Which sites to purchase train tickets?

[z444z]

Every time you use the forum site for research, it costs the retailer money

the issue of low look to book ratios.

This is why I always use trainline for hypothetical searches

 

[markymark2000]

On a related note, why is it that third-party retailers can sell train tickets in the UK, anyway? Aren't 20-odd TOC sites enough?

Some 3rd party retailers can be good as it can help to create competition and thus encourage the incumbents to improve their offering. Some sites (both TOC and 3rd party) offer seat maps for picking reservations, some sites offer split tickets, some sites offer rewards for loyalty or offer cashback. Some sites integrate with other services and accounts (see Uber for example. I believe that RealTimeTrains has something coming to integrate it's ticketing area with other parts of it's site).
TOCs can also be slow adopters of new things too, and that is very much seen with E-ticket Plusbus. Now a year since these launched, only a handful of TOCs offer these (LNER, GWR, Hull Trains, Lumo, TFW). Thankfully 3rd party retailer TrainSplit supported it from day 1, so I have used websites with Trainsplit systems a number of times to get such tickets because they simply aren't available through most TOCs.
There's lots of things that 3rd party retailers have brought us and I think we should celebrate some of those things.

That said, as with any market when you open up to 3rd parties too much, you end up with bad actors and the let greed take over. Things such as Trainline charging silly fees and taking advantage of customers because they can. Or sites like Trainpal and their dubious approach to advertising. We are also in a situation with the e-ticket Plusbus because so many TOCs use Trainlines platform, as Trainline refuses to support e-ticket plusbus (or is just dismally slow at implementing it. Not sure which) that in turn holds back the majority of the industry. All because 1 provider with such a large market share seems to be dragging it's heels on making some tickets more available.

There's lots of pros and cons to the competition.

 

[Wallsendmag]

If the interests of passengers entered into the thinking a all on GBR fares and retailing reform, you'd think getting rid of the ridiculous TOC monopolies on online retailing for Smartcard fulfilment would be somewhere on the list of priorities, wouldn't you?

Why would you think it hasn't already been offered?

 

[fandroid]

Why would you think it hasn't already been offered?

We've had this debate elsewhere. Some contributors believe that Smartcards are yesterday's technology, and in some ways, they are. However, I find the sheer convenience of just carrying a small piece of almost indestructible plastic in my shirt pocket and slapping it on the universal reader is actually more practical than either a phone or a paper ticket.

The monopoly problem is real in that to load a GWR Touch card with a ticket I have to buy the ticket on the GWR app. A national database of the cards and universal online purchasing would indeed be a big improvement.

 

[Haywain]

Why would you think it hasn't already been offered?

Well, it hasn't, has it? And if it has it certainly hasn't been well communicated to those who might make use of it like, you know, the public?

 

[Wallsendmag]

There was a RDG TPR Smartcard project but it didn't go anywhere

 

[Adam Williams]

The feedback I've seen second-hand is that RDG's proposals for a retailer HOPS were very expensive for very little gain.

Perhaps it may all change with ITSO on Mobile. I still think ITSO as a spec is fiendishly complex for what it's actually being used to do, and the promise of it all being interoperable really hasn't ever materialised either.

 

[Wallsendmag]

The feedback I've seen second-hand is that RDG's proposals for a retailer HOPS were very expensive for very little gain.

Perhaps it may all change with ITSO on Mobile. I still think ITSO as a spec is fiendishly complex for what it's actually being used to do, and the promise of it all being interoperable really hasn't ever materialised either.

ITSO is very expensive (you wouldn't believe how much LNER had to pay originally when we were only accepting cards and not issuing products on them.) and don't hold your breath with ITSO on Mobile.

 

[Tom]

ITSO is very expensive

I don't think that ITSO itself is fundamentally expensive but there are definitely certain parts of it which are.

The whole ITSO ecosystem suffers somewhat from built-in gatekeeping with some of the security and design principles, given that it is somewhat designed to be all things to all people, which means challengers can really struggle to come to the fore which otherwise would have lowered the costs.

This is fundamentally a problem with the rail industry though. Being fearful of change and challenge is a core characteristic of almost the entire industry - this makes completely sense in safety critical scenarios but less so elsewhere. All that results in is gold-plated inflexible solutions being offered (and tendered) to the industry, rising costs to silly level.

Those costs being at a silly level of course can then be used politically to say "well we did offer it" while ignoring that the costs are prohibitive because of the built in gold plating.

Third parties are constantly suggesting solutions to the industry that fundamentally benefit customers but the industry has an intrinsic "not made here" problem - if we didn't come up with it or do it ourselves then you're already at a disadvantage. There are things I've seen over the years that are fundamentally good ideas but because it costs up-front money, even if it saves money in the long run, the short termism of this industry means it's not going to happen. And we wouldn't end up with the look to book nonsense that @yorkie mentioned in post #26.

 

[OscarH]

ITSO is very expensive (you wouldn't believe how much LNER had to pay originally when we were only accepting cards and not issuing products on them.) and don't hold your breath with ITSO on Mobile.

To be honest, I, and I suspect a lot of others would agree, don't really care about ITSO (although it's dumb ITSO on mobile wasn't done years ago). The biggest concern is all the recent shouting about ITSO (and calling it barcodes 2) is going to be used as an excuse for not making progress with sorting the remaining barcode ticketing acceptance issues

 

[styles]

This is why I always use trainline for hypothetical searches

Should make a browser extension so any non-Trainline search also opens the same search but in the background on the Trainline website. You know, for research

I find their split ticket algorithm to be quite poor in reality.

 

[z444z]

Should make a browser extension so any non-Trainline search also opens the same search but in the background on the Trainline website

Or 100 tabs that auto close after making the search….

 

[settlelad]

I read this thread with interest, and have learnt a lot, and thank the OP for raising the question, the forum owner (who makes this forum available where people can air such questions/views) and the contributors. I am a relative newbie, and would like to support the forum (especially if by using the forum's ticketing site for purchasing, that allows earning a few pennies for the site), and conversely not adding costs to the forum's ticketing site by using it for search then not necessarily/consequently buying through the forum's ticketing site, which I might unwittingly do (I hadn't realised that doing a ticket search might incur a cost to the searching site, but now I am wiser, and older).
At the end of the day, I'm looking to get the best information for a ticket at the best price, and like anything else on t'internet, when researching/buying, I usually scout around a handful of regular/favourite sites.

To respond the OP's question

• for basic information on trains and fares, as a starting point, I use https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/
• for buying local/short journeys, where I pretty much know how much I should be paying and there's not much scope for split savings etc, I use Northern Rail (local site/services) (https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/tickets). Northern's online ticketing site is quick and easy. There's also a local ticket office (which has, quite unusually, recently *extended* its opening hours see e.g. https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/25777097.longer-opening-hours-settle-railway-station/) which I will use if I can, in the (perhaps misguided) belief that the more the ticket office is used, the better the chances of it not getting closed permanently
• for buying longer journeys, which are mostly through Leeds towards London involving LNER, I will use the LNER site (https://www.lner.co.uk/tickets/)
• for anything else long-distance which is complex, I tend to gravitate towards https://book.splitticketing.com/. Depending on the results, and the amount & complexity of the split, and the fees (I'm happy to pay for their services, but a cap on the share of the split savings, as mentioned by others, would perhaps be appealing), I may continue with the purchase, or I may drop e.g. two tickets into the basket on Northern's ticketing site (but I now understand that's a little bit unfair to splitticketing.com).
• I will try to buy tickets through the train company I am using, in the belief that if there's a problem or delay, I might get better help or response if it was a direct purchase, and I'm not hardcore enough to split a journey into 5 tickets to save 50p or a couple of quid (depending on the total cost of the journey): life's too short sometimes
• if I'm hunting for a good deal a long time in advance, if there's a site where I can create a deeplink to the journey in question (so that I can bookmark it and go back to it easily), that's a definite advantage
• I have looked at trainline from time to time, but am not a fan.

On the other side of the coin, I run and own a couple of websites (e.g. for local/family history) which I built and pay for and make quite a bit of information available about a particular area for general benefit that wouldn't otherwise be in the public domain which I don't expect to make any money from. However, other than the hosting and the domain costs that I'm happy to pay, I don't incur any ongoing fees but I'm not a business and the website fees are relatively small.

 

[Adam Williams]

for anything else long-distance which is complex, I tend to gravitate towards https://book.splitticketing.com/. Depending on the results, and the amount & complexity of the split, and the fees (I'm happy to pay for their services, but a cap on the share of the split savings, as mentioned by others, would perhaps be appealing), I may continue with the purchase, or I may drop e.g. two tickets into the basket on Northern's ticketing site (but I now understand that's a little bit unfair to splitticketing.com).

For the avoidance of doubt, this service is not provided by the people who do the day-to-day maintenance on the underlying split ticketing and fulfilment system and is merely a "re-brand"+domain name which belongs to someone else and re-sells the same product (at a premium, with additional fees) provided by the forum ticketing site and trainsplit.com itself.

Speaking in a personal capacity: I do not understand why it exists or why anyone would ever want to use it.

 

[settlelad]

For the avoidance of doubt, this service is not provided by the people who do the day-to-day maintenance on the underlying split ticketing and fulfilment system and is merely a "re-brand"+domain name which belongs to someone else and re-sells the same product (at a premium, with additional fees) provided by the forum ticketing site and trainsplit.com itself.

Speaking in a personal capacity: I do not understand why it exists or why anyone would ever want to use it.

Thank you. I learn a little more each day.

 

[redreni]

For the avoidance of doubt, this service is not provided by the people who do the day-to-day maintenance on the underlying split ticketing and fulfilment system and is merely a "re-brand"+domain name which belongs to someone else and re-sells the same product (at a premium, with additional fees) provided by the forum ticketing site and trainsplit.com itself.

Speaking in a personal capacity: I do not understand why it exists or why anyone would ever want to use it.

I guess it's like petrol stations that seem to stay in business despite consistently charging several pence per litre more than the one over the road and not differentiating in terms of the offering (toilets, decent coffee etc). With higher margins, it's presumably worth doing even though most people will just go where it's cheaper, so the market share will never be large.

 

[styles]

For the avoidance of doubt, this service is not provided by the people who do the day-to-day maintenance on the underlying split ticketing and fulfilment system and is merely a "re-brand"+domain name which belongs to someone else and re-sells the same product (at a premium, with additional fees) provided by the forum ticketing site and trainsplit.com itself.

Speaking in a personal capacity: I do not understand why it exists or why anyone would ever want to use it.

Probably ranked quite high on Google for 'split tickets' or something though.

Much like Trainline is the same booking engine used by ScotRail now, the latter of which doesn't charge fees, but can guarantee Trainline comes higher in the search engines!

 

[redreni]

• for buying local/short journeys, where I pretty much know how much I should be paying and there's not much scope for split savings etc, I use Northern Rail (local site/services) (https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/tickets). Northern's online ticketing site is quick and easy. There's also a local ticket office (which has, quite unusually, recently *extended* its opening hours see e.g. https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/25777097.longer-opening-hours-settle-railway-station/) which I will use if I can, in the (perhaps misguided) belief that the more the ticket office is used, the better the chances of it not getting closed permanently

Despite the dismissiveness of many forum members with regard to ticket offices, they continue to exist and there continue to be circumstances where the experts' advice will be to use them (e.g. for attempting to buy a return ticket with a one-way change of route excess).

My observation, nationally, is that ticket offices have been more likely to survive in places where people are good at forming associations and writing letters (articulate middle class people, mainly). Closure decisions haven't been unrelated to demand, but they haven't been a perfect reflection of demand, either. Organised resistance to closure matters, too. The existence of demand helps in that regard, obviously, although the government's - sorry, RDG's - closure plans a few years ago seemed to take little account of demand and wanted to close very busy ticket offices including, for example, Euston.

Evidence that ticket offices are used is, in my view, helpful when campaigning to keep them open, even though a big part of the reason some of us want them to remain open is because of the many other things they do besides selling tickets. Ministers certainly weren't shy about cherry-picking figures that showed some ticket offices were barely used, conveniently ignoring that they were proposing at the same time to also close ticket offices that were very well used. My view is the same as yours - using ticket offices won't guarantee their survival. Not using them makes them easier to close, though.

 

[BazingaTribe]

Aa a data point, I used my GWR app to buy tickets when I commuted every day from Basingstoke to Reading and inertia has set in. That journey is what I normally do 90% of the time so I still use GWR and will be on autopilot for other tickets if I can get them that way. It also used to give me Nectar points and I racked up a lot of points between that site and eBay.

At other times I just use Trainline because of the cashback. As has been said above, I actually earn a decent chunk of change through Top Cashback so that's where I look for any provider first, be they white goods, craft materials, pet supplies and so on.

I tried the forum site but the grid format put me off a bit. I guess that's just something to be overcome too but the GWR app is just 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mode for me.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Aa a data point, I used my GWR app to buy tickets when I commuted every day from Basingstoke to Reading and inertia has set in. That journey is what I normally do 90% of the time so I still use GWR and will be on autopilot for other tickets if I can get them that way. It also used to give me Nectar points and I racked up a lot of points between that site and eBay.

At other times I just use Trainline because of the cashback. As has been said above, I actually earn a decent chunk of change through Top Cashback so that's where I look for any provider first, be they white goods, craft materials, pet supplies and so on.

I tried the forum site but the grid format put me off a bit. I guess that's just something to be overcome too but the GWR app is just 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mode for me.

Aren't GWR replacing their Web and App ?

 

[MrJeeves]

I tried the forum site but the grid format put me off a bit.

The new site doesn't have any grid, and is more similar to other ticketing sites you may be familiar with.

 

[Trainbike46]

Aren't GWR replacing their Web and App ?

I think they are, but I'm still hoping they wait until someone else offers a mixingDeck-style website. So far, no changes appear to have happened yet.

To answer the OP's question: I have used many different ticketing websites through the years. Currently I mainly use the forum's site, especially for any routes where split ticketing might be useful, or if I have to claim the ticket on expenses (their receipts are much clearer than many other ticketing providers, making expense claims easier). If I want a specific ticket type (and the journey doesn't involve Belfast), I go for the GWR MixingDeck website (tickets.gwr.com). I also buy tickets from ticket offices fairly regularly, though those vary massively between stations in my experience.

 

[Tom]

I think they are, but I'm still hoping they wait until someone else offers a mixingDeck-style website. So far, no changes appear to have happened yet.

We added a Mixing Deck-like interface to Realtime Tickets a few months ago, accessible through the detailed button. See attachment. It uses the same provider as the forum site under the hood so the splits presented will be the same, etc.

 

[Trainbike46]

We added a Mixing Deck-like interface to Realtime Tickets a few months ago, accessible through the detailed button. See attachment. It uses the same provider as the forum site under the hood so the splits presented will be the same, etc.

Great to hear that is available now! I knew there were plans to add something like that, I'm glad to see it has gone live before MixingDeck is gone. Now I know what to use for my future purchases where I used MixingDeck before.

 

[BazingaTribe]

Aren't GWR replacing their Web and App ?

I haven't seen any recent difference in the front end or the app engine. There are often tweaks, but no substantial revision.

I'm not often in the market for a lot of different ticket permutations but this sounds interesting. Certainly our corporate site moved to offering split tickets, although again on the main route I used that meant I had to use a stopping service rather than the fast service, which actually had a negative impact on me getting into London (and hence to my swanky company paid for hotel) quicker. So horses for courses, I suppose.

 

[MrJeeves]

I haven't seen any recent difference in the front end or the app engine.

That's because it hasn't been replaced yet, but it will be.

 

[philthetube]

I as a non techie I wonder if there is a way to restrict searches from non paying customers, or to charge for the service after a certain number of searches which have not resulted in purchases?

I admit that I do quite a few searches myself but very rarely buy a ticket, this is because as a priv holder I cannot use my pass online, however, on occasions, see a good deal in first class which brings the price to an acceptable level and I will then use the site.

I would have no issues with making a small payment for the use of the service

 

[pokemonsuper9]

or to charge for the service after a certain number of searches which have not resulted in purchases?

If that was implemented I would just use the forum site, then trainsplit, raileasy, split ticketing and any other rebrands until I find what I want