How can the train companies get away with this?

[flanajb]

After commuting into London for nearly 8 years I have just found out that if I was to buy a split train ticket a day return ticket would be £19.50 cheaper than if I purchased the standard return ticket.

Day peak return : Salisbury -> London Waterloo == £71.80

Day peak return but with a Salisbury -> Basingstoke and a Basingstoke -> London Waterloo == £51.10

How can these robbing *******s get away with this. When I think how much I have been fleeced by these buggers over the years even though I have always asked them whether there is a cheaper option it makes my blood boil.

Given that these companies have a monopoly they should be forced to sign to a strict code of conduct which stops them from such practices.

 

[No skills]

Have I read this post correctly? you are spending £359 pw going back and forth to work?

 

[Harbo]

There's an App called Tickety Split which works it out for you.

Rod

 

[AndyT]

The answer is that they are not organised to provide a public service, but to make profit. I sympathise, but your experience is proof that their methods work!
If you build an absurdly over-complicated pricing structure, you can sell your service at a high default price to impatient or ill-informed or trusting people, but still sell something (for a bit less) to those willing to spend hours researching and calculating. The same approach makes buying flights, hotels, insurance, mobile phones and internet access a similarly horrible experience.

Do other countries, with state-operated railways, still have a simple rate per mile for tickets?

 

[flanajb]

Have I read this post correctly? you are spending £359 pw going back and forth to work?

I buy monthly season tickets at the cheap rate of £520 / month :-O

I have had to buy a peak day return though on a number of ocassions though

 

[flanajb]

The answer is that they are not organised to provide a public service, but to make profit. I sympathise, but your experience is proof that their methods work!

No this just proves that if a company has a monopoly they can do as they choose. The failure is with the regulators not monitoring the rail operators practices.

 

[doctor Bob]

The answer is that they are not organised to provide a public service, but to make profit. I sympathise, but your experience is proof that their methods work!

No this just proves that if a company has a monopoly they can do as they choose. The failure is with the regulators not monitoring the rail operators practices.

surely though you were not bothered enough to look for a cheaper alternative. A few hours work would have saved you 1000's. The argument works both ways I would have thought.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

When you really get caned is when you need tickets at short notice - I paid £375 for one adult and one child , 2nd class return Cornwall to heathrow, and had to stand nearly all the way back as we couldn't reserve seats - that did the peripheral neuropathy in my feet a world of good. And the powers that be wonder why we prefer cars.

 

[Harbo]

I

 

[flanajb]

The answer is that they are not organised to provide a public service, but to make profit. I sympathise, but your experience is proof that their methods work!

No this just proves that if a company has a monopoly they can do as they choose. The failure is with the regulators not monitoring the rail operators practices.

surely though you were not bothered enough to look for a cheaper alternative. A few hours work would have saved you 1000's. The argument works both ways I would have thought.

Not bothered enough is a little strong. Try naive in thinking that I would not be getting ripped off

 

[AndyT]

Flanajb I'm sure you're not alone! At least now a few more people will have read this and learned a bit more.
I've not checked but I'm pretty sure that regulators can only influence a few categories of ticket prices, not pricing as a whole. I would conclude that regulators were necessary to make most people think that there was still some sort of public service remit, while really allowing maximum income for the train operators.

 

[mailee]

HOLY SH*T! I am just glad I don't use trains, I never realised just how expensive they were! :shock:

 

[flanajb]

I would conclude that regulators were necessary to make most people think that there was still some sort of public service remit, while really allowing maximum income for the train operators.

I agree totally here. You cannot allow what is effectively a monopoly to run their business as they choose without intervention from regulators. Imagine if in a particular area you only had a single supermarket to buy your groceries and there was no competition. I suspect your grocery bill would rise considerably.

People would soon be complaining about that, but for some reason train users are not granted the same protection.

Yes, the numbers are shocking, but if you have to travel right into central London to work your options of how you get there are a little limited. It would be nice to be able to pick and choose which train operator I use for my journey, but that is not an option

 

[Louise-Paisley]

I have to travel down to Derby later this year, I can hire a car for the weekend and put the fuel in it for slightly more than the cost of a return rail ticket. Of course if I go by train I then need taxis or other public transport to get to hotel, hotel to place I am going and back three times and return taxi to station..

So car rental it will be I guess.

 

[bexupnorth]

I commute from Northallerton to Leeds most days. Absolute cheapest I can do it without having to buy tickets months in advance is by season ticket at a cost of £17.50/day. Equivalent fuel cost for the car I would need anyway is a little over £15, reducing to about £11 when I get an oil burner in the near future. Then there'll be days when I don't need to travel so the cost of the train ticket per journey goes up. Oh yeah, it's also a good half an hour quicker by car. I also get to sit down all the way and not share the cabin with some drunken oaf listening to tunes I've chosen rather than some secondhand rubbish.

My only other first hand experience of public transport is in Holland, Italy and France. All are significantly cheaper, cleaner and have more space...

I'd really like to travel by train, but it's just not a sensible option. (hammer)

Ade.

 

[marcros]

I think that is reasonably typical of the north Ade where you just cant make it to pay using public transport. In London, parking is a problem and is expensive, there are congestion charges and traffic issues. But there are good links to get to stations- tubes, buses etc. Where there is not a huge distance, walking is an option to get to the tube or station.

In most of the northern cities, parking is not a huge issue. Work car parks are common, except for the right in the city centres, and there is often a significant distance between A and B. To get to work on the bus, it is actually 2 buses, including a walk between the bus station and where to catch the next one and a 15 minute walk the far end. Between those busses, at best there is a 20 minute wait, so the journey is about an hour door to door. I am only travelling about 8 miles across Leeds.

If I could get rid of my car then it might be different, but I still need to insure it and tax it for the year even if it sits outside the house whilst I use a bus.

 

[Dibs-h]

I work with a chap who's wife got a job in Warrington - which meant moving from Bradford to somewhere 1/2 way between the 2. So they moved to somewhere in Manchester. As luck would have it, there is someone at the same company in Warrington that lives 5 mins away from their flat, so his wife gets a lift for a petrol contribution, I dare say.

My colleague? Now that is a bus down to the centre of Manchester, train to Bradford, & bus to the office (7-8 mile bus journey) , or a mile away & then a walk of a mile or so to the office. He's gone from leaving home at 8.15 and being in at work before 9am, to leaving home at 6.30am.

If I had to get up at 6am or earlier for the foreseeable future - feel like prison. :roll:

Dibs

 

[JakeS]

I'd really like to travel by train, but it's just not a sensible option.

Same for me - the only place in this country I ever feel happy about the price I've paid taking a train somewhere is the London Underground. Not to mention that something like a third of the time I take a train anywhere, they cancel it and run a coach instead which takes five times as long!

Travelling from my partner's hometown of Brescia in northern Italy, on the other hand, we can get to Verona for something ridiculous like 8€ on the day, not much more to Milano. The same money wouldn't get us to the next stop along the line in the UK!

 

[marcros]

I'd really like to travel by train, but it's just not a sensible option.

The same money wouldn't get us to the next stop along the line in the UK!

and the worst bit of it then would be that you were stuck in Newark.

 

[Harbo]

Fares are heavily subsidised in Italy - the Govs policy here is to gradually reduce its subsidy it pays to our stupid Franchise system!
For a couple of years I used to commute to London (£44/day)
and you couldn't always get a seat?
Packed like sardines and then again on the tube!

Glad I'm retired

Rod