UK: Carnet rail tickets are a canny saver…

[John Ashworth]

Carnet rail tickets are a canny saver … but why are they so hard to find?

Having recently discovered carnet tickets, Lisa Bachelor thinks train companies should make it easier for passengers to locate cheaper fares

Guardian
Posted by Lisa Bachelor
Thursday 22 December 2011

The "happy new year" greeting that train fares will rise from 2 January 2012 was greeted with the kind of bitter criticism usually reserved for politicians and high street banks.

"Same old b*******s every year, I hate living in this country," one reader commented under our story about the increases – succinctly summing up the feelings of many of the nation's commuters.

The news prompted me to once again check whether I could save any money on my own train travel from Hertfordshire into London. Since coming back to work following maternity for three days a week I have asked twice at my local train station whether there is a cheaper option than buying a daily return ticket at the station each day.

I travel regularly so thought there could be, but I don't use the trains often enough for a weekly or monthly ticket to be cost-effective. I checked whether ordering online in advance would save me money, but it doesn't (besides which, I sometimes end up working from home at short notice so any pre-ordered ticket would be wasted).

So the answer from the station staff has always been "no". I have to queue up every day – also a pain – and buy a standard return ticket.

Then I read another article by my colleague Mark King on how to beat the rail fare rises. One of the suggestions he makes is to buy carnet tickets. He says: "First Capital Connect offers the chance to buy 10 single tickets, for both peak and off-peak travel, on many of its commuter routes. These last for three months and you pay up front, and are great value if you make a few journeys a week."

I don't travel by FCC but thought it was worth finding out whether my train operator, National Express East Anglia (NXEA), offers a similar option. I asked at the train station; the staff had never heard of carnets and said NXEA didn't offer them as far as they knew. I looked at the company's website under Tickets and Fares and there was no mention of carnets. I was about to give up when I decided to do a quick Google search. One of the results sent me to NXEA's Contact Us page. There, halfway down the screen, was a section headed National Express East Anglia Sustainable Transport Plans and Carnet Tickets (so not exactly easy to find) and a number to call (0845 600 7245).

I spoke to a customer services representative who told me I could buy 10 journeys for the price of nine, and if I bought now I would beat the price rise. The tickets are valid for three months and can be used by my husband on the same route during that time – so I bought 30.

I got my calculator out and worked out that the cost of 10 return journeys would be £120.60 using the carnets rather than the £133.56 I would have paid from January – a saving of almost £13. While this is not exactly a fortune, it is decent enough.

However, more to the point is that NXEA should be informing commuters about this. I told the woman on the carnet sales line that the station staff knew nothing about the tickets. "They wouldn't – they're not told about them at stations," she said. "You can only get them by calling this, the Business Travel number." She then told me the number was "mainly used by local councils and businesses looking for cheaper fares".

Train passengers should not have to dig around in the small print of a train operator's website to find the cheapest deals. First Capital Connect displays its carnet option prominently on the Train Tickets and Fares section of its website. So why is NXEA making it so difficult for its passengers to find what could be the cheapest option for them?

According to its press office NXEA does not offer a customer-wide carnet product and only has one for business customers, which is why it isn't publicised. But I managed to buy the tickets and I'm not a business. I even asked on two separate occasions when I called the carnet line whether it was OK for me to buy them and was told yes.

Have any of you managed to save any money on your own train fares, and if so how easy was it to do?