We were choosing
the right accountant for last week's Finance Fridays. For this
week we are looking at how to get cheaper train tickets by buying a
number of different tickets for the journey.
The other week by eye was
caught by a story of a football fan travelling from Oxford to an away
match in Newcastle. He and his girlfriend visited seven stations on
the journey, had 56 tickets between them but saved £30. Trying to
work out the best deal on train tickets is very difficult as you have
to negotiate between different train service providers and peak or
off-peak times. So I thought I would pick a journey and see what the
difference in price is between different internet ticket sites. Just
for the record this isn't a sponsored or paid for post just my own
investigations.
I decided the journey I
would make was for Sheffield to Edinburgh Waverley, one way, on
Saturday 11th March departing after 8am for one adult with
no Railcards. Although this is a long journey it is straightforward
and usually a direct service. The first websites I decided to check
was the established Trainline
site, East Mindlands
Trains which manages Sheffield Station, and Virgin
Trains which runs the train service between Sheffield and
Edinburgh. As you can see the first train after 8am is 8.22 and all
three companies are offering the same price for the ticket at £57.00
I then tried Red
Spotted Hanky as I know many people say this site can be cheaper
but on this occasion they were asking exactly the same price.
This is where things got
interesting as I decided to try out dedicated train ticket splitting
sites. It seems that Trainsplit,
Raileasy and
Trainsplitting are all the
same site just different web addresses. As such they all showed the
same price but it was £45.60 – a saving of £11.40 or a 20%
saving. This is for boarding the exact same train as for the tickets
sold by the other sites. How can this be possible? I found this out
by visiting another site.
It seems Trainline do offer
a ticket splitting service but you need to go through the tool on
MoneySavingExpert.com
known as Tickety Split. At first it gives the original £57.00 ticket
but once you press on 'Split this Ticket' it goes down to the same
£45.60 offered by the other sites. It also shows how this is done.
You are buying two separate tickets instead of one ticket straight
through from Sheffield to Edinburgh. The first ticket is for
Sheffield to York costing £10.00 and the second ticket is for York
to Edinburgh at £35.60. The genius of this method is that this train
stops at York on the way from Sheffield to Edinburgh so you do not
need to get off and catch another. You may need to swap seats but on
a train journey of over three hours you would want to get up at some
stage anyway.
As I said at the start of
our little journey the route between Sheffield and Edinburgh is
direct and for the ticket options I've shown you don't need to get
off the train or make sure it is stopping at a certain station as
this is the standard route. However on other routes you will need to
make sure that the tickets you have booked through the ticket
splitting method do stop at certain stations. For example the 9.29
Sheffield to London St. Pancras stops at Chesterfield, Derby and
Leicester but the 9.49 train stops at Chesterfield, Derby, Long
Easton, East Midlands Parkway, Loughborough and Leicester. So if you
bought a ticket from Sheffield to Loughborough and then Loughborough
to London St. Pancras you could use it on the 9.49 but not on the
9.29 as it doesn't stop at Loughborough. Yes, it can be confusing but
it means you should always be careful in your travel planning – it
could save you quite a bit of money.
Have you ever use a train
ticket splitting site? Did you find the saving worthwhile?
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My husband was in the UK recently, using the train and found splitting his tickets so much cheaper. Also one of his journeys was to go from London to Whatstandwell, a small stop between Derby and Matlock. The cheapest ticket was London to Matlock but it didn't stop at Whatstandwell, Only Derby first and then Matlock ... so he bought that and asked his sister pick him up in Matlock instead saving him over 50% of the cost of a ticket to Whatstandwell itself. Work that one out?
ReplyDeleteI have never done this as it seems really complicated. I will have to look into it though as I have a few long train journeys planned over the next few months. x
ReplyDeleteI have not heard of this before but will look into it. Train travel is so expensive!!
ReplyDelete