Club 55

[whole diary]

[imac]

Yes, there have been a lot of negative views about Club 55 on this thread.
As a satisfied passenger, may I comment?

I travellef from Guildford to Truro - a return day trip - to have a brief lunch with a relative I had not been able to meet for 20 years. It was rather wonderful for both of us.

I travelled first class. Both there and back the first class was half empty, and it looked as if a considerable number of the passengers that were there were also on Club 55. I had a quite passable cooked breakfast on the way out and the attention of the wine steward on the way back. All profit to FGW^▸ (First Great Western), as well as pleasure for me.

I would not have gone had I to pay the ^300 or so basic first class fare. For a day out, that is in direct competition with a ride on the steam hauled Orient Express. Nor would I attempt that particular journey second class, as the high density seating blocks out most of the passing view. Ten hours reading [again] 'Pride and Prejudice' is not much of a day out.

My only cavil is, as many above have commented, the difficulty of finding out exactly what the travel restrictions are. It took a week to get a confident answer from Enquiries, involving some High Official at Paddington then on holiday, as to whether the ticket would be valid on the 07:57 going west from Reading - an important criterion if one is to get to Truro for lunch. No commercial reason, it emerged, why it should not be valid - I was surprised to find how empty the first class was on what should be a significant business train.

But difficulty over finding out what travel restrictions apply is pretty general, and I do not pick out FGW for this. A planned journey last week into South London produced a wholly bizarre set of answers from  484950, and subsequently a supervisor who insisted on a telephone response rather than e-mail. It turned out that she simply did not know the answers [ ?not to be put in writing?], and suggested that I ask my local station. However we did agree that the two further answers given by the NatRail web site were both wrong, and she volunteered to have them corrected. My local station said "its a grey area, but this is what we usually sell".

So I am not very sympathetic towards the comments made by some professionals above about 'blue rinses' cheating the system. 

imac

[vacman]

the 0730 Padd-Pnz is a quite train at the best of times, I stand by my views, the 0844 and 1000 Pnz-Pad services were rammed to the gunwhales with c55's whilst passengers who had paid the full FC^‡(resolve) fare stood!

[Chris from Nailsea]

Thanks very much for posting such a detailed record of your journey, imac - and welcome to the Coffee Shop forum! 

I happen to share your concern at the lack of clear information about the validity of specific tickets: if the terms of those tickets aren't clear, to all and sundry - including FGW^▸ (First Great Western) staff! - then those tickets just shouldn't be advertised for sale, in my view.

CfN. 

[imac]

Thankyou for two interesting replies from Vacman and Chris
Perhaps a few further words of explanation might be helpful?

Train Loading
Firstly I accept that other midweek trains going to Cornwall might be considerably fuller than the half-full First 07:57  from Reading that I caught. This early train is businessman's times and, as I said, it did surprise me. However I suppose if I had an appointment in Bristol I would nowadays probably drive down the motorway or train to Parkway.
For the return I caught the 14:41 from Truro. The First Class by the time I got off at Reading was a little bit over half full. Perhaps the later trains were fuller?

Ticket availability
Actually, the leaflet I picked up at the local station on Club 55 was, with hindsight, clear enough - for trains going west in the morning no restriction from Reading was listed. However I am aware of the 09:30 rule, and thought I had better double-check, since I did not want to cut across a rule hidden in a Notice I had not seen.
FGW^▸ (First Great Western) Customer Services seemed a more likely point than 484950, as this was a FGW promotion. The first respondent said quite firmly that trains before 09:30 were not available. I re-read the leaflet, and phoned again. The second respondent said not available, read the leaflet, paused, said he was not sure, and offered to call back once he had contacted the High Official at Paddington. He did, after a week, and confirmed that the early train was available. A responsible action.
Vacman has now kindly confirmed that this train regularly runs half empty in First so the availability of Club 55 seems commercially sensible.

The second confusion concerned a joint journey my wife and myself proposed. The first question concerned the availability and use of a London multizone travelcard - this produced the multiple incorrect answers. The second concerned the correct extension ticket for extending the availability of a London Freedom Pass - this produced the multiple 'don't knows'. They are both pretty common tickets and issues and I was a little surprised.
In making these comments I am not knocking the enquiry and booking office people - they do seem to have a difficult task.

Now, I have a limited experience of reading legal documents, have high speed internet access, am moderately computer-literate, have, acquired through ages, a generalised knowledge of network rail, and have the time [most of the time] to 'suss things out'.
If I can't get correct answers reasonably quickly, what chance has the 'blue-rinse' lady?  Maybe some are 'trying it on' but I dare suggest that others could be simply confused.

Imac

[Ollie]

The second confusion concerned a joint journey my wife and myself proposed. The first question concerned the availability and use of a London multizone travelcard - this produced the multiple incorrect answers. The second concerned the correct extension ticket for extending the availability of a London Freedom Pass - this produced the multiple 'don't knows'. They are both pretty common tickets and issues and I was a little surprised.
In making these comments I am not knocking the enquiry and booking office people - they do seem to have a difficult task.

Freedom Pass would have no impact on the Club 55 fare though as price would be the same.

[grahame]

If I can't get correct answers reasonably quickly, what chance has the 'blue-rinse' lady?  Maybe some are 'trying it on' but I dare suggest that others could be simply confused.

If your job is to enforce the rules, and you spend a high proportion of your day looking for / dealing with people who break the rules, you may tend to start off by assuming the worst about everyone.  There have been occasions (and I'm referring wider here, and not to anyone who's posted in this thread) when an enforcer has - in my view - assumed that passengers are guilty of a deliberate attempt to defraud when they've got no such intent.   There are some over-55s who aren't very pleasant and can do a very good "try-on" act, feeding off the law-abiding, old-and-scatty reputation of the older generation, but the majority who are incorrectly ticketed are likely to be such because of a genuine error / lack of knowledge / delay on a previous leg.

I don't think the best solution is with the staff, who have a really tough job, nor is the solution to be so lax as to leave an open door for people who deliberately defraud the the system.   The real solution would be to fix the fare system - but that would mean sweeping out an awful lot of special deals and putting a lot of prices up dramatically (which would lead to some people being very annoyed for a very long time) while reducing a lot of prices (which would lead to some people being slightly pleased for a day or two when they learned of their 'luck') - and is a political hot potato than no-one wants to grab.

We've written a lot on this sort of subject here (as I'm sure you've noticed) so I won't go banging on further - however, it's also worth noting just how stressful it can be on the innocent passenger who finds him/herself at the receiving end of an inquisition. I've had customers who refused to join a train at our local station (where you buy tickets on the train) because they've read all the "MUST buy ahead" penalty fare stuff with its dire threats, and met others who have been threatened with the police because the train manager has got it wrong about which particular offpeak fares are valid on her train.  And in my own experience I was pulled up for walking through First Class on a standard class ticket (to give something to someone who I knew was there) ... yes, I was wrong;  I simply forgot the rule (and I conjecture that others would not have even known) ... and as you see it's still with me years later.

[old original]

Looks like it's returning, starting on the 19th September, no more details at the mo.

[JayMac]

So far, the only confirmed operator offering Club 55 this Autumn is Arriva Trains Wales:

http://www.arrivatrainswales.co.uk/Templates/Content.aspx?pageid=383
http://www.arrivatrainswales.co.uk/Club55TermsConditions/

Tickets will be available to purchase from 27th August 2011 for travel from 4th September until 14th December. ATW^▸ (Arriva Trains Wales (former TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company))) have again teamed up with neighbouring TOCs, offer through journey opportunities with special priced add-ons. Journeys to/from FGW^▸ (First Great Western)-land have been included again this time round.

Rumours abound that First Group TOCs are also about to announce an Autumn Club 55, but I've not yet found any confirmed information online.

Any inside info from our FGW staff forum members....?

[old original]

'twas in my mates Star(?) machine for travel after 19th sept, but only 1st class was showing so they're still playing with it probably...

[Maxwell P]

Looks like the First Class freebies could be taking another hammering. 

[Ollie]

Club 55 is happening again - not sure of exact dates at the mo.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Hmm. I already get discounts from Saga - why can't I also get benefits from Club 55??  Pure age discrimination! 

[vacman]

Think I'll book some annual leave 

[JayMac]

It would appear that the 1st Class offering for this autumn's Club 55 (confirmed as running after a call to FGW^▸ (First Great Western) CS but they wouldn't tell me the start date) is to be quota controlled. Which will come as a relief to staff, season and full fare ticket holders.

The down side is that to free up seats for the Club 55 quota FGW have removed from sale the lower tiers* of 1st Advance fares on many (if not most) Inter City flows.

So what they give to one section of society they take from the rest. 

*On principal flows there are usually between 5 and 7 tiers of 1st Advance fares. I've checked a representative sample of flows for journeys beyond September 19th (the likely start date for Club 55) up to the current booking horizon and all were returning 1st Advances priced at either the 3rd or 4th lowest tier upward. The lowest 2 or 3 tiers are simply not available.

[vacman]

I'm relieved to hear that it's quota controlled but it's simply not fair that regular travellers under the age of 55 will now be penalised!