Great Western Coffee Shop

The new Auto-Renew Monthly Season ticket offer lets you buy your normal monthly season ticket as normal, but if you commit to doing so for a year, then the final 12th month travel card will be free of charge.

You have to use the South Western Railway smartcard, which is valid for use on the TfL network, so you could for example buy a travelcard from Waterloo station and use it for London commuting.

Although the saving over the year isn’t as high as you would get from buying an Annual travelcard upfront, it is one option for spreading the cost and still making a saving.

SWR have also started offering Carnet deals, as a number of other train companies already do. This lets you buy a batch of 10 tickets for a specific journey in advance, and get a 5% discount.

The discount is less than other railway companies offer and they expire in two months instead of the usual three months, but it has the added advantage of offering unlimited travel on the day you use the ticket — so you could make several trips on the day you use the ticket.