Simon Calder: How to find the cheapest train ticketsSimon Calder, THE INDEPENDENT
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00:00You won't find cheaper tickets anywhere else, that's the current promise from Trainline,
00:06so let's test it out. I'm here at London Paddington Station, hub for the Great Western
00:14Railway, with the premier route being from here to Bristol Temple Meads. The train for
00:21the 9 o'clock is right here. How much is a ticket going to cost you? Well, if you were
00:28foolish enough to buy a ticket from Paddington to Bristol, then it would cost you £132.60.
00:35Of course that is complete nonsense, way too much. You don't need to pay that too much.
00:41By using a split ticket and by buying one ticket from here to Digcot Parkway and another
00:48one from there to Bristol, you can save, well, I've just checked it out, 43% on the price.
00:55Saving you £57, well worth doing. Now, I found that on my favourite split ticketing
01:04app, which is ScotRail. The reason I like it is that it's exactly the same as Trainline
01:11but without the fees. So, if I book on ScotRail, I just pay the fare. If I book on Trainline,
01:18I pay the fare plus a £2.79 fee. That's basically increasing the cost by 3 or 4%.
01:28Trainline says we have to charge fees in order to develop the fantastically good tech that
01:34we have. I absolutely agree that they have got magnificent systems and it's a tribute
01:40to their software designers. But I certainly don't want to pay more than I need to for
01:45my train ticket and I don't want to encourage you to do so either. In normal circumstances
01:51where you don't have the madness of split ticketing, then just go to the ticket office.
01:57They are not allowed to charge any fees on top of the normal price. You can, of course,
02:05go through various apps, various websites that are not going to charge you money. No
02:10train operator's online presence is allowed to charge a fee. But there's a couple of
02:17points that I will always make. For instance, on LNER, the state-run railway company which
02:24links London Kings Cross with Yorkshire, with North East England and with Southern Scotland,
02:30I always book my tickets with them direct for a couple of reasons. First of all, if
02:36anything goes wrong, then you immediately can get your delay repay compensation from
02:43them. Secondly, you've got LNER Perks, which is basically a 2% straight cash discount.
02:53You get it back on your next journey. So well worth doing there. There's even a £5 sign-on
02:59bonus. A couple of other sites that I use from time to time. Trip.com, who do particularly
03:05good deals on rail cars from time to time. And also Uber, who at times have had a 10%
03:14credit on your train bookings. So, while Trainline says you won't find cheaper tickets anywhere
03:22else, I would humbly disagree with that. They say further along, if you do, you'll get your
03:28money back. Well, what's the point of putting in a claim when you could just get a cheap
03:33ticket in the first place? And one final thing, watch out for very specific deals that
03:40you can only get from the operator and generally only online. The classic example is the Avanti
03:46Superfair. Marvellous tickets, £15 Liverpool to London, £9 from London to Birmingham,
03:54but you can only get that by going online to Superfair and booking your trip.