I don't know whether this falls within your competition rules Jason, but.......I posted this previously on another thread. Hope it was, and is still, accurate as I'm using it tomorrow!:-

I was pleased to find that if you
can wait until the 11:23 to Liv St. and are coming back after 7pm, (and
you have a railcard) then a super saver Day Travelcard to London is
£19.  This applies to any train arriving in London after 12 midday, as
long as you return after 7pm. I think this super saver only applied at
weekends before, but now it is a weekday thing too,

Buy a day return to Chelmsford and a day return from Chelmsford to Liverpool street, make sure the train stops at Chelmsford and save money!

 

The whole rail system has gone mad!! I had a meeting in London on Tuesday at noon so I got to Colchester North Station car park at about 10.30am to park and catch the next Liverpool Street train that came through. I went to pay for a day's 'Off Peak' parking for £3.80 but couldn't get my credit card into the machine nearest me (I think someone had stuffed something into the slot) so I walked to the next machine... which didn't take credit cards.

So I called the telephone number on the machine to pay that way. The sticker on the machine assured me it would be "Quick and simple." It wasn't, because the first thing it tried to do when it connected was to try to cross sell me other services, then suggested I could save time by downloading their iPhone app!!

Eventually it ran through the the various options, but there was no 'Off Peak' option, so the only thing for it was to use the option to input the number of hours I wanted to pay for. I choose five hours, only to be informed that five hours wasn't an option! Knowing my meeting would only take 30 minutes, and was near Liverpool Street, I thought I'd live dangerously and tried four hours. BINGO!! It worked. I entered my credit card details and was then given a summary of my purchase... it told me I could park until the exact same time the next day (it was now 10.43am) for which I was being charged £4... 20 pence more than if I had been able to pay for my parking with the machine, and TWENTY hours more than I had wanted... which of course wasn't what I'd really wanted as I had originally tried to buy five anyway.

Somebody actually gets paid to come up with this nonsense.

The Advanced Saver tickets scheme is yet more evidence of the little changes Abellio have made since taking over. Though I'm not a fan of having a fragmented, privatised railway. They've probably been the company we've had so far. There are tonnes of these fares inconsistencies. Mainly the fault of the DfT, they sign-off the fares manuals.

We can't have people jumping onto trains just because they suddenly decide that they want to travel, can we.

That sort of behaviour must be discouraged. After all, everything else we do in life is planned well in advance. Why should public transport be any different?

I don't know if this will help regular commuters particularly, but Martin the Moneysaving Expert suggests one of two things: buy tickets twelve weeks in advance (as this is when they're released and the cheap ones are up for grabs) or book a chain of singles. Not what you'd call
convenient, but still, it might work for thr occasional trip......

And here's Peter's link.

Yes the whole thing is written for people buying tickets from the machine. The staff at Wivenhoe are pretty hepful if you buy tickets at the BO (but such conversations won't necessarily bring out ALL the options you can adopt). Incidentally the Enfield cock-up will get corrected some day (it's been there for a long while though).

"So if you are traveling between Wivenhoe and LS on the 8:23, 9:23 or
10:23, you can buy an Off Peak Day Return to Enfield Town... and then
end your journey at LS. The price is £24.60, compared to the Wivenhoe to
LS fare of £31.90"

Can anyone confirm if this little 'trick' still works?

Gonna make use of that tomorrow then. Thanks!!

Best to check on the national rail website as that'll confirm.

And don't worry if, like me, you are more of an Elementary than an Advanced saver - you can still buy the Advance Saver tickets!

Hi, It isn't shown on the website. It's a local easement for Wivenhoe.

The off peak tickets on the day of travel won't show up on the machine for the 0834. These can be bought at the ticket office, after the 0822 train has departed.