Trip.com

4ylyurga9

Having previously bought 3 year railcards through MSE and got a great discount at Trainpal, I decided to use Trip.com this time as a new customer I could save 25%. I bought railcards for myself and my wife costing £120. The first trip I tried to book was to Leigh on Sea. Trip.com would only let me go to Southend Victoria.

I subsequently looked at other routes involving "country" stations and Trip.com doesn't recognise them. So not much us if you want to get to "out of the way" places.

My only hope is that as we have not activated the railcards they should be refunded in August! Otherwise a very expensive mistake!

James_Londoner

Trip.com certainly lets me buy tickets to Leigh on Sea. Are you using the website or app, and what type of device?

Once your railcard is activated, you are not limited to buying your tickets via them - you can still use any other retailer (or station ticket office, or self-service machine), in conjunction with your railcard stored in the Trip.com app.

(Personally I'd still avoid trip.com as their app is rubbish and I don't like their gimmicks, but they certainly sell rail tickets to all destinations on the network)

flaneurs_lobster

The price of the 3-year Railcards at the "official" site is £80 each. Trip.com sell them for £60, the quid pro quo is that they are only visible/useable via their app - the idea being that you will be more likely to book future tickets via Trip.

As @James_Londoner says, you don't have to buy there.

There may be a downside, seeing reports that the railcard may only be visible when the app is online (a breach of the condition that Trip should allow offline access) so beware of trying to show when train is in a tunnel….