h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My daughter Iz has booked a return train ticket with London Midlands from Euston to Watford Junction. She bought an "any time day return" ticket which is supposed to be valid for any time during the day. The website insisted she specified a time for the outgoing journey. Why

Good question. I suspect it's nothing to do with ticket validity, but more to do with the vagaries of the ticketing system. Maybe the outward time's part of the database primary key or something.

Is she using the trainline by any chance? It's awful for doing that. I'd be very wary she's not getting an invalid ticket as a result personally, I don't trust it as far as I could spit it (I can't spit websites very far )

Their webdesign doesn't seem to cope with open ended tickets at all.

Buy from the operator direct would be my advice.

Having said that- if the ticket says 'anytime' on it, then she's probably OK and has satisfied the stupid intractableness of the web design.

Can't remember which site it was. After she'd booked the ticket she tried the company's own website- it also asks for a time.

She won't collect the ticket until she goes to London. She was hoping for some reassurance that she will in fact get the right ticket.

in those cases I always make a bazillion screenshots. For when I descend on their customer complaints office with my Email of Flaming Righteousness.

This may be just an artefact of the ticketing system. Some services have different T&Cs depending on the time of day. For example, there are trains in the West country that require you to book a seat in busy periods.

If she wants to travel on the Underground before 1938, the carriages are now on the Isle of Wight mainline.

<BB<

Could it simply be that it is a ticket valid for 24 hours from the time you start the first journey and not just from midnight to midnight on the same day?

I googled the terms and conditions of an anytime railticket yesterday night. She will be OK, they are indeed valid at any time of day.

Just an artefact of the booking system.

Thanks Orcus. Stupid websites account for a lot of problems.

You're most welcome.

It is in an irritant, I get annoyed having to state a time for an open ended journey on websites like the Trainline and it does come across as confusing. So I can imagine if you're not so familiar it's going to cause stress.

As a rule of thumb it's the cheaper tickets - advanced fares and off-peak tickets where you're likely to get issues with exact trains being needed.

I wonder if they ask for a specific time, because there may be other ticket options? An attempt to ensure you can get the best ticket for the time of journey you plan - or you might want to change time of travel to get a cheaper ticket.

I have found that some of the least useful web-sites are for airlines. You can search for hours and never find the answer to a relatively simple question. The only site that I have found to be worse is our "Canada Revenue Agency" - aka, the Tax Man.

European low-budget airline websites are very good because they get 100% of their income from the websites.

>>I wonder if they ask for a specific time, because there may be other ticket options? An attempt to ensure you can get the best ticket for the time of journey you plan - or you might want to change time of travel to get a cheaper ticket.<<

If only. I always think the ticket machines do the exact opposite of that, tbh. I never feel sure that I'm getting the best deal whatever country I'm in.

Ah, ticket machines aren't to be trusted at all!

Pretty sure I had this exact same debate with myself around Xmas time, and in the end I had no trouble using the tickets any time. Really head messing around though.

London Midland into Euston is my Manor, so to speak.

In my experience, rail ticket websites ask you to specify the train you intend to catch, even when you are buying an anytime ticket, so they can automatically make you a seat reservation. And I suspect this is for their benefit, not yours, because as seats on particular services get booked up, the availability of cheaper 'advance' tickets reduces.

On London Midland services it's certainly not for your benefit, because you can't actually reserve seats on their services. Some sites even get you to specify window/aisle etc preferences, before breaking this news to you

The key thing to watch out for is the ticket type. Advance tickets are valid only on a specific service. Off-peak tickets have time of day restrictions. Anytime tickets sometimes have route restrictions (I once had to pay a £3.45 surcharge because of this, despite my protests that this was the route the website had given me for my ticket).

Ticket machines have a nasty habit of defaulting to a more expensive ticket, eg first class (husband got nobbled in that way on a one-stop journey - he found out he could have been enjoying an anti-maccassar and an electric socket 2 mins before his journey ended) or anytime (if you're buying your ticket at 08:55 but travelling on a train leaving at 09:05).

One of my favourite Private Eye cartoons ever was of a guy sitting at a table reading 'Understanding British Railway Ticketing volume 5' with volumes 1 to 4 stacked on the floor next to him.

Mol