bank holiday train fares, am i being unreasonable?

skipsmum

We took the family to the Natural History Museum yesterday. I had a leaflet about group saver tickets for trains, looked it up on the South Eastern trains site, and for 5 adults and 3 kids came to £40 for groupsaver tickets, or £40ish + £26 for a family railcard. You couldn't buy them online, only at the station.

Got to the station (a main one), and the ticket office was closed. The machine didn't work properly and I could only get individual tickets which came to £70. They still didnt include the travelcard for the tube which I had to buy in London and cost nearly £40.

So is it reasonable to write to Network Southeast and complain and ask for a partial refund? I feel somewhat cheated, as we only thought of going because we had a leaflet put through our door on groupsavers!
Or am I just a moany old cow this week?

fwor

It doesn't seem unreasonable to complain when the only reason why you've had to pay £40 or so extra is because Network Southeast could not find anyone to man the ticket office.

However, I wouldn't hold out much hope of them treating you reasonably.

I recently found a great example of just how far the rail companies will go to enhance profits: I wanted to travel off-peak to a nearby station and checked carefully on the prices online. Peak (Anytime) day return fare: £24.00. Off-Peak day return fare: £24.90.

Yes, the Off-peak fare really is more expensive. Why? Because only the Peak fare is regulated - they keep putting up the price of everything else until the "cheap" fare is the most expensive. Says it all about the state of the railways in this country...

olly300

skipsmum wrote: »

We took the family to the Natural History Museum yesterday. I had a leaflet about group saver tickets for trains, looked it up on the South Eastern trains site, and for 5 adults and 3 kids came to £40 for groupsaver tickets, or £40ish + £26 for a family railcard. You couldn't buy them online, only at the station.

Got to the station (a main one), and the ticket office was closed. The machine didn't work properly and I could only get individual tickets which came to £70. They still didnt include the travelcard for the tube which I had to buy in London and cost nearly £40.

So is it reasonable to write to Network Southeast and complain and ask for a partial refund? I feel somewhat cheated, as we only thought of going because we had a leaflet put through our door on groupsavers!
Or am I just a moany old cow this week?

They will turn round and tell you:
1. You should have checked the ticket office opening times
2. You should have then brought your tickets in advance

You are better of complaining to them and then writing to the local newspaper.

robt_2

fwor wrote: »

It doesn't seem unreasonable to complain when the only reason why you've had to pay £40 or so extra is because Network Southeast could not find anyone to man the ticket office.

However, I wouldn't hold out much hope of them treating you reasonably.

I recently found a great example of just how far the rail companies will go to enhance profits: I wanted to travel off-peak to a nearby station and checked carefully on the prices online. Peak (Anytime) day return fare: £24.00. Off-Peak day return fare: £24.90.

Yes, the Off-peak fare really is more expensive. Why? Because only the Peak fare is regulated - they keep putting up the price of everything else until the "cheap" fare is the most expensive. Says it all about the state of the railways in this country...

What stations is that between out of interest?

fwor

robt wrote: »

What stations is that between out of interest?

Not the stations that I was planning to use, but a similar nearby example is Lingfield to Arundel, returning off-peak the same day.

Both thetrainline and nationalrail show the same thing - Anytime £24.00, Off-peak £24.80.

It's not actually a recent thing - when I originally noticed it, the same fare was about £17.00. IIRC that was less than 2 years ago - a demonstration of how much the rail companies have ramped up the fares during that time...