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September 07 | Be
careful when buying rail tickets |
In a recent survey by Which? it
was discovered that only half of prices quoted by the National
Rail Enquiries and also staff at the ticket offices in stations
were the cheapest available.
The consumer watchdog asked 25 questions regarding prices on
various rail routes across the UK, which has prompted Transport
Secretary Ruth Kelly to announce that she would make purchasing
rail tickets simpiler to understand. She said at the Labor
Party conference that people, "can be confident they're
getting the right ticket at the right price".
Quoted more than double
In an example, Which? were quoted £44.50 for a ticket to
Grantham in Lincolnshire from London where if they had been put
on a train just 10 minutes earlier the ticket could of been
bought for £20.
Astonishingly small
Although the report looks fairly bad, National Rail Enquiries
chief executive Chris Snoggins slammed the survey as unreliable
due to the 'small' number of questions. Mr Snoggins said,
"The problem with this survey is that it is just a sample
of 25, an astonishingly small sample size, as has been the case
of Which? reports in previous years.
"We employ two independent expert external companies who,
between them, measure 18,000 of our calls a year and on that
scale of sample we actually get 97.2% correct." he said.
Mr Snoggins comments were also backed up by The Association of
Train Operating Companies (Atoc) who agreed that the sample
provided was too small to be representative.
Mystery shopper tests
An independent marketing report which included mystery shopper
tests concluded that booking office staff sold the correct
ticket 99.1% of the time, Atoc added.
Which? had also agreed that the National Rail Enquiries website
did supply it with the best value fares.
Useful Websites
National
Rail Enquiries
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