Rail fares.....need to remortgage!!

You do not want to buy a ticket from a person at a train booth unless you have to.
ok for smaller journeys, there will not be much difference.

I think that people there just give the fare that comes up on screen. She certainly does not usually find a range of prices. And his or her fare normally seems to be middle range at best.

I a couple of weeks back was travelling back from Birmingham Moor Street using Chiltern , on the ticket mentioned on an earlier post, I was travelling on one Chilterns Silver service trains which are loco hauled push and pull types.
I glanced at the price of the ticket of the passenger in front of me , who had a super off peak open return from Birmingham Stations to London Stations priced an unbelievable £26.39p.
I do know with Birmingham New Street , you have London Midland ,and Virgin serving Euston, and local users to Coventry are advised not to use Virgin, as its a dearer ticket.
But today you have a joint Virgin/Stagecoach running both the east coast main line ,and the west coast main line at the moment.
Some rail operators have either got extended periods of when the contract expires, and bids go out to others.
Chiltern are the only operator to have a long term one of 22 years.
The Great Western despite disputes about new trains ,and electrification , First have a contract which expires in around 2-3 years.
I have noticed the new trains will have the former Great Western green livery , with whoever wins the bid.

What makes me angry is that there's no way to check the price you're going to pay. If you look on the website it gives you prices assuming that you're buying there and then, if you want to budget for tickets bought at the station you can't do it.

When I went to Manchester 3 weeks ago the price on the website was £47, by the following morning it had gone up to £97.

The problem with finding the cheapest fares is that it takes longer than the journey, so if you value your time it isn't really saving you anything.

There used to be times, when fares go up. I think you hit one of those crun.
At 8 weeks they used to go down. At 3 weeks they used to go up.
They also used to change either from a saturday night to sunday morning, or sunday night to monday morning.

My kids go on long train journeys often. So it was worth it for me to spend a day in the first instance, and them and I keeping an eye on prices over a period of time to work things out.

It can also be due to availability of "advance" tickets soontobe rather than a set time, I.e.when the allocated cheap tickets have gone, they have gone. In my case both fares, with the £10 difference, were for the next day, same route, same provider, same everything.
If you see a discounted ticket, my advice is to buy it there and then though.

I have no idea how many advanced tickets are issued.

My total guess is that more are issued for stations that are nearer ends of lines, as they are the hardest seats to fill.

And the government wants us to use public transport instead of private cars. No chance.

A really weird thing is that you can look at prices online and then you look again and it has gone up. If you go in and clear the cookies it will go back down. My son told me that one and it works.

Do you know if that works for airline prices and other things too?

[not that I know how to clear cookies, but I can ask someone].

It might do. Worth trying.

Clear cookies? - how do you do that?

I think the same thing applies to amazon. After you have looked at anything online, the next time you look it is more expensive - what a con!

No doubt it will be different on different computers, Luckygirl, but I click on the three horizontal lines in the top right hand corner of my screen (customize and control Google Chrome), choose History from the dropdown, check that Cookies are ticked, click on Clear Browsing Data, choose the timescale (usually from the past hour), Clear Browsing Data again, and your cookies and the record of your what you've been looking at (mainly GN) from the last hour mysteriously disappear.

I have to do this before I go to any website via Topcashback, otherwise they don't always recognise that I've gone in via their site and don't award me the dosh.

The disadvantage is that some of your stored passwords, including for GN, seem to disappear and you have to type them in again. I'm sure some clever clogs will be able to tell us how to stop this happening.

Thanks for the cookie clearing tip, Leticia.

It's absolutely bonkers isn't it. I went to a funeral recently along with 2 other relatives. We flew Manchester to one of the airports on the south coast for £120 return. We booked 4 days in advance (remember, funerals aren't planned weeks ahead) but if we'd booked earlier it's possible to do the return for about £40. The train fares were astronomical and we'd probably have had to stay overnight so booking flights was by far the cheaper option.
Madness.

Yes Iam64 It's not only financial madness but, just as importantly, environmental madness too.

It really penalises people who have to travel last minute. Really they should get a discount for filling empty seats!

MaggieMayBe gave a very clear explanation for clearing cookies.
If you are on an iPad you go to settings, Safari,clear history and website data.
It will sign you out if anything you were on, but in view of Mumsnet problems I have decided it is best to log out of anything as you leave it.

I think the last minute seats get filled on the whole by people who sadly have to use them in a hurry, almost no matter what the cost.

It's not just rail fares but air fares are also a minefield. Dh off to Amsterdam and he's saving £400 going via Frankfurt. Ok, it's added a couple of hours travelling but worth it for + 2/3 saving.