Rail Season Tickets pricing oddness....

The_Groat_Counter

Yes, you've found the answer - on some routes the return tickets differ in price according to the direction of travel, so a return from the home counties into London will cost more than a journey going the other way - the logic is that trains on these routes will predominantly be used by people commuting into London in the morning and back out in the evening, so the train company offers cheaper return tickets to try and tempt people to travel in the opposite direction on trains that aren't at all busy and have lots of spare capacity (leaving London in the morning, returning to London in the evening) - though this is really aimed at potential leisure passengers rather than daily commuters.

Season tickets cannot be priced 'directionally' though - if they were, then all the commuters into London would just buy the cheaper season ticket 'from London' even though they were actually commuting into the city each day. (There could be some new type of cheaper season ticket invented, which would only allowed travel out of London in the morning and back into London in the evening, but this would be quite a change from the principle that any season ticket can be used at any time for any journey along any part of the route that it covers - however such an offering might well be worth it anyway, as it'd mean you wouldn't need to faff around buying separate tickets for each day you travel.)

Stinkybell

Although my train isn't as busy as the ones in the other direction, that doesn't mean I get a seat every day! Looks like I'll be making friends with the man at the ticket office over the next few weeks....