The Anonymous Widower

What Is The Best Time To Buy Train Tickets?

On the 3rd of February, I’m going up to York to see my old boss.  The idea was to take the 10:00 from King’s Cross and then take the  19:35 back home after a meal and a chat.

So booking the ticket shouldn’t have been too difficult, especially as I tried to book the ticket on the 18th of January, sixteen days before travel.

I tried several times to book direct on the East Coast web site, but for some reason I couldn’t get an acceptable fare. The day before, I hadn’t had any problems and was rather surprised.

I should also say that I don’t like booking through agents and always prefer to deal with the company itself.  It all stems from an incident many years ago, when I was going round the United States and had booked on British Airways to fly to New York and then two days later on a direct flight in Continental from Boston to Houston.  The ticket agent at BA had told me that I would have to confirm the second flight in New York, as it was the only direct flight of the day and could be fully booked. As instructed I went into a travel agent in New York,  and was told that BA had made a mistake and booked me on a non-existent flight.  But no matter, he could book me by Atlanta on Delta.

But it didn’t just go by Atlanta, but virtually every other city in the eastern part of the United States.  I ended up in Houston, as a piece of chewed string at three in the morning.  But the travel agent had got his commission!

A few days later I flew Continental to Los Angeles.  I asked about the changed flight and the gate staff checked and found that the flight from Boston had run as normal and for my trouble they upgraded me to First.

So after the unsuccessful attempts to buy on East Coast, I looked at Grand Central, who also run trains on the route.  For the times, I wanted to travel, they were actually offering me tickets on East Coast.  So in the end I turned to the TrainLine and booked tickets at £24.10 up and £18.80 down, which was an acceptable price. I did pay a booking fee of £1.00 and a credit card fee of £3.50 on top, which I always find unacceptable.  I’m pretty certain, that East Coast don’t add miscellaneous charges. I also didn’t like the attitude of the TrainLine web site, which seemed to expect me to sign up to all sorts of dubious spam-producing loyalty offers.  In my view there is only one decent loyalty scheme on UK trains and that is Virgin’s, where if you enter your Virgin Flying Club number, you get a few extra points. Totally painless and they don’t spam.

Imagine my surprise though when on the next day, I tried out of curiosity to see what I would be charged on East Coast.  I could go up for £21.45 and down for £16.75 on the same trains, as I’d booked the previous day.

So if I’d waited 24 hours, I’d have saved £9.20.  Not a great deal of money, but I don’t like being ripped off by agents.

So why had I been unable to book direct on the 18th of January?

The obvious ones are.

1. A fault on my computer.
2. A bug on the East Coast web site. 
3. Too many people trying to book overloading the web site.

I could also be paranoid and might suggest that the East Coast web site, was being deliberately overloaded by person or persons unknown.  I should say that a friend was also trying to book an Edinburgh London ticket at about the same time and she had similar problems to those I had of being unable to buy a ticket at a sensible price.

Since then, I’ve been looking at the East Coast web site and seeing what I would pay for the two tickets. Prices are as follows.

• 20-January £21.45/£16.75
• 21-January £21.45/£16.75
• 22-January £21.45/£16.75
• 23-January £21.45/£16.75
• 24-January £25.85/£16.75
• 25-January £25.85/£21.45
• 26-January £39.15/£32.50
• 27-January £28.35/£24.45
• 28-January £25.85/£21.45
• 29-January £25.85/£21.45
• 30-January £25.85/£21.45
• 31-January £25.85/£21.45
• 1-February £25.85/£21.45
• 2-February £25.85/£21.45
• 3-February £57.80/£57.80

This simple example is showing that booking about two weeks before should give one of the best prices.  I shall continue to add more data to this table, to get a more definitive answer.

But whatever you do book direct! And judging by the last figure, when I attempted to book on the day of travel, the last minute option is not on, although I think that if I’d booked in the evening of the 2nd, I’d have got a better price!

Incidentally, when I went to Cambridge on Tuesday, I tried to book a ticket online at First Capital Connect.  They referred me to the TrainLine.  So I bought the ticket at the station.

January 27, 2011 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Flying, Trains, Virgin Trains