailers and whether it can be trusted to be correct or not, and sometimes retailers have to make judicious choices to "do their own thing" in certain respects. I also think it doesn't help that a lot of TOCs' own websites are generally run by the same 2 or 3 booking engine providers, and I suspect at least some of the TOCs have the attitude that if their fares are being sold correctly on their own site, they don't look very deeply into any potential problems (unless someone complains).

 

[Mojo]

If you are only buying the tickets through GWR for the Nectar points then you could buy from East Midlands Trains via one of the cashback sites which are offering ~1% which is equivalent to what you would get with Nectar but in a perhaps somewhat more usable format. If you pay by debit card then you could also try Expedia which is offering ~3%. Both sites sell SET Advance fares.

 

[James H]

Just to add that SouthEastern advances are now available on the SWR site.