The great Virgin "Value Advance Single" fares gamble

marks87

If you're to be travelling by Virgin Trains, you can usually save quite a bit by getting two "Value Advance Single" tickets (one for each direction).

Now a bit of a story...

At the end of next month, myself and A.N. Other are to be travelling down to Liverpool for the weekend (usual price £124.15 for a Saver Return, with one YP Railcard). So I tried Dundee-Liverpool...nothing; OK...Dundee-Wigan...nothing; How about Dundee-Preston then...nothing.

Eventually I worked it out as follows:

Dundee - Edinburgh: First Scotrail Value Advance2; £24
Edinburgh - Wigan NW: VT Value Advance Single A: £31.55
Preston - Edinburgh: VT Value Advance Single C: £15.75

(There's also a £20.40 Preston-Liverpool return in there as well, bringing the total to £101.70 meaning a total saving of a little over £22, but that's largely irrelevant to the rest of this post!)

So anyway, this morning (out of curiosity) I tried Dundee-Preston...and lo-and-behold, a pair nice Value Advance C's had appeared out of nowhere at £19.90 each way. :mad:

These couldn't have been cancellations, because the tickets are non-refundable. So the only explanation is that Virgin like to hold back some of their cheap fares and gradually release them.

So be warned - booking well in advance isn't always beneficial. But at the same time, there's no guarantees that even cheaper fares will actually appear. It really is a gamble...

msgj

That's an interesting story! I have also had fun hunting for cheap fares.

Does anyone know when Virgin start to release their value fares? I've just been looking for a ticket Newcastle - Derby in September. This is less than two months away, but nothing available yet ...

sockospice

Weekend tickets are usually released later than weekday tickets because they have to wait for confirmation of planned engineering work.

bunking_off

Their booking engine (same underlying one is used regardless of whether you use VT, trainline or Qjump) can be tempramental. On quite a few occasions I've had trains show no availability of discount fares, only for them to re-appear the next day. Whenever there's no availability on Value fares, I always try again later...

dzug

msgj wrote: »

That's an interesting story! I have also had fun hunting for cheap fares.

Does anyone know when Virgin start to release their value fares? I've just been looking for a ticket Newcastle - Derby in September. This is less than two months away, but nothing available yet ...

They are there up to at least the end of September. Possibly not on Sundays (16th is there, 30th apparently not) but definitely on weekdays.

dzug

marks87 wrote: »

These couldn't have been cancellations, because the tickets are non-refundable. So the only explanation is that Virgin like to hold back some of their cheap fares and gradually release them.

quote]

I can think of several other explanations that are more likely than that - a pure glitch in the booking engine for one, and yes 'cancellation' for another.

When you are booking the tickets, it reserves them for you at some stage in the process - certainly before you pay, though I don't know exactly when. So the tickets that weren't shown to you may have been being held for a customer making several purchases in one session. He then changed his mind, aborted the booking and never paid - and at some stage they got released back into the system

marks87

dzug wrote: »

I can think of several other explanations that are more likely than that - a pure glitch in the booking engine for one, and yes 'cancellation' for another.

When you are booking the tickets, it reserves them for you at some stage in the process - certainly before you pay, though I don't know exactly when. So the tickets that weren't shown to you may have been being held for a customer making several purchases in one session. He then changed his mind, aborted the booking and never paid - and at some stage they got released back into the system

I looked at the site twice after buying - once three days later, the next 5 days later. It was at 5 days the tickets appeared. I don't think it takes 4-5 days for "semi-reserved" tickets to re-appear in the system.

TheImportanceOfBeingIdle

The advance tickets are generally released 2 months beforehand. The only real explanation for tickets disappearing and reappearing is a pants booking engine as has been said.

marks87

Just to update, after writing to them, Virgin acknowledged that they release cheaper fares late and have since refunded me the difference, as well as giving £30 of rail travel vouchers for any inconvenience caused.

patrick0

This page has the advance dates, but it is updated manually so can be a few days behind:
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/booking_horizons.html

Trainline has an advance ticket alert email service for popular destinations. See http://www.thetrainline.com/ticketalert/

If I'm after a particular advance fare then I end up manually checking each day by creating a URL similar to the one below (London Euston-Manchester on 27/8/10 returning 30/8/10) - then I just need to click on a browser bookmark to see if advance fares are available for the dates:
http://www.farefinder.virgintrains.co.uk/BestFares.aspx?orig=EUS&dest=MAN&out=20100827&rtn=20100830

I usually buy tickets on https://www.eastcoast.co.uk as they don't charge any fees and their booking engine (Atos Origin) is much quicker to use than Trainline/Virgin.

dzug1

Cancellations ARE possible - the customer can change non-refundable tickets for a fee

Whether such tickets get released back into the system - pass.