Just to clarify, I agree with your sentiments. It was the individual who had the brass neck, I certainly do not find the whole situation funny.

It does seem the application of the rules tapers off as the day/evening wears on. The people who arrived without valid tickets were allowed to purchase them. What about PF^▸ (Penalty Fare)'s?

You would encounter a more robust approach if you turned up at Reading during the day IMO^▸ (in my opinion).

Also the issue of (Off Peak Day) returns being valid until 0230 the next day got me thinking it should really be a bit later than that. Having to pay an Anytime fare for a service at 0330, say, seems a bit excessive.

Do commuters generally start before 0430, which I believe is the cut-off on Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services)?

Had to laugh at the passenger last night having a go about lack of ticketing facilities at Reading late at night, then was found with a ticket to Reading West when he allegedly wanted to go to Maidenhead.

Presumably it was a dry day? The outcome could have been quite different otherwise.

^22.80 & ^33.90 respectively on the Southern website, so that is the "undiscounted" price.

I do not have the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) app, but from what you have said we can conclude it works on that too then.

Agree about the ringtone element. Mobile phone conversations tend to be annoying compared to normal conversations because I think it stems around not being able to hear the other participant.

Counter-intuitively I think someone putting their call on loudspeaker (at a reasonable volume) would be less irritating.

AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know), there are 2 major booking backends, ATOS/WebTIS and Trainline. The main difference is just the branding applied to the front (e.g. FGW, Southern, Redspottedhanky etc. in the case of WebTIS). In the case of the ASA ruling FGW will have made a change request to ATOS to limit the fares shown as applicable to the search made. The inconsistency being Southern have not been made subject to that ruling, so have not requested the change presumably. A lot of the pages on the FGW site, for example, share similar relative URL's to the others with just the domain name changed.


I bet XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) would not be interested to introduce this, given that a lot of their advance quotas are now set to 0 !


Here is Virgin Trains' example. I only discovered it recently on this page under "best fare finder" on the right hand side.
http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/tickets-offers/

...or Motor Insurers' frequent claims of 20% off.

20% off what? How do we know the initial premium has not been adjusted upwards to take account of this.

Absolutely, there has only been around 2/3rds of August from which to benefit from the true "spirit" of the promotion (even then for travel from 8 September).

Companies will continue to use these slights of hand - how long has it taken the OFT to take action against low quality imported furniture retailers?!

The increase is actually 0% when buying via the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website, not 1.11% because the 10% discount entirely cancels out the 11.11% increase.

These increases/discounts are already in the system.

e.g. I took a sample journey from London Paddington to Plymouth on Wednesday 6 November, on the 11.06.

Price quoted by FGW = ^18.50 (i.e. the same fare as now, so called WDS Advance from BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) Fares)
http://www.brfares.com/#fares?orig=PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains)&dest=PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains)&rlc=
Price quoted by Southern = ^20.60 (so actually not rounded to the nearest 10p, but rounded up)

Interestingly Southern also shows the entire fare range on the first mixing deck button (so ^15 being the new lowest standard advance fare), but FGW only shows the lowest price available for that particular search.

SWT^▸ (South West Trains) did this around 6 months ago, with colour-coded posters on stations describing the chance of getting a seat on morning peak services into London.

I cannot find a link online and the posters have long since gone.

Generally up fasts arriving in London around 8.30 were heavily loaded. You were more likely to get a seat on stoppers.

Customers who book through firstgreatwestern.co.uk will save 10% on First Great Western's Advance tickets from 11 August 2013 to 02 May 2014 for travel dates between 08 September 2013 to 03 May 2014. These discounted Advance tickets can only be booked through our website.

Further details here:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Train-times-and-tickets/Ticket-types/Leisure-tickets

Have a sit down and a pint* in the pub on the station while she waits 

Edit: *other more suitable beverages may be available

Not sure on that one. Mine is still OK, but I am using an old version of Firefox (14) and do not get redirected.

East Coast and Southern are still using the old style AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know). Plus Southern used to (still do maybe?) their rainy day guarantee for a refund without admin fee for some uncollected tickets.

Had a similar one at Euston going to Liverpool LS on an Advance changing at Crewe (boarding a Manchester Piccadilly VT^▸ (Virgin Trains - former franchises) and changing onto London Midland for the last bit). Reason being it was substantially cheaper for little extra hassle.

The guy at the end of the barrier said "you know this doesn't go to Liverpool" having just seen the advance ticket with 2 "reservations" (well one normal reservation and one get this service but no seat one!).