Stansted Express peculiarities

[tannedfrog]

- The Stansted Express website is now offering tickets that they call Advance but which allow travel on any train on the day specified. This could potentially cause confusion for any passenger subsequently travelling with other TOCs!

- If you collect any Stansted Express ticket from a machine you must not collect it before the date of travel.

- If you want a Railcard discount you must buy your ticket from a Stansted Express ticket office.

 

[Hadders]

Having had a look at their website it seems to a discount on a 'normal' ticket if you purchase 7 days or more ahead, via their website with the ticket issued an an e-ticket ot m-ticket.

It's not really an Advance ticket so they should not market it as one.

 

[LexyBoy]

Is it valid only on Stansted Express services? *ducks*

Agree it's silly nomenclature- EC manage to have an advance purchase discount on walk-on fares without changing the name.

 

[dcsprior]

Fully agree that using "advance" to mean something different to every other rail company is a bad idea.

However I reckon that when someone who doesn't regularly travel by train hears "advance", what they imagine is something like what Stanstead Express are selling, so the normal use of "advance" isn't great. Perhaps they're expecting many of the people buying the ticket to not be regular rail travellers (or at least people who rarely venture beyond the TFL zones, so don't understand advance tickets) and so feel that making it more flexible than a normal advance will save them grief in the long run... of course it will only add to confusion in the long run but the customer will be on another company's train when that happens.