National Rail

[jack]

However, every time I go anyway, I am still horrendously annoyed by buying train tickets. I normally need an off-peak return.

This time I was confused because I tried to find out which trains back from London to Cambridge on Monday my off-peak ticket was valid for, but when I looked up journeys on the website none of the King's Cross trains were listed as offering an off-peak ticket.

I felt it was most likely that my ticket would work as normal, before whatever the rush-hour cut-off was. But I couldn't quite dismiss the nagging doubt that they might have found some loophole and changed the rules so the fast train was never off-peak -- that seemed ludicrous, but not the most ludicrous rules change I'd seen.[1]

In fact, it ended happily, as I decided to just go to King's Cross and try, and I arrived just as a fast Cambridge train was announced, and ran to the platform and got on with about thirty seconds to spare.

Looking at the national rail website now I'm back to a real web browser, it seems my mistake was to look at single fares. There are separate "slightly more off-peak tickets" only valid on Liverpool Street routes, just to make sure to gouge anyone who stupidly buys a ticket before comparing possible different tickets from different train operators, and those do have separate single and return off-peak tickets. So I hadn't realised that the suggested single ticket from King's Cross was "anytime" because the only possible "off-peak" ticket was a day return which cost more than a single anytime.

I should have figured that out if I looked at possible alternative tickets, but my mind stupidly got stuck on the idea that I could look at the website to figure out which trains my off-peak return were valid for, and I didn't consider the alternatives.[2]

And that doesn't even touch on the rules for when a rail ticket "to London Terminals" is valid on a tube ride (it seems "often, but never quite on the one you want to take").

[1] I assumed "peak" meant "peak travel times", but a friend insisted it meant "peak prices", and if it did, "off-peak" would technically be a valid description even if the ticket was only valid on second tuesdays...

[2] I do think it's somewhat deceptive to sell someone a ticket which is supposedly valid on different trains, whilst deliberately obscuring which trains it IS valid on. And yes, I realise if I scrupulously want to travel at a particular time, however expensive or inconvenient, the rail planner works, but that's not automatically the case.

Comments

[mathcathy]

I think "valid to London Terminals" means to any tube station which is also a national rail station, doesn't it?

[corrvin]

I've noticed the same sort of thing with airlines-- while I can say "show me the lowest price on this day" it's hard to say "okay, I want to go as cheaply as possible, WHICH day/time might that be, so I could arrange to travel then?"

(I'm spoilt, there's a direct OKC-Chicago route now, so it's much easier to look up than it used to be 10 years ago when I started going there to visit.)

[liv]

There's a metasearch at Skyscanner.net which lets you search by date for the cheapest flight, if that helps?

[corrvin]

Well, I want the other way around. That allows me to say "Of all flights on $DATE which is cheapest"... which is fine if I have a date for travel in mind.

But what I really want is to say "Okay, I can take five days of vacation anytime between the 4th and the 19th of the month, which set of days 4th-9th, 5th-10th, etc. has the cheapest flights?"

[corrvin]

P.S. Obviously I don't want much! That's a really complicated query, I think.

[liv]

No, Skyscanner totally can do that, it's just a bit buried. You might have to search on a particular day first and then say your travel time is flexible... let me go and look up the exact steps. You do a search with some plausible dates, then open the "Flexible" tab, then choose "whole month" in the dates column. You get a nice graph showing which days are cheapest, and you can navigate back and forth through adjacent months. I don't know if this link will work for you, or if you have to perform the search yourself, but try:
http://www.skyscanner.net/flights/okc/chia/cheap-flights-from-oklahoma-city-will-rogers-world-to-chicago.html?oym=1210&iym=1210&rtn=1

[corrvin]

OMG. GENIUS. Thanks!

[jack]

Oh yes, I'm annoyed at the trains insofar as they've got more like airlines: there may be good reason for it, but I think airlines are generally a lot worse, in not even pretending to have open tickets, or tickets that aren't tied to one particular airline, and in very deliberately making the booking process more complicated in the hopes of charging people more.