MSE News: Football fan shocked at receiving 56 separate tickets from splitting site

Legacy_user

A MoneySaving football fan got more than he bargained for when using a split-ticketing site which sent him 56 tickets...

Read the full story:
'Football fan shocked at receiving 56 separate train tickets from splitting site – but he did save £60'

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Hasbeen

Seven actual ticket's out Seven actual ticket's return each person, all the rest are seat reservations

ex-pat_scot

It gets a lot better if you make cycle reservations (2 cycle reservation tickets per "ticket") - he'd have a suitcase full!


The online ticket system - where you show the code on your phone rather than the paper ticket - seems an obvious way forward.

sue.b_2

I hope all the seat reservations are for the same seats. Imagine having to change seat every time a new ticket came into effect.

Biggles

Ah, train tickets! The subject header made it look as though they were football tickets, I was wondering how many matches were involved!

dekaspace

I have actually done this before when I had £28 left after being evicted from a flat and train fare was £30 for one ticket and £14 split tickets and this being the days before online bookings had literally a vans worth of stuff over 2 trolleys, having to rely on station staff to either look after my stuff or move one of the trolleys to ticket window where I bought a ticket and hoped I had enough to cover the journey

Was funny as well though as had to put all my stuff in those old fashioned bike carriages, but the ticket staff put me in first class and got free tea and coffee, though after 2 nights sleeping rough in station due to bank holiday weekend and pouring rain I needed it.

grumpycrab

Outbound appears to be Newcastle -> York -> Sheffield -> Derby -> Birmingham -> Banbury -> Oxford. The return adds Northallerton after York.
Don't know what time the game starts but they'll be starting early.

cookie365

Game starts at 3

It looks like they're going back on the 19:12 which stops at all those points (with a change at York) so it'll be the exact same journey as if they didn't do the split.

Assume the same on the way up.

Haven't bothered checking if they have the same seats for the different bits of the same journey but I don't expect any inspector will care if they're in unreserved seats as long as they're on the right trains.

redux

They could have saved about £30 each by buying advance returns for the whole trip.

Or maybe £50 each with 2 advance returns, splitting via London.

So in this case perhaps the splits were only worthwhile if the trip was planned at short notice.

yorkie2

redux wrote: »

They could have saved about £30 each by buying advance returns for the whole trip.

Nope; it is cheaper to split on XC, where through Advances cost a fortune.

redux wrote: »

Or maybe £50 each with 2 advance returns, splitting via London.

via London would have worked if he booked when the VTEC sale was on.

redux wrote: »

So in this case perhaps the splits were only worthwhile if the trip was planned at short notice.

Even at long notice, through fares on XC are generally a rip-off.

redux

I wasn't guessing. I posted those comments after looking up fares in 3 or 4 weeks time, assuming that similar prices might have been available for today that much time ago.

That may not be precise, but it seems a reasonable chance.