Split ticketing – official MSE discussion

martindow

yorkie2 said:

martindow said:

yorkie2 said:

onashoestring said:

Blobboman said:

I confess to being new to the Split Ticket concept, but I'm glad I found it on MSE. I needed to buy 5 tickets from Birmingham to Southampton for this October. I waited for the 12 week lead-in so that the Advance Fares would be available. The cost for 5 adults was, and still is, £432.00. I then went to Train Tickets and put in exactly the same info. The cost, including their 10% for finding the deal, was £253. So a £180 saving. Very pleased. Thanks for the info.

Is that price with a  railcard discount ? If not you maybe able to save even more with a railcard .Possibly up to another  30% off . 

https://www.railcard.co.uk/

You can use the split ticketing websites to find the best tickets available and then buy direct from the train company saving their admin charges and giving you more protection if there are cancellations. 

The above post is factually incorrect.

Train companies charge more than split ticket sites.

There is no additional protection by purchasing from train companies

On the contrary, purchasing from a ticket splitting site gives you evidence of a contract for a through itinerary

I regularly do a trip splitting at an intermediate station.  These are offpeak return tickets and LNER provide the itinerary with the booking.  I usually reserve seats, although I am not tied to specific trains, which provides further evidence of these being through journeys.

I'm not sure that I agree that split ticketing sites offer any more evidence than this.

what journey is it? are you saying LNER is a split ticketing site?

No, I was responding to your comment about an advantage of a split ticketing site is that you get an itinerary to print out to demonstrate that it is a single journey. 

I was saying that when I book trips with LNER, a TOC, splitting the journey I get an itinerary from them.  It is not just split ticketing sites that offer this.

MilesT6060842

From what I have seen, split sites won't find a split that is "beyond and back".  It can be done manually, and is just as legal as any other sort of split.  This is not "stopping short", to be legal you have to travel to the split station and then change trains to complete the journey on the next ticket.  (NB Many airlines won't let you do something similar, especially if you are part of the airlines/alliance's loyalty scheme, although you can do it travelling on different airlines on different tickets with good insurance for delay/disruption)

I have a specific example which works as a test case and is usually available, and can save £10 one way. 

For brevity I will use 3 letter station codes

Desired journey:  LST-SUY (all on Greater Anglia).  This requires a change at MKT (also on GA)
Cheaper "split":  LST-COL, then COL-SUY  COL is beyond MKT, and the COL-SUY leg requires a change at MKT (usually).  COL-SUY is usually not restricted to a particular train, LST-COL is usually an Advance.
Note the cheaper version doesn't add very much to the journey time, for reasons which will become obvious

Why this works: GA generally only offers Advance tickets on the express trains on the Great Eastern Main Line to Norwich.  Almost all the express services stop at COL, but expresses don't stop at MKT (the change point for SUY), hence no advance ticket offered for MKT or SUY (which is why a traditional split won't work and won't be found by the split websites).  And the split websites don't check for travelling beyond stations passed through on journey including official change points.

COL is not very far from MKT, and the express is saves most of the time that will be lost by changing train and doubling back to MKT, and overall the schedules usually work OK that it doesn't take that much longer to travel between LST-SUY or vice versa via COL.  This trick works for some other stations on the Great Eastern Main line e.g. Witham, find the next station the expresses stop at and price up a ticket backwards to the desired station.

I think this is very customer unfriendly. I have often thought about writing to local newspapers to try and shame GA into a better deal for some branch line passengers

NB: Changing at NRW to travel onwards to a branch line is often included at same price on an Advance ticket, i.e. LST-SHM is often same price as LST-NRW (SHM needs a change at NRW), so why not SUY?  Commuter profiteering I think.

On a related point;  when there are engineering works on the Great Eastern Mail line, the national rail website will often propose the Ely-Cambridge route as this is marginally quicker than replacement buses (but always more expensive).  Always worth checking by putting in a "via COL" to the National Rail website (or other train websites including Greater Anglia) to ensure you get the usually cheaper option (although you may need to tolerate a replacement bus which is 45 mins longer, often via Newbury Park on Central Line underground, or occasionally NRW-IPS  

yorkie2

No, I was responding to your comment about an advantage of a split ticketing site is that you get an itinerary to print out to demonstrate that it is a single journey. 

I was saying that when I book trips with LNER, a TOC, splitting the journey I get an itinerary from them.  It is not just split ticketing sites that offer this.

Do you have an example of what you are referring to?

martindow

It's a GWR route but I prefer the LNER booking pages.  The journey I wass referring to was Reading to Bath splitting at Didcot which makes a big difference in price.  I book it as two separate off peak returns (RDG-DID and DID-BTH) and as well as the the tickets to download they provide an itinerary of the trains I've selected.

I'm not tied to particular trains, as long as a I avoid hours in the morning when the tickets would not be valid, but I like to reserve seats on my usual trains.

yorkie2

martindow said:

It's a GWR route but I prefer the LNER booking pages.  The journey I wass referring to was Reading to Bath splitting at Didcot which makes a big difference in price.  I book it as two separate off peak returns (RDG-DID and DID-BTH) and as well as the the tickets to download they provide an itinerary of the trains I've selected.

I'm not tied to particular trains, as long as a I avoid hours in the morning when the tickets would not be valid, but I like to reserve seats on my usual trains.

The point is that the price charged by LNER for Reading to Bath is greater than the price charged by split ticketing websites, for the same journey.

I believe it will generally be cheaper to use a split ticketing website, rather than LNER, for a journey such as Reading to Bath, if that is what you search for (which is what a layperson will do).

What you are talking about is a very different concept; you are presumably spending time carrying out research into intermediate fares (which is carried out automatically by split ticketing sites) and then you are searching for the constituent parts of the journey. This may be viable for an experienced traveller doing Reading to Bath, but what about an occasional user travelling from Yorkshire to Devon or Cornwall (which I'll hopefully be doing next month, strikes permitting...)

martindow

yorkie2 said:

martindow said:

It's a GWR route but I prefer the LNER booking pages.  The journey I wass referring to was Reading to Bath splitting at Didcot which makes a big difference in price.  I book it as two separate off peak returns (RDG-DID and DID-BTH) and as well as the the tickets to download they provide an itinerary of the trains I've selected.

I'm not tied to particular trains, as long as a I avoid hours in the morning when the tickets would not be valid, but I like to reserve seats on my usual trains.

The point is that the price charged by LNER for Reading to Bath is greater than the price charged by split ticketing websites, for the same journey.

I believe it will generally be cheaper to use a split ticketing website, rather than LNER, for a journey such as Reading to Bath, if that is what you search for (which is what a layperson will do).

What you are talking about is a very different concept; you are presumably spending time carrying out research into intermediate fares (which is carried out automatically by split ticketing sites) and then you are searching for the constituent parts of the journey. This may be viable for an experienced traveller doing Reading to Bath, but what about an occasional user travelling from Yorkshire to Devon or Cornwall (which I'll hopefully be doing next month, strikes permitting...)

My journeys to Bath are a regular occurrence so I know where to split the journey - there is no need for me to pay a fee to a splitting site every time I make the trip.  I think I bought through a splitting site the first time I made this journey so they've earned their fee.

I agree that for one off or unfamiliar journeys it is worth using split ticketing sites, in which case it is best to try several, as I've found them to not be infallible offering differing splits and savings.

yorkie2

martindow said:

My journeys to Bath are a regular occurrence so I know where to split the journey - there is no need for me to pay a fee to a splitting site every time I make the trip.  I think I bought through a splitting site the first time I made this journey so they've earned their fee.

I agree that for one off or unfamiliar journeys it is worth using split ticketing sites, in which case it is best to try several, as I've found them to not be infallible offering differing splits and savings.

Yes I suppose if someone does the same journey regularly and it's just one split, it can be worth doing it yourself, if you know what you are doing.

But for many people, split ticketing sites are very valuable tools; any share of saving fee is very small compared to the amount saved, and there are numerous benefits, such as having all the tickets in one PDF, a through itinerary, and the ability to use a seat selector.

Marmora39

I just bought split tickets from Newcastle to Birmingham through the Railsmartr website and didn't get charged any fees