Fare Dealer
RAIL fares expert Barry Doe untangles the complex world of split ticketing.
IN RAIL 863’s The Fare Dealer I wrote about splitting advance tickets across operator boundaries to avail yourself of cheaper quotas on each leg than might otherwise exist with a throughout booking.
Some readers emailed to ask how this would affect the right of being put on a later train if something went wrong in the early part of the journey, while others asked about compensation in general for lateness with a combination of tickets.
Most people believe that if you use a combination of walk-on or advance tickets the downside is an increased risk of messing up the journey, or lack of refunds if things go wrong. For example, if you have booked an advance single from Morecambe to Thurso using Northern, Virgin Trains and ScotRail and the train on the Morecambe branch fails, missing your booked train at Lancaster (plus, of course, the later connections) then you are automatically put on later trains throughout.
In addition, you would inevitably arrive at Thurso more than four hours late, owing to the frequency north of Inverness.
Under the National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT) you are legally entitled to a minimum refund of 50% of your advance single for any delay exceeding 59 minutes, but that is further subject to the Charter of the operator that caused the delay, who might offer more. In this case, you would go to Northern, whose fault it was, and under their Charter you’d get a 100% refund of the throughout Morecambe-Thurso single, as the delay is over 1hr 59mins.
Now, let’s say instead you’d bought a walkon return for any train, currently £140 Standard Class (incidentally, very reasonable for 510 miles each way).
Under the NRCoT you’re entitled to 25% of the return (£35) for a one-way delay over 59 mins, but under Northern’s Charter you get the whole £140 back, because a one-way delay exceeding 1hr 59mins entitles you to a 100% refund of a return ticket. The delay applies to
your whole journey, not just Northern’s leg.
But what if you’d booked your advance journey Morecambe to Glasgow and Glasgow to Thurso, or, with walk-on, you’d booked Morecambe to Lancaster, Lancaster to Carlisle, Carlisle to Glasgow and Glasgow to Thurso? How much would you lose out if the Morecambe branch train failed and you missed all your connections?
Well, perhaps very surprisingly, the answer is that there is no difference at all. With advance, you’d still be put on the next Virgin train to Glasgow, despite not having a through ticket from Morecambe, because you had a series of tickets for the journey and it was an industry fault. The same would apply at Glasgow. Ditto with compensation - you’d get it on the total value of your tickets from the operator that caused the delay.
To be sure of my facts I sought advice from a fares expert at the Rail Delivery Group, who admitted it was inevitably complex because charters vary from operator to operator, as well as being subject to the NRCoT, and the whole potentially then coming within the scope of the Consumer Rights Act.
However, whether you have through or separate tickets makes no difference and the operator that caused any delay must compensate for the whole journey based on their own charter – as long as those separate tickets were purchased in order to make a through journey.
One of the reasons is that there are cases where through fares don’t exist and split ticketing is needed and it would legally be splitting hairs to allow compensation and rights where this was the case, but not if the split ticketing was merely the passenger’s choice.
My contact did admit that he wouldn’t like to pretend that in every case an operator will pay up without quibble in such situations, but nevertheless they are legitimate claims.
Barry Doe has a bus & rail timetable web site at www.barrydoe.co.uk which also contains his rail franchise map for downloading. Contact him at faredealer@barrydoe.co.uk