Rail Tickets Price Discrepancy Hunt

AP

The purpose of this thread is to identify any rail tickets when it is cheaper to buy a return ticket from B to A than one from A to B.

For example:

Hull to Sheffield - Standard Day Return £21.40
Sheffield to Hull - Standard Day Return £18.80

Stockport to Sheffield - Standard Open Return £15.90 (SDR not available)
Sheffield to Stockport - Standard Day Return £15.60

Chelmsford to London Terminals - Standard Day Return £20.20
London Terminals to Chelmsford - Standard Day Return £12.10

Harlow Town to London Terminals - Standard Day Return £13.70
London Terminals to Harlow Town - Standard Day Return £9.30

Please post here any other journeys that anyone is aware of with similar price discrepancies.

rdwarr

AP wrote: »

...

Please post here any other journeys that anyone is aware of with similar price discrepancies, so that we can buy the cheaper version of the tickets and use the return portion to go out and the outward portion to come back.

Is that actually allowed?

AP

rdwarr wrote: »

Is that actually allowed?

Yes it does! See example 7 for a morning peak hour single journey from Chester to London in the following article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6442947.stm

Voyager2002

Nice idea, but it will only work if you are going there and back on the same day. The outbound half MUST be used on the date printed on the ticket: the return half only begins to be valid on that date.

AP

The examples that I found are all Standard Day Return tickets which is of course only valid on the same day. However, there will be many passengers not holding season tickets making frequent day trip journeys. The principle is that passengers should not be paying a higher price for a return ticket from A to B than one from B to A, which are in essence the same two journeys.

If enough passengers realise this unfair practice and start buying the cheaper version of these tickets, using the return portion to go out and the outward portion to come back, hopefully this will stop the train companies from setting two prices on the same ticket in future.

moonrakerz

AP wrote: »

If enough passengers realise this unfair practice

It's not really an "unfair practice", it is the law of supply/demand and the rail companies trying to spread the load across the day. A train into London at 8:30 in the morning will always cost more than a train leaving London at 08:30.

AP

If you look at it another way, when more passengers board a train into London in the morning, the train company is actually getting more revenue by the increased ticket sales.

As long as the timetable is in place, they will have to run that particular service regardless of the number of passengers getting on. So the net cost of running a peak hour service into London is actually lower after taking into account the increased ticket sales from the higher number of passengers.

By increasing the price of a return ticket into London is not going to make an office worker with a standard 9 to 5 working pattern to suddenly start working an afternoon shift or a night shift pattern. This law of supply/demand is simply another excuse for the rail companies to rake more money from the poor passengers in addition to the inflation-busting fare increases year after year.

dzug

rdwarr wrote: »

Is that actually allowed?

No it's not actually allowed. To use an outward ticket you have to be able to produce (if requested) an unused return half.

They rarely request it, but will do so if suspicious - eg an outward portion of a day return being used late in the evening, or outward portion of a standard return being used after the date of issue.
The return half being used unfeasibly early could also arouse suspicion but I'm not sure what action they could take.

dzug

Just seen AP's post - that is different, it's not using the outward half at all so isn't a problem.

moonrakerz

AP wrote: »

If you look at it another way, when more passengers board a train into London in the morning, the train company is actually getting more revenue by the increased ticket sales.

Only if it charges the extra passengers a higher fare than if they use another train at midday.

AP wrote: »

As long as the timetable is in place, they will have to run that particular service regardless of the number of passengers getting on. So the net cost of running a peak hour service into London is actually lower after taking into account the increased ticket sales from the higher number of passengers.

By increasing the price of a return ticket into London is not going to make an office worker with a standard 9 to 5 working pattern to suddenly start working an afternoon shift or a night shift pattern. This law of supply/demand is simply another excuse for the rail companies to rake more money from the poor passengers in addition to the inflation-busting fare increases year after year.

The major problem with morning trains into London is the gross overcrowding, the differential fares are an attempt to spread the load. If you think that by letting everyone get the early morning train the result will be lower fares - dream on !

No railway company is going to cut fares for it's "captive market", if it can attract extra trade by offering discounted fares during the day when the rolling stock is empty, all to the good.
You seem to be saying that the discounted fares should be available to everyone on every train !

The railway companies all run at a loss, the only "profit" they return is from the massive subsidies doled out by central government. Why should someone living in the Isles of Scilly pay more Income Tax to enable you to get a cheaper ticket on the 09:00 into Waterloo?

To use a well worn expression "what a way to run a railway !"

AP

Let me just clarify a few points here:

1. I do not think that by letting everyone get the early morning train the result will be lower fares. All I am saying is by charging a higher Standard Day Return fare for morning trains into London is not going to solve the overcrowding problem, as people have to go to work at that time of the day if the company they work for does not have a flexible-hour working pattern. They do not have a choice to travel outside the peak hours.

2. I am quite happy for the morning peak fare to be higher than the off-peak fare, as long as it is the same in both directions. The example journeys that I quoted in my earlier post all (except Sheffield to Hull) have a Cheap Day Return ticket at a lower fare for travel outside peak hours. The Standard Day Return ticket is already a higher fare for travel during peak hours with which I have no problem. What I am not happy with is the even 'higher' Standard Day Return fare for travelling in one direction than the same Standard Day Return fare for travelling in the opposite direction between exactly the same two places. This is what I mean by 'unfair practice' in the first place.