railcard minimum fare confusion

ozcar

hi everyone, this is my first post on mse... ive lurked many times and been amazed at how knowledgeable you all are on matters such as this.. im so confused it is time to bite the bullet and sign up, hopefully i can help others around here too at some point.

for the next 9 months we are going to be trying to pay our sons travel to university in liverpool, for a post graduate course, i am looking around for the most cost effective way to get him there 4 days a week, i`m able to take advantage of advance fares, reducing the cost to £9.50 for each journey... with a railcard it`s even cheaper at £5.95 which is great value. but then i saw that railcards have a minimum fare of £12 before 10am, so it would only be effective for his return journey, leaving us to pay £9.50 for the outward journey.
however when going through the ticketing process it allows me to apply the railcard to the earlier journey too.. both fares at £5.95 each.

i was confused as to how it worked so i called railcard who say that it must be a mistake with virgin trailns... even a mistake through their own ticket pricing page (which i also tried) and when the ticket gets checked he would be asked to pay the full fare of £22+ and i was to call virgin trains ... which i did, but hey say once the ticket is purchased then thats it, as long as he has his railcard with him he will be fine.
ive looked into season tickets too but they would cost £85 a week.. which we cannot afford... it would be cheaper just to book advance tickets than to purchase a season ticket.
does anyone have any experience with this ? the last thing i want is for us to buy the tickets in advance then be faced with a bill for an extra £16 + for each of the outward journeys.

discat11

It may allow you to select an earlier journey and apply the discount but this is likely to be a glitch with the online system -it won't make an invalid ticket suddenly valid even if it shows the ticket has a booked seat on that train.

I take it you mean a YP railcard? (16-25 RC). It makes it very clear in the terms it cannot be used to discount tickets to travel before 10am under section 7.

If there is such a glitch then it's worth contacting the webpage operator, unless it's the same as the train operation company -if so I'd go to them directly.

These YP restrictions have been around for many years and it's almost certain the ticketing staff will be well aware of them so it's not worth the risk of buying and hoping the fact the webpage provided tickets booked for pre 10am trains will allow discretion to be used, whatever the person on their 'phoneline says.

Discretion might be used once but it wouldn't happen much more than that I'm afraid and it wouldn't be an upgrade from 5.95 to the full fare -it would be the whole fare again, upgrading an invalid ticket is a discretionary process and certainly isn't guaranteed.

Mif_2

The terms and conditions seem quite clear - the minimum fare doesn't apply to advance tickets:

A £12 minimum fare applies for journeys starting between 4.30am-10am Monday to Friday excluding Advance Fares. This minimum fare does not apply on Public Holidays or throughout July and August.

ozcar

Mif wrote: »

The terms and conditions seem quite clear - the minimum fare doesn't apply to advance tickets:

omg i`m so dumb, all the pages i read and all the calls i made i still didn`t actually notice the caveat about it not applying to advance tickets. it appears that neither railcard nor virgin trains are familiar with it .. otherwise they`d have said something.
thank you so much, thats put my mind at rest now.

yorkie2

discat11 wrote: »

It may allow you to select an earlier journey and apply the discount but this is likely to be a glitch with the online system -it won't make an invalid ticket suddenly valid even if it shows the ticket has a booked seat on that train.

I take it you mean a YP railcard? (16-25 RC). It makes it very clear in the terms it cannot be used to discount tickets to travel before 10am under section 7.

If there is such a glitch then it's worth contacting the webpage operator, unless it's the same as the train operation company -if so I'd go to them directly.

These YP restrictions have been around for many years and it's almost certain the ticketing staff will be well aware of them so it's not worth the risk of buying and hoping the fact the webpage provided tickets booked for pre 10am trains will allow discretion to be used, whatever the person on their 'phoneline says.

Discretion might be used once but it wouldn't happen much more than that I'm afraid and it wouldn't be an upgrade from 5.95 to the full fare -it would be the whole fare again, upgrading an invalid ticket is a discretionary process and certainly isn't guaranteed.

The above post is incorrect . There is no such ban. Only a minimum fare , which is not applicable in July/August and never applicable to Advance fares.

An itinerary is also evidence of a contract.

MiF is correct !