This is intertwined with ScotRail's decision to make their Anytime fares the same as their Off Peak fares (note the careful wording here - they haven't abolished Anytime fares).
Here is me trying to buy a return from Eskbank to Bellgrove tomorrow morning. The timing of it would have been peak time. However, for ScotRail to marry their fares, they've removed the restriction codes on Off Peak fares. Sounds fine on paper.
Here is stage 1:
Here is stage 2:
You can see at this point the quoted fare is a whopping £45.50. I cannot see anywhere on this page to change my ticket type. If anybody can see one could they please let me know how to use it?
In the absence of a manual ticket type option, I click continue.
Here is step 3:
This view to me is bizarre, as it suggests the only option I have is to buy 2x Anytime Day Singles.
To add insult to injury, here is what happens on the ScotRail website:
But all of this is garbage isn't it? Because as you can see in the top right on the ScotRail screenshot, there's a button to change the ticket to an Off Peak Day Return for £22, less than half the price.
Click that button and suddenly you get this:
I have a few issues here:
Edit: please ignore my %s. I read £22 as £20 for some reason. The percentages are nearly accurate, I just cba to recalculate them now
Here is me trying to buy a return from Eskbank to Bellgrove tomorrow morning. The timing of it would have been peak time. However, for ScotRail to marry their fares, they've removed the restriction codes on Off Peak fares. Sounds fine on paper.
Here is stage 1:
Here is stage 2:
You can see at this point the quoted fare is a whopping £45.50. I cannot see anywhere on this page to change my ticket type. If anybody can see one could they please let me know how to use it?
In the absence of a manual ticket type option, I click continue.
Here is step 3:
This view to me is bizarre, as it suggests the only option I have is to buy 2x Anytime Day Singles.
To add insult to injury, here is what happens on the ScotRail website:
But all of this is garbage isn't it? Because as you can see in the top right on the ScotRail screenshot, there's a button to change the ticket to an Off Peak Day Return for £22, less than half the price.
Click that button and suddenly you get this:
I have a few issues here:
- Is there a way of manually selecting ticket types on the TfW website? If so, where is it?
- Why does ScotRail's website offering a combination of two tickets >200% of the price of a ticket with effectively the same conditions (in fact, better conditions on the cheaper ticket as it's an open-ended return)?
- Has anyone seen any worse examples of this on ScotRail since, particularly any involving split tickets, because I imagine their booking engine will be absolutely awful at working out the best value fares with split tickets if it can't even get this right?
Edit: please ignore my %s. I read £22 as £20 for some reason. The percentages are nearly accurate, I just cba to recalculate them now
