York to Newcastle TOC only tickets - new options

[Starmill]

TPE are the fare setter for Selby to Garfoth any permitted tickets and are therefore unable to offer flexible TPE only tickets for longer than a 12week period...

I'm not quite how this relates to what I said and remarkably enough I know that already but thanks...

 

[Starmill]

York-Newcastle TOC only fares are a mess that has been going on for nearly a decade now. One of TPE/XC introduce them with no notice in order to annoy whoever's running the Intercity East Coast franchise that week. The other 'minor' operator then undercuts by about 10p on a return. They exist for up to a year or so, then are removed. 18 monhts later, they return in some different form.

Precisely, it all seems to run on a cycle. This is not the only place this has happened either!

 

[ainsworth74]

That's because of the unjustifiable rule that the tickets are considered to hold no value when used on the wrong TOC (revenue allocation is not a good excuse; Virgin have to excess "via High Wycombe" fares used on their services via Milton Keynes, for example!) and therefore the TOCs are putting their staff in a position of unnecessary conflict where they are told to charge not just a reasonable excess fare, but for a whole new ticket, which is not acceptable and will lead to customers being understandably unhappy!

Quite! I have a great deal of sympathy for the staff on the ground that are having to deal with this crackpot rule but very little beyond that as it is a problem of the industries own making and well within their powers to fix by allowing excesses as they do to regularise most other situations!