East Coast "Cheap Ticket Alert" rip off!

ds83

Obviously if they would give me a refund, that would be ideal, since I would be able to get a cheaper ticket instead. It's like some people are replying without bothering to read the original post. Sorry if you think I sound tight. This site is supposed to be about saving money last time I checked.

s_b

ds83 wrote: »

Obviously if they would give me a refund, that would be ideal, since I would be able to get a cheaper ticket instead. It's like some people are replying without bothering to read the original post. Sorry if you think I sound tight. This site is supposed to be about saving money last time I checked.

i think theres tight and moaning about nothing
you managed to get a good price and a seat

mate of mine his bottom used to squeak as he walked,
now he was tight

totallybored

dzug1 wrote: »

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

I think it is this. I book a lot of tickets on east coast and it has very occasionally happened to me. Sometimes the lowest price tickets have turned up an hour or two later.

Unfortunately, it is annoying and nothing you can do about it. Just put it down to experience and next time if the cheapest ticket isn't there don't buy it straight away (the next price tickets tend not to go as quickly).

And for the posters saying that the OP should be grateful for getting a cheaper price than the standard ticket price I don't agree. The OP paid double what he could have done, how is that a good deal and moneysaving?

mick_vandick

my complaint is that passengers should be given non-misleading advice about what they can do to get the cheapest fare possible.

But 99.9% of the time it isn't misleading. I agree with what dzug1 says and it seems they made a botch of the first release.
Annoying yes but misleading no.

ds83

So East Coast got back to me. They say it was not a mistake with the first release, but a matter of the prices having been adjusted due to low demand.

I think this is okay, as long as cases like this are genuinely unusual; if it was the case, for example, that the ticket I bought gets reduced in price after the initial release nearly every time, then the Cheap Ticket Alerts would seem like a kind of skimming and would be misleading. I take their and your words for it that this isn't so.

For anyone who is interested, here's the lengthy explanation they were good enough to send me.

I am sorry to learn that you are disappointed that the Advance purchase ticket you recently bought has gone down in price. I understand you feel this is down to incorrect text alerts, however I assure you the alerts do inform you of the cheapest fare at the time of release.

However the Advance Purchase tickets are quota controlled and I believe this is were the discrepancies in pricing has come from. It may help if I take this chance to explain our position on the matter in more detail

By booking Advance tickets before you travel, you can make great savings on standard ticket prices and get our lowest available fares. However we set the price of our Advance tickets according to customer demand for each train. As demand is constantly fluctuating, we alter the prices on a regular basis and fares may go up or down accordingly.

To explain more fully, we offer Advance purchase tickets at attractive prices on a range of services, primarily to ensure that seats are taken. Although certain train services are consistently busy, we have spare capacity at other times of the day. Although we aim to offer Advance tickets on all our services, by offering a greater number of Advance tickets at these times, we can make quieter trains more attractive in terms of price; this helps us to secure revenue during less busy periods and ease customer overcrowding.

Like many budget airline companies, we also continually monitor how popular our services are, and we adjust the price of our Advance tickets accordingly over time. Usually, as the date of travel approaches, ticket prices increase as more seats are taken, which is why we encourage customers to book as early as possible to get the best fares. However rarely, as in this case, seats continue to remain unsold and we reduce prices further.

FLOPPYJOE

Must admit that East coast appears to be ripping us off at the moment.Tickets are made available 3 mths in advance but prices seem to be much higher than they were a few months ago.You can book up to Fri 20th July at the moment.The thing that gets me is they show you a minimum price so for 2 adults and a child with a family railcard single from Doncaster to Edinburgh on say thurs 19/7 they are showing it COULD be £16.85 when in fact the cheapest is £53.40.They should not be showing the £16.85 because there are no tickets at that price and quite frankly i dont think there ever were.I usually keep an eye out for train bargains and recently they have got much tighter.They appear to be starting the fares off at an inflated price and then are dropping them some weeks later on lack of demand,so they are taking advantage of people who have in the past booked on the very first day that tickets become available.Crafty move if you ask me.As for someone paying £152 then get a life.You must have more money than sense.

vyseyboy

Had a pretty similar experience to the OP recently, having received the alert that the cheapest fares had been released for my chosen travel date, went ahead and booked 2 tickets for a total of £72.50 (std class, Edinburgh to London)

Checked again this week (a week later) and could now get exactly the same tickets on the same train for approx. half what I paid! Gutted! They must have released new, cheaper tickets since.

Not such a fan of demand-based ticket pricing in general (recent experiences with single fare Glasgow to Durham being cheaper than Glasgow to Newcastle, despite it being further, on the same train) - suppose that's the downside of privatised, profit-focussed national transport infrastructure. </rant>