TrainChecker doomed before it exists?

zakwilcox

If the MSE TrainChecker effort ever comes to fruition (and it sounds like a difficult task, so I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't), and really saves people money like it promises to, I'd imagine that:
- it'll be immensely popular (ready for the traffic?)
- train companies will notice the trend
- they'll do one of:
a) keep the system as it is and raise the cheaper fares
b) make the whole (very obtuse) system less complicated, to stamp the problem out, rounding everything up
c) assuming their Terms of Service even allow TrainChecker to exist right now - they'll change those terms and disallow such usage

Is this an overly pessimistic prediction?

highguyuk

Just thought I'd say :hello: and welcome to the site.

However, your first post is not one I would expect from a newcomer?

Astaroth

Not really a question though is it? If you look at the flight checker it states...

MSE wrote:

Unfortunately the one major player missing is Easyjet, no matter how much we try to persuade it, simply and sadly it won’t agree

They are clearly doing this in a legitimate method rather than unauthorised screenscraping and so I wouldnt have thought they were going to be doing the train version in any underhanded way... so if it goes ahead the rail companies would be allowing it and fully realise the outcome.... unfortunately I have no idea how ticket sales for trains work (given you can buy tickets for travelling with any rail company from any rail company - and of cause on some routes there is more than one operator so even if you buy from Virgin for a route that Virgin operates there is nothing to stop you travelling on a GNER train)

zakwilcox

I would read that quote by MSE Martin as meaning "we tried to screenscrape it but the site is too clever for us", but then I'm reading it out of context.

AIUI there are two sources for the fares. One is a horribly complicated (and very thick) book full of symbols, codes and secret runes that explains how the whole fare system works, and the other is the online one (Virgin, TheTrainLine etc. are all just frontends to the same system).

Dunno how you get your hands on the book, but it wouldn't be feasible to type all that crap in. The nationalrail.co.uk system T&Cs say:

This Web Site is for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, products or services obtained from this Web Site.

I'd call TrainChecker a copy, a distribution, a derivative work, a reproduction, a display, a publication, a transfer...

Astaroth

Even if you get the owners permission to setup a price comparison/ aggregator website screenscraping is very often the easiest way to do it. It doesnt require the selling company to do anything (other than possibly reducing security to allow the IPs of the new site to have enough hits) where as setting up a proper webservice/ XML method will probably take much more development work from the selling company which would be particularly true if they hadnt considered this as an option and so dont have any webservices setup.

The T&Cs apply to a general visitor... you can negotiate contracts which will supercede these.... if you look at most insurance companies websites they will have similar T&Cs about the use of their sites but they allow the likes of confused.com and insurancesupermarket to scrape their sites (and give them comission for every sale they generate)

MSE_Martin

An interesting debate. The Trainchecker certainly isn't easy - and nor is it going to be cheap - we have to buy the data in - and its certainly going to be very expensive (depending what we use £30,000 to £100,000 a year), however I think I can manage it (hopefully it will increase traffic to the site tremendously, which will offset the cost)

Yet there are other issues, such as server power to deal with the data. Yet this is a serious development project and we have the technology to work in a non-live setting. Now the question is making it live, work and run

Martin