Beware thetrainline tickets if crossing London by tube

altogal

I've recently had v poor experience with thetrainline.com when buying rail tickets for journeys that include a tube journey. On three separate occasions I have booked journeys which require a tube journey to get from say Waterloo to Kings Cross, but when I received my tickets there was no tube ticket included. The national rail tickets will not go through the London Undergound ticket barrriers, and the LU staff refused to let me through becuase I had no valid ticket to travel. I therefore have had to buy additional tube tickets and then try to claim a refund from thetrainline.com. This is despite the fact that thetrainline booking confirmation I received quite celarly showed the tube travel part of the journey. There was no warning on the thetrainline.com site or any indication that additional tickets might be needed. The last time this happened I took the tickets issued by thetrainline to my local station. The tickets were booked for a journey from Kingston in Surrey to Vauxhaul Rail station and then from Vauxhall tube to London Kings Cross tube and Kings Cross to York. When I checked the tickets with my local station they told me that the tickets I had been sent by thetrainline.com were in fact only valid for the route from Kingston to Clapham Junction, from there to Milton Keynes, then from there to Manchester Picadilly and then to York! :mad: My local ticket office have advised me to use thetrainline.com for checking prices, to print off details and then buy tickets from them- advice I will be following in future. Incidentally it is no use trying to explain any of this to thetrainline.com's customer service staff - they are not based in the UK so have no idea of the difference between LU and National Rail tickets in my experience.

Simon11

I always advise passengers to book online train tickets with the TOC that they are travelling!

Alot easier to complain if anything goes wrong and TOC's(Train Operating Companies) sometimes offer cheaper fares on their websites which you won't have much chance of getting elsewhere!

dzug1

The tickets the trainline send you SHOULD work the tube ticket gates. That's not to say they will, but that is the way they should work. You don't get separate tickets

If they don't the gate staff should let you through.

There is a symbol printed on the tickets (sorry, forgotten what it is) that indicates tube validity. If thetrainline have done it right that is

wealdroam

dzug1 wrote: »

There is a symbol printed on the tickets (sorry, forgotten what it is) that indicates tube validity.

Tickets that include cross London travel usually have a Maltese Cross (†) on them.

altogal

The tickets I have had definately don't work and the Tube staff would not let me through unless i bought separate tube tickets. The Tube ticket office staff even took my tickets and put the code through their machines to prove that the tickets weren't valid.

Since my original post trainline have admitted there is a problem and have agreed to process a refund for the tickets so there obviously was a problem. My tickets did have the + sign but the National Rail staff confirmed that they would not work through LU barriers.