This makes sense how?

[davidgillon]

I needed to book my train ticket home, so checked on Trainline.com, the cheapest ticket was £129, which is weird as even this close to travel I'd normally be able to get a £46 or £67 ticket. A little bit of poking and prodding seemed to show it was the London to Chatham leg was the issue, no idea why, that's the high speed  commuter line and not normally an issue. Went to the local booking office instead (our local station is so noddy the ticket office is in a model railway shop), he pokes at his computer and gets the same figure, then pokes some more and says 'if I split it into two legs and do London to Chatham separately then it's £67.' So I asked if he'd had to switch to the non-high speed service to get that. 'No,' he says, 'it's exactly the same trains, but half the price, no idea why.'

Railway pricing moves in mysterious ways....

Comments

[hilarita]

I think the train companies trade on this. I have a degree in maths, and yet I get so confused/fed up/tired by having to deal with this shit that I will Just Pay Them The Fucking Money to make the problem go away.
(I also particularly love the bait&switch I've sometimes seen where National Rail Enquiries advertise a particular ticket price, which is then nowhere to be seen when you click through to the Evil Bastards who can sell you a ticket.)

[jesse_the_k]

Same thing happens in the U.S. with airplane flights. Completely mystifying: if you touch three cities it's $150, if you go direct from one to another it's $700.

If this appeared in an SF work it would be mocked for incomprehensibility.

[davidgillon]

if you touch three cities it's $150, if you go direct from one to another it's $700.

I'll actually be catching exactly the same three trains as I would at the higher price. Only difference is the final leg is now a separate ticket, and the total price is half what it was!