Great Western Coffee Shop

The old question of travelling more cheaply, what's allowed and what's not in terms of actual travel and postings here has come up again;  as we've a lot of newer members, I'm taking the opportunity to clarify it on behalf of the moderator team.

There are two ways of reducing your fare

* You can AVOID paying a higher fare by finding a lower cost one that properly and fully covers your journey.   This is legal, allowed.

* You can EVADE paying for your journey, or part of it, or try to get by on an *invalid* cheaper ticket (such as buying a child fare when you're no longer a child).   That is illegal - not allowed.

Most experienced travellers, as a matter of course, use legal fare avoidance.  Buying an off peak ticket in place of an anytime, advanced purchase, for example ... also buying a ticket for a longer journey that the one you're making or making a journey from A to C using tickets from A to B and B to C, allowed if you travel via and on a train that is scheduled to stop at B.

The official view on the forum is that legally reducing your cost of travel is acceptable, but that illegally doing so is not.  Posts which help people on a budget travel when they couldn't otherwise do so are offering a valuable service, and if the folks who run the railways don't like such lower fares being taken up, they shouldn't offer such fares for sale.   Posts which encourage illegal travel are, though, outwith what's allowed and the board owners could be in hot water if they encouraged them.


For acceptable ways of reducing your fare costs, see the following thread:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4254.0