Ticket splitting

[NottinghamWhite]

I decided to “bag “ a new cricket ground the other day at Kidderminster as Worcesters ground was water logged. By using my rail card the cost of a standard return was £35:50 so off I pop to Beeston station. I had a laugh with the lady behind the Perspex and told her where I wanted to travel. She said if I went from Beeston to Long Eaton & Long Eaton to Kidderminster by splitting the ticket it the cost would be £15:75 a whopping saving of almost £20. How can this be right & why isn’t it offered anyway ?

[johnh]

NW, what did you do during the 6 hour wait for your connection at Long Eaton?

[Sniffer]

An ex-railwayman writes:

Any booking office clerk worth their salt will sell you the cheapest ticket(s) available. So, for example, the last place I used to work had a daily dodge around a certain restriction. A certain railcard wasn't available before 9am so couldn't be used on the 08:53 to London. The next station was 10 minutes away so we sold a normal ticket to there and a discounted ticket from there to London (or wherever). This is fine when it's a known and obvious thing, unfortunately it's not always known or obvious. We had a clerk at a very quiet country station who had a passion for working these anomalies out. Which is fine if you work at a very quiet country station, it's not so easy to work these things out when you've got a queue 10 people deep for your entire shift. And it's not as if the management are going to point out ways for the company to lose money.

[ChilwellWhite]

Isn’t it law now that the railway companies should always offer the cheapest alternative or is the cooking sherry kicking in ?

[Sniffer]

Isn’t it law now that the railway companies should always offer the cheapest alternative or is the cooking sherry kicking in ?

That would be walking.

I don't know about the law but it's standard practice to work out what the passenger needs and give them the appropriate ticket for that. I mean if someone wanted to go from Bristol to Bath and back on the same day you wouldn't sell them a Peak return to London even though that ticket would work as it's probably 10 times the cost. But by the same token, if someone wanted to go to Auchtermuchty you might take some time working out the route and finding out what the appropriate fare was, you wouldn't spend an hour and a half trying several permutations of ticket splitting to see if you can get the tickets any cheaper. Having said that, if a passenger knew exactly what he wanted and asked for a number of tickets that split up a single ticket you would issue them.