TVM - promoted "quick buy" tickets still cost more than they should

[whole diary]

[grahame]

If I walk up to a ticket vending machine at an unstaffed station in our area, it will offer my a number of popular journeys, including (after 9 a.m.) an off peak return to London.   At Cam and Dursley, the fare is £95.40, at Frome it's also £95.40, and at Melksham it's £86.50.  If I'm travelling to London, and not going or coming back at "commuter time", that's the ticket I want, right?  No - wrong - it probably isn't.

Taking Melksham as the simplest example, I could spend £86.50.   Or I could select that fare then go four more menu selection to switch from an "Off Peak" to a Super off peak" ticket at a fare of £64.90 - that's a saving of over £20, or around 25%.  What's the difference?  On the journey from Melksham to London - no difference at all.  Super off peak and off peak are valid on any train from Melksha except the 07:21 and 08:02 on Monday to Friday.  On my return journey, on the £64.90 fare I can set off back any time at the weekend, or on Monday to Friday at 12:18, 14:18, 19:18 or 21:31.  The extra £20 lets me leave London additionally at 10:00 or 16:31. If I want to leave London at 07:48 or 17:48, those are peak trains and neither "off peak" nor "super off peak" is valid. The ticket machine does not offer these details - it just says exactly the same thing about "no being valid on peak trains" on both the £86.50 and £64.90 tickets. If you want to ask for help, the help point to talk to someone is 20 yards away!

My problem with this is that for newcomers, they aren't going to know the difference and will pay the ticket machine £20 more than they need. 

And I fear that come the closure of ticket offices in other local stations, many members of the public will be sold tickets costing more than they need to pay. Perhaps the closure of ticket offices is in part a way to increase revenue, as well as (according to headlines) "to save costs.


I have used Melksham in my example above because it's the least bad and simplest.

At Frome, as well as the £95.40 off peak headline option, you have choices:
£86.50 off peak only valid via Newbury
£71.20 super off peak
£64.90 super off peak only valid via Newbury
£51.10 off peak only valid via Salisbury
£48.50 super off peak only valid via Salisbury

At Cam and Dursley, as well as the £95.40 off peak headlne option, you have:
£86.50 off peak only valid via Stroud
£71.20 super off peak
£64.80 super off peak only valid via Stroud

P.S. on Melksham - the machine can also be persuaded to sell you an off peak any route, and a super off peak any route, at higher fares than the from panel price which is via Swindon.   Using any route (in practise via Westbury) very rarely gains you anything more than a few minutes earlier in or later from London.

I did see one machine (none of these three!) yesterday with a notice "if you want to find a complete range of fares, use the A to Z station selector" - which at least gives a hint.  But the system looks designed to entice the unwary to spend more than they need ...

[bradshaw]

I have to get from Maiden Newton to Bristol early next month just for the day, so looked in to prices.
All the sites I accessed gave the CHEAPEST as £40.80. That is until you see the other fares button. This includes the CDR^▸ (Off Peak Day Return [ticket type] (formerly 'Cheap Day')) at £30.20. So the cheapest fare initially offered is over 33% higher than the actual cheapest.
How many are sucked into paying the higher fare I wonder. It is this which will be a barrier to closing all the ticket offices.
At £40 I would not have bothered travelling by train and probably driven instead.

[Bmblbzzz]

I haven't used a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) for a couple of months, but the last time I did, the Super Off-Peak was right there on the first screen. There wasn't even the vaguest description of the difference between that and Off-Peak, or of what constitutes peak. I expect that to do so would require several screens' worth of verbiage, and therein lies the bigger problem.

[Ralph Ayres]

When there's a choice between conspiracy and incompetence I generally go for the latter. In this case I suspect the people making the decisions really aren't aware how difficult/impossible it sometimes is to get a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) to sell the cheapest (or best, even if it's perhaps not quite the cheapest) ticket and I don't think ticket office closure is deliberately designed to increase revenue in that way.  It's just possible that we may finally see TVM software improved but there's really nothing to beat the combination of experience and fuzzy logic that a good ticket seller has to cut through the dross and sell the right ticket.  Sadly I suspect real fare simplification ain't gonna happen as enough passengers currently benefit from some of the current quirks and will lose out that the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) will be unwilling to make the significant changes needed. 

[Surrey 455]

I had the opposite experience recently. A few weeks ago I wanted to travel from Bookham to Fratton. I was surprised that the TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) was charging less than I was expecting until I saw that the default option was via Barnham. I was planning to go via Guildford which was the quicker option by about an hour. The other options just showed a price and ticket type and it was not obvious which button to press to go via Guildford. I eventually worked it out. That was at a SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) TVM. The next station down the line is Leatherhead which is a Southern station. Their TVM also defaulted to via Barnham.

App or website default to via Guildford.

[grahame]

When there's a choice between conspiracy and incompetence I generally go for the latter. In this case I suspect the people making the decisions really aren't aware how difficult/impossible it sometimes is to get a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) to sell the cheapest (or best, even if it's perhaps not quite the cheapest) ticket and I don't think ticket office closure is deliberately designed to increase revenue in that way. 

I suspect you are correct on this.  I have got to know quite a lot of rail industry professionals over the years, and almost all of them are good, but most of them travel on staff passes or have a transport department.

Not exactly a "mystery shopper" job, but I would love to see a senior politician or DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) civil servant dropped off at Melksham Town bridge and be required to make the journey to their office on Horseferry Road and back frugally. They might find it very educational, especially if not provided with a smartphone (but we will let them have a credit card).   An artificial test for sure - perhaps better if the candidate were to be that person's mother, son, or ex, shadowed by the VIP but not helped through systems.

[Sixty3Closure]

Approaching it from the other side the last ticket machine I used had a 'cheapest ticket' option without so far as I could see any explanation as to what the restrictions were. I assume it was a cheap day return but as it wasn't a regular journey I didn't know which trains I could use it on (or not).

It was about 7.30am but I don't know if the machine would sell me a ticket that I couldn't use on the next train?