Weird Train Fares !

[mikey4444]

I bought a day return from Swansea to Bath, for Saturday the 9th today.

The clerk at the station turned out to be an old colleague of mine from BT, which was nice.

The straight return was about £30, but she suggested that if I bought 2 returns....Swansea-Cardiff and Cardiff-Bath, it would only be £20 !

Doesn't make sense to me. I wonder how many other people would have taken the 1st option and wasted £10 ?

[Zacs-Master]

Yep, as I posted on here recently, it cost less to get a return from Selby to York than a single.

[hereIam]

I can't explain weird train fares either. I often go to Edinburgh by train and it is really easy to shop around online and find a cheap fare which can vary by £10 + from other fares - odd !

[mikey4444]

I am guessing that all this is a result of the dogs breakfast that the Tories left us with, after privatisation.

But I am wondering....what if I hadn't known the Clerk ?
Would she still have offered me the cheaper alternative ?

[trt]

It used to be similar with flights mikey, not sure if it still is though.

About 2 years ago, I was going to buy a one way ticket for a friend, who was coming to the UK from Abu Dhabi.
I saved her £115 by buying a return from Etihad airlines direct.

[fiction-factory]

As you attribute the mess to the Tories, mikey, it might be worth pointing out that privatisation was carried out between 1994 and 1997. Labour had opposed it but once they got in power in 1997 and remained there for 13 years they did little to change things (other than the return of the Railtrack part to public ownership in 2001).

I must admit though I don't understand the pricing structures. martin Lewis has mentioned before that it can be a lot cheaper to break a trip up into several smaller journeys. I'm fairly savvy at these things but would much prefer things to be simpler

[fiction-factory]

Similar things happen in supermarkets. Sometimes a 300g jar of coffee can be cheaper than a 150 g one for example

[atalanta]

I just bought two marker pens. I only needed one, but a pack of one was £2.99. A pack of 2 ( same make, colour, etc ) was £1.99. Yes, I have got those the right way round.

[EDDIE51]

Yes the 2 tickets can often work out cheaper, it is quite legal.
Beunochico , often recommends the 2 ticket for 1 journey option in his posts. I suppose he has not noticed this question.

[Buenchico]

>>> Rail staff are obliged to offer the cheapest options as long as you ask for them.

'Fare-splitting' is common practce and there are even websites which try to do it for you, such as this one:
http://www.splitmyfare.co.uk/
However they're not perfect. I've often been able to beat their quotes by doing it manually here:
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/
(and those 'split fare' websites usually seem incapable of breaking a journey into more than two separate sections).

The only thing to watch out for when opting for 'fare-splitting' is that the train you take (if it's a through one) must stop at the station where one ticket's validity ends and another one's starts. e.g. if you found that it was cheaper to get from Swansea to Paddington by paying from Swansea to Newport and then from Newport to Paddington, you'd need to ensure that the Paddington service that you boarded at Swansea actually stopped at Newport.

[zebo]

Flights can also be confusing. I was pricing flights to the USA, flight A was direct to the US from Heathrow, flight B from Manchester was £60 cheaper and involved taking the shuttle down to Heathrow to connect with flight A.

[EDDIE51]

^ I once wanted a return from Dhahran Saudi Arabia to Heathrow.
It was cheaper to get a Dhahran > New York return with a stopover in London. So I bought Dhahran to JFK return and threw away the London > New York > London parts.

[mikey4444]

Thanks everybody. I am happy to save £10, although I am still not entirely sure if I would had been offered this, had I not known the Clerk.

[albaqwerty]

I needed to go from my wee town to Glasgow then to Edinburgh last year.
Lovely ticket lady said the cheapest way was to get a return from wee town to Glasgow then ticket to Edinburgh
One train, no changes and £12.50
Didn't have to ask about cheapest fare etc.
Was very happy with the assistance but very sad at why I was having to do the journey.

[Jackdaw33]

Chico's point about trains stopping at the station where the tickets change validity is not to be underestimated otherwise it can work out an expensive way of trying to save money.