It also has a low fares finder which shows the best fares on specific dates regardless of a return or two singles. The interface is really user friendly and allows you to easily look at all trains for the day. For advance tickets on the East Coast it offers a permanent 10% discount not available anywhere else, and sells tickets for all train journeys in the UK. Like the others it does not charge any fees and does not book insuranbce by default.
Posted in Transport, Weblinks on Monday, 31 December 2007 at 16:40Ħ5 responses to “How to avoid TheTrainLine fees”Įxcellent article, although it should be pointed out that the new website operated by National Express East Coast (previously GNER, ) is the only website operated by a Train Operator that is not operated by the Trainline, so if you book here you wouldn’t be giving them any money. You’ll save yourself some money, and hopefully reduce the market share of, whose position as the largest retailer of tickets has clearly made it complacent, to the extent that it believes it can rip off its customers without them going elsewhere for their tickets. So next time you book a train ticket, please try the site of one of the train operators. It also runs the websites of 16 out of 20 of the train operating companies, most of which don’t charge additional fees.
First Great Western leave the insurance option unselected so that the customer need only check the boxes if insurance is required.Īccording to Wikipedia, TheTrainLine accounts for 20% of all train tickets by value. In addition, TheTrainLine insists on selecting insurance for the journey by default, which the customer must remember to deselect. At the time of writing, if you book a ticket with First Great Western, it is free to have the ticket delivered or to collect it from a FastTicket machine, and there is no credit card fee either! Therefore, it’s possible to save up to £3.50 just by using a site with different branding. It even appears as TheTrainLine on your credit card statement! However, unlike TheTrainLine’s own site, the train operators’ own sites don’t levy the extortionate additional charges and booking fees. The layout and interface are practically identical, it’s just the colours and branding that are different. Anyone used to the latter would feel quite at home. Most of the operators’ websites are actually provided by none other than TheTrainLine. Just because you are using a particular train operator’s website doesn’t mean the journey has to involve travel on that operator’s trains. Once again, remember that it’s possible to buy any ticket from any outlet. For example, I use the website of my local operator, First Great Western. Fortunately, most of the train operating companies operate their own ticketing websites. The customer can also never be sure the person in the ticket office has explored all the ticket options to find the cheapest, which can be quite time consuming. Even if it’s nearby, there may be long queues, or it might not be manned at the right times. Of course, it’s not always convenient to go to the station to buy tickets.
The cheaper ticket could be bought at your local station, assuming it was convenient to go there. TheTrainLine’s claim that they can save customers £63.28 on an Edinburgh to London journey, for example, is quite misleading as they are comparing an advance purchase ticket with one bought on the day of travel. You don’t have to buy the ticket from the station your journey starts from or from the same train operator, and you can also buy cheap, advance tickets in person. So what is the alternative? It is important to remember that it’s possible to buy any rail ticket from any outlet. These latest fees can not be avoided, as you have to obtain the tickets somehow. The newest fees are £1 for having the tickets posted to you, or 50p if you choose to collect them from a “FastTicket” machine at a railway station. The fee could be avoided by paying by debit card. This then increasaed from £1 to £1.50, £2, and is now an extortionate £2.50. The slippery slope to booking fees started some years ago, when TheTrainLine introduced a charge for paying by credit card. It has just introduced booking fees, meaning that a ticket booked with TheTrainLine now costs more than buying the same ticket at the station. is a website that allows UK rail passengers to buy their tickets online.
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