When to buy season ticket - any advice?

Seaxwyn

I need a year's (or 18 month's) season ticket from Redhill to London Terminals, starting 5 January 2010.

Should I buy it now or wait, is the price likely to go up or down by then?

Also, I live just outside the Oyster card zones. Would I be better buying a season ticket to the first station in the zone area and an Oyster card? I would not want to get off the train to swipe in and out en-route.

Thanks for any advice anyone can give.

Hintza

Probably on the 31st December before their annual price rise. Start doing your research now and work out how much daily, weekly, monthly, annual will cost. If say you only work 4 days a week or do funny shifts shorter term staggered tickets might be cheaper.

misscutiepie1984

go to your nearest station they should be able to tell you the price. The prices change 2nd January, the government are in charge of standard class fares and the price which can be charged is linked to the R.P.I which was about (-1.5%) in July so as this was negative you should find the fares are going down. I would check though as there can be some anomolies.

I work in the ticket office for the railway.

Seaxwyn

Thanks! I did ask at my local station and the man said the fare might go up or down. So I'm tempted to gamble on it going down - do you think that's risky?

misscutiepie1984

sounds like he doesn't know how to use his machine to check the new fares lol

misscutiepie1984

you can look on the first great western site for season ticket fares

misscutiepie1984

just had a look on the website and a fare that I know for certain is changing and looked at your journey, yours seems to be staying exactly the same. HTH

Seaxwyn

OK, it's £2192 for 12 months

So should the station staff know what the new fares will be from January 2?

misscutiepie1984

assuming they have the same machine as me they should be able to look it up. My station has the Fujitsu STAR machine, They need to be looking in the season ticket price enquiry option and looking to start the ticket from 2nd Jan onwards.... they probably just don't know what they are looking for.

Mini_Bear

Also even if it did go up a couple percent (£50 ish) you would buy it 5 days later (jan 5th instead of dec 31st) so it would last 5 days longer and would prob cover any fare increase.

AirlieBird

You can look at season ticket prices for different start dates on National Rail website.