Advance Train Tickets - Is 12 Weeks Ahead The Best Time To Book - Help?

EdTheDuck

I am a little confused and would appreciate it if anyone can advise.....

I wanted to book train travel (Burton to Exeter with CrossCountry) and set up a ticket alert so that when advance fares became available I could "snap up" the advance fare straight away. The alert came through 12 weeks prior to travel on Saturday (19th March) and I booked advance fares at £31 per person.
I happened to be looking once again yesterday, the exact same route, times, trains etc are now showing as £19 per person. Obviously I can't cancel and rebook as they are advance tickets etc, my understanding was that it was best to book as early as possible, is this not the case? Do advance fares get cheaper as time goes on? Please help as I have to book the return in a few weeks....

Thankyou

Ed

wealdroam

This MSE article may help.

Briefly, you will not find the cheap advance singles before 12 weeks before booking.
It may be later, much later, than twelve weeks... particularly at weekends.

dzug1

Generally booking as soon as the advance fares are available is the cheapest. However, release of tickets may not be an instantaneous event - they take a while to percolate through the system though several days sounds excessive. I would have thought a few hours - and if you'd had an e-mail to say they were there I would have thought they were already there - not about to be there.

I've seen reports (unconfirmed) that some train companies will release a further batch of cheap tickets if sales are going badly, but it's certainly not normal and not something to rely on. And two days isn't long enough for this anyway.

A few speculations:

it was a case of oops, we forgot to release all the tickets intended

when you booked on Saturday the tickets had been 'sold' - ie put on hold for a customer. They didn't proceed with the purchase, and the tickets got released back into the system.

just a glitch - they do happen

moonrakerz

Moral of the story:

When you have bought something - DON'T keep looking at the prices afterwards !

EdTheDuck

Thankyou for the replies.

Ed

yorkie2

Booking horizons are here:

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/booking_horizons.html

It is very rare for the price to go down - once Advance fares are released. It's a risk you take, but usually a very small one.

The cheapest quota of tickets for XC & Connections is £19.50 for this flow, and that goes up to £31.00.

For XC only tickets, the price can be as low as £14.00 (in theory!)

There is a potential problem when connecting TOCs do not release their quotas, that can prevent you booking the whole journey at a good price despite the fact your ticket is for travel with mostly a different company. If TPE are not releasing their cheap tickets, then you won't get a Leeds to Aberdeen cheap price with a change at York despite the fact that East Coast are the major operator (for example), the solution is either to wait (but that is risky) or to 'split' (but that can be more costly). Not ideal.