Missing cheap trains

goodValue

Over the last few days I was looking for advance tickets from Bristol to Brighton viewing on a number of websites.
I booked on Thursday, but on that day only one of the websites showed the cheaper tickets. This was trainline, which also charged a booking fee.
So what happened to the cheaper fares on the other websites?

Voyager2002

The official line is that such a thing cannot happen... in practice of course it does, although on the other web sites you may have chosen search preferences that meant that they did not show you the fare in question.

dzug1

Impossible to answer really.


Two likeliest:


They were there but you didn't know how to persuade the websites to show you them. For example FGW won't show the cheaper fares via Southampton unless you tell it to - as it's usually a lot slower that way


A glitch - they happen


Edit - depending on how far ahead you were booking it's possible that the other websites were slow to put them on sale - even if only by a very short period - or that they were in the process of selling out

yorkie2

goodValue wrote: »

Over the last few days I was looking for advance tickets from Bristol to Brighton viewing on a number of websites.
I booked on Thursday, but on that day only one of the websites showed the cheaper tickets. This was trainline, which also charged a booking fee.
So what happened to the cheaper fares on the other websites?

Did you take any screenshots?

If not can you provide details of the date and time, and we can look at a variety of websites and investigate.

The fares should be the same, but sometimes different booking engines may suggest changing at different places and this can affect the default price. You can change the via/avoid points or select a routeing to match the price, when this occurs.

goodValue

It is possible that I didn't use the web sites correctly, as this is the first time I've done this.
In fact, I never did see a cheap fare on the eastCoast website.
Against that, I did see the cheap fares on the nationalRail website, except for the day I booked (ie I saw the cheap fares for a couple of days previously).
I can only access the Internet at my local library, so it might prove difficult getting screen shots.
The journey was from Bristol to Brighton on 26 June. There were advance fares for trains leaving between 9am and 11am. The fares changed on the couple of days I looked, so I expect a retrospective look now may not tell you much.
When I posted I was really looking for known problems with the websites. And the lack of responses about that seems to indicate that the sites usually do a good job.

wealdroam

You haven't given any clues of the fares you have found, but Southern Railway are currently showing these Advance Singles via Salisbury on your date:



That journey Planner will not show those tickets by default.
To see them, one needs to click on Show me in the lefthand column, then tick the box labelled Valid only for travel via (changing trains or passing through) Salisbury.

Other journey planners may use a different technique.

And just for the record, here is East Coast's offering:




So to summarise, tickets for your journey are still available on your dates for under £20.

goodValue

I spent an hour a day for a couple of days searching for websites and fares.
Each day I was seeing fares of £13 to £15 outward and return.
On the day I booked, only trainline showed a reasonable fare (£19.50), whilst the other sites showed fares of £50 plus.
I suspected that I wasn't using the eastCoast site correctly, but did see the advance fares on the other sites.
It looks as though you have found a cheaper fare than I actually paid.

t0rt0ise

I was trying to book tickets the other day on a different route but it kept coming up with saying that it wasn't able to access the national database so that cheap tickets weren't available. After many days I did manage to get Advance tickets but it seemed to be down for days.

wealdroam

t0rt0ise wrote: »

I was trying to book tickets the other day on a different route but it kept coming up with saying that it wasn't able to access the national database so that cheap tickets weren't available. After many days I did manage to get Advance tickets but it seemed to be down for days.

What is the 'it' that you mention three times?

A particular company's journey planner I guess.
Care to tell us which one?

surfsister

I've noticed this before and always check 3 or 4 websites before I book. it does happen!! ceratain times of day best but can't recall when!