East Coast "Cheap Ticket Alert" rip off!

ds83

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East Coast trains have a "Cheap Ticket Alert" service which emails you when 'Advance' fares become available for your chosen date. MSE advises people to use the equivalent service on Trainline.

Since the service is labelled "Cheap Ticket Alerts", and has the presumed aim of helping you save money, I think a reasonable person could easily be misled into thinking that booking as soon as you receive the alert allows you to get the cheapest tickets. I was certainly given this impression.

After receiving an alert email, I immediately booked a ticket from Edinburgh to London on my chosen date, paying £23.95 one-way with a Railcard. All the fares on that day were this price. Looking again, two days later, most of the fares for that day have reduced to £17.95, and for a train two hours earlier than the one I booked, goes as low as £10.90.

This is infuriating considering how hard I had been trying to save money and take the necessary steps to keep my train fare as low as possible.

Whether or not it is intended this way, the Ticket Alert service comes across as a deliberate ploy by East Coast to mislead people into paying higher fares than necessary.

I think this is worth MSE investigating or at least placing a warning on the page of the website that mentions ticket alerts.

mark55man

Think you are being a bit precious. You are paying £23 quid for a ticket that must normally costs £100s.

I would suggest that the fact they do cheap tickets at all means they may do cheaper ones - would you be writing in if you checked and the price had gone up. Its just a fact of life fix and take the risk of decreases or don't fix and take the risk of increases (or lack of availability)

ds83

They're hardly ever hundreds of pounds, actually, so long as you don't just turn up and go. If they were hundreds it would be extortionate.

I am pretty skint most of the time, hence put a lot of planning into getting the cheapest train fares possible. The £14 difference is a lot to me.

The Ticket Alert thing is an issue because:

(1) If you are going to have a variable pricing structure, it should be predictable, not a lottery, so those people who have a strong need to plan ahead and save money have the opportunity to do so.

(2) They shouldn't create a misleading impression that by booking as early as possible, you get the cheapest fare. This is what a reasonable person would conclude from the Fare Alert service, otherwise why would they bother having it?

mick_vandick

They shouldn't create a misleading impression that by booking as early as possible, you get the cheapest fare.

But you do. I use East Coast a lot and am normally waiting for the day when my departure date will go on sale as the day they do is the best day for getting the bottom priced fares. It's around 9/10 weeks in advance usually.
It sounds like you jumped in before they had fully loaded all the prices. At the top of the booking screen you can see what the prices are from - ie, London to Edinburgh £12.90-£65.60 and on the day they are loaded there will be some for £12.90. Not as many as there used to be but there is always some.
If you don't get in quick they are gone so i think it is fair to call it a cheap fare alert.

ds83

Not sure what you mean by "jumped in before they had fully loaded all the prices". I clicked on the cheapest fare bracket and scrolled through the whole day, and they were all £23.90. I'm quite familiar with the East Coast interface and didn't click on the higher fare bracket or something.

I am pretty sure this was because it was a Friday. I checked the Wednesday and Thursday fares as well, and they were cheaper, but I had to travel on Fri.

Two days later, and the price was reduced, so it wasn't as you suggest a matter of getting in quick.

dzug1

A pure guess but maybe in this case is they made a botch of the first release and amended it when it was spotted.

Or maybe they adjusted the fares because demand was low - a perfectly logical thing to do. Whilst in an ideal world things would be predictable, in reality they are not.

Does this happen all the time or is it a one off?

ds83

Your latter theory sounds plausible I guess. When I booked, just a couple of hours after the tickets went on sale, the Friday prices were all the same, and all higher than e.g. Wednesday. This makes sense since Friday is a more popular day. If so, this means that booking *later* is better than booking when the tickets have just been released, since you have the option of picking a less popular service and paying less; and suggests you are getting a bum deal if you make overly careful use of the Cheap Ticket Alerts!

rdwarr

Price for an "Anytime Single" is £152. I think snapping up a ticket for £24 is a good move - there MAY be a cheaper one later on but, if not, you could be looking at £60 plus.

wealdroam

OP, what is East Coast's explanation?

ds83

I don't know what East Coast's explanation is yet, although I did send them a whiney email. I'll let you know how they respond.

The cost of an anytime single is really irrelevant here, since no one in their right mind would get one unless their trip is urgent and unexpected, or, more likely, they get caught out on the train with the wrong ticket and get charged for a full standard price single. A more reasonable barometer is the price of a single tomorrow: £37 with a Railcard.

Regardless of whether you think this price is fair or good value - and I am not complaining about their prices in general - my complaint is that passengers should be given non-misleading advice about what they can do to get the cheapest fare possible.

s_b

ds83 wrote: »

I don't know what East Coast's explanation is yet, although I did send them a whiney email. I'll let you know how they respond.

The cost of an anytime single is really irrelevant here, since no one in their right mind would get one unless their trip is urgent and unexpected, or, more likely, they get caught out on the train with the wrong ticket and get charged for a full standard price single. A more reasonable barometer is the price of a single tomorrow: £37 with a Railcard.

Regardless of whether you think this price is fair or good value - and I am not complaining about their prices in general - my complaint is that passengers should be given non-misleading advice about what they can do to get the cheapest fare possible.

ask for a refund then and let someone else have this bargain ticket
railcard indeed
whinge whinge whinge
last time i looked to get a train down to london they wanted £152 ish luckily i managed to get a megabus seat