Fare Dealer
RAIL fares expert Barry Doe says a reader’s trip demonstrates the problem with journey planners.
I recently heard from a RAIL reader, who told me a tale that I found extraordinary. In one way it’s amusing, yet it points to major problems with online retailing. He said that one weekend he was with a former university friend in London, and fancied a trip to Southend. Looking at the London Connections map, he saw the Gravesend & Tilbury ferry and wondered whether they could incorporate this into the journey.
He went to the National Rail Journey Planner and inserted St Pancras to Southend Central via Tilbury Riverside, and it brought up journeys via HS1 to Gravesend, the Tilbury Ferry, the bus to Tilbury Town and c2c onwards to Southend.
I’m sure you’ll be thinking that it also said they’d need separate tickets for each leg. No! It offered an Off-Peak Day Return, with Network Railcard, for £8.85 - which is the normal ‘any permitted route’ return from London Terminals to Southend Central.
It went further, and advised that the ticket would be accepted on the bus, but you have to pay for the ferry. So our reader and his friend went to St Pancras and bought two of the said £8.85 returns from the ticket machine (TVM).
Upstairs at the barriers, the tickets were rejected but staff let them through saying “You’re not meant to go this way, so ask the guard”. No one came through the train and they alighted at Gravesend, where they were let through the barriers without a problem.
They walked to the ferry, where they noted a single was £4 and a Day Return £3 (typical crazy marketing!). At Tilbury Riverside, they walked past the old Tilbury Continental Ferry Terminal to where the bus was waiting. The driver examined their tickets and at Tilbury Town the barriers let them through. They had a good day and returned direct.
Only when he got home did our reader email me, to ask if all this was meant to happen as he was surprised it was a permitted route.
So was I! I tried the Journey Planner myself and got exactly as he found. I passed it to the Rail Delivery Group, which looks after it, and they admitted they too were amazed and that the planner should never have
allowed this, as it’s way off-route.
OK, we can all smile and wonder how such a thing can get through online systems, but it’s very serious and raises important issues. The first is the long-standing situation whereby all London Terminal TVMs sell fares for journeys from any terminal.
So, at Paddington you can buy a return to Margate and at Cannon Street you can buy a return to Swindon. The tickets will say ‘London Terminals to X’ on them, and you’ve just bought it at a London Terminal - but you’re not told that what you’ve bought isn’t valid from that particular London Terminal, nor on the Tube to reach the correct one.
As a ticket from Margate to Swindon is valid on the Tube across London, isn’t it reasonable for users to think that if they buy London to Margate from a TVM at Paddington it’s valid on the Tube, too?
Now, in the case under discussion there are more expensive fares to Southend Victoria via Shenfield. That route passes through Stratford. If you bought a ticket from a St Pancras TVM, wouldn’t it be perfectly reasonable to assume it’s valid on HS1 between there and Stratford International, bearing in mind that the ticket says ‘any permitted route’?
It isn’t, and neither is there an HS1 fare. You’re meant to realise it’s only valid from Liverpool Street and, again, that you have to pay a Tube fare to get there.
Yet in our reader’s case, the Journey Planner wrongly advised him to use a ticket from St Pancras that’s not valid via Stratford or Gravesend, or on HS1, and the TVM does nothing to correct this. Isn’t it time TVMs at London Terminals only sold tickets valid from the station from which they are bought?
Secondly, what of legal contracts? Say someone stopped our reader and wanted to excess him for being off-route. Would he have the right to show a print-out - or indeed call up the erroneous entry on a Smartphone - to prove he was acting on official railway advice?
I’ve just been told that a reader from Shelford wanting to try the new Cambridge to St Pancras service (of which more next time) found both National Rail and Thameslink planners offer him a £17.40 Super OP Day Return - a fare specifically banned from use via Cambridge.
Anglia’s planner correctly refuses it. Are such errors endemic in some systems? It’s extremely worrying.