Virgin Trains losing revenue?

[gunn13]

Not sure if this is the bet place for this but feel free to move.

Just got off the sleeper earlier this morning at Glasgow Central and was approached by someone on the platform asking to see my ticket.
She then explained that she and a colleague had been employed by Virgin to check to see how many passengers are using 'Any Permitted' tickets to travel from London on services other than Virgin services. She wasn't interested in mine anyhow as it wasn't an 'Any Permitted' but I got chatting about it. Apparently Virgin feel they are losing revenue somehow and are not being allocated the correct level of money from London-Scotland tickets.
According to her, originally the Virgin guards had been asked to query how customers bought their tickets and why they chose to use that particular journey if holding 'Any Permitted' tickets on their trains. The guards supposedly refused this so Virgin employed these guys to do it at stations.
They were some kind of external organisation with their Network Rail visitor passes for the station.

Does anybody know anything of this?
Or had a similar experience?

 

[Greenback]

Virgin probably have a bee in their bonnet about ORCATS, which isn't going to be 100% accurate as it wasn't designed as an impartial means of allocating revenue correctly, but as an internal accounting tool under BR.

In my view the money spent on this would be better spent on something else. Like protecting revenue in Lancashire and Cheshire!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Some of the any permitted tickets from places served by VT are valid to termini other than Euston; are they checking everything at those places as well? Or at the other VT served stations? If not then this is a totally pointless excercise.

 

[Hadders]

How often are ORCATS allocations updated?

In the past London-Glasgow was quicker from Kings Cross via East Coast, but now it's quicker from Euston via Virgin.

Maybe Virgin feel the ORCATS allocation doesn't reflect that more passengers will now travel from London-Glasgow with them compared to a few years ago.

 

[OwlMan]

How often are ORCATS allocations updated?

In the past London-Glasgow was quicker from Kings Cross via East Coast, but now it's quicker from Euston via Virgin.

Maybe Virgin feel the ORCATS allocation doesn't reflect that more passengers will now travel from London-Glasgow with them compared to a few years ago.

TOCs can object if they think the split is wrong. ATOC then recalculate.

 

[Simon11]

ORCATS are updated with every timetable change, thus May and December.

 

[jumble]

Also they don't care much about revenue from Euston to Manchester

Traveled on Thursday evening From EUS to MAN and back Sunday evening ( with advances on correct train)

Very cursory glance at ticket at EUS on way out and then no further ticket checks of any description on either outward or return