XC Fare Hike - pre-strike days

[59CosG95]

My partner's trying to book a single from Peterborough to Leicester with a railcard; normally an off-peak ticket with that discount is £6.25. However, for Wed the 31st of May and Thurs the 1st of June, it's rocketed up to £17.55. That's a 181% increase!

Is this because all the cheap seats have been taken? Or is this Arriva XC profiteering minimising loss of revenue?

 

[Gaelan]

The £6.25 is an advance fare, so presumably that’s run out and you’re being charged the off-peak single (which can’t sell out) of £17.55.

I’ll defer to others on whether it’s possible for XC to deliberately remove advance availability, but it’s equally likely the tickets have just sold out because of others avoiding the strike days.

If you haven’t, check TrainSplit, as it’s possible only a small segment has sold out and you can get a cheaper fare for the rest of the trip.

 

[Watershed]

The £6.25 fare isn't an Off-Peak fare - it's an Advance. As such, it's entirely down to XC's discretion whether they offer any of these fares. However, any suggestion of profiteering is ill-founded, as (like all the other DfT TOCs) XC don't keep the revenue - they simply pass it on to the DfT.

£17.55 is the cost of the Off-Peak Single, but for only 40p more you can get the Off-Peak Return, the return portion of which is valid for a month. If your partner is making a day trip, buying a combination of tickets is likely to be cheaper, depending on the exact time they're travelling.

As 31 May is an ASLEF strike day, there will be no XC services on any of their routes. As such, whilst you can buy a ticket now, there won't be any trains to use it on and you'd then have to argue with XC about them paying for alternative transport.

There will be services on 1 June, but they may be reduced slightly due to the ASLEF strike the previous day and RMT strike the next day. Either way, XC won't open up Advance availability again until the revised timetable for that date has been published, which tends to happen around a week beforehand.

 

[father_jack]

They've not "hiked" the fares. It's just that XC seem to close all reservations on days either side of strikes so if there aren't reservations there aren't advance tickets.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

They've not "hiked" the fares. It's just that XC seem to close all reservations on days either side of strikes so if there aren't reservations there aren't advance tickets.

Effectively this will have had the effect of "hiking" the fare; interesting also that the OP was of the opinion that the discounted £6.25 fare was an Off Peak, rather than Advance, type ticket. How easy is it, normally, to get this much lower fare?