don't bother with thetrainline.com

[drummergirl34]

booking tickets in advance with this website? don't bother - when you book online you book a ticket for a specific train. when you normally buy tickets at the station, the tickets are for any train so are more expensive.

Plus, you have to give thetrainline a little bit as men in the middle!

If you are booking more than 24 hours in advance, contact your local station and book the trains directly!

I used these.

I was going from Leeds to Cardiff. It was significantly less going via Manchester Pic rather than Birmingham which I would not have known otherwise. I think I saved @ £100 for the family.

Are there other sites that give you the heads up about different routes?

We use East Midlands trains to book any tickets with - no admin costs and same prices as at the ticket desks at the station.

DD booked I think through them for a train that didn't exist. Still waiting for them to get back
She had to pay extra at the station to buy another ticket

crosscountrytrains.co.uk

Trainline.com is good if you don't know which operator runs the journey though. You can then go to the operators website and buy the tickets directly

The National Rail Enquiries site lists all options and then clicks through to whichever one you need!! Keep telling bf this is why he doesn't get free WiFi codes on virgin while I do!!

Just did a comparison of virgin trains directly and Trainline for exact same journey I need to do.
Trainline was nearly £10 cheaper.

Mine are always the same, so I guess it depends on routes! I also hate the compensation on trainline, although tbf, that could just be bf, but he ends up with vouchers that can't be used to book online, whereas I get mine straight into the bank pretty quickly!

Neither of the 4 nearest stations to me have a ticket office.

That should be none of.

Virgin trains currently have a sale on for travel between july and December. I got a ticket for DS with young person's railcard from London to Glasgow for £18.

I have always found Trainline to be significantly cheaper. Have to look at different routes and different times, but sometimes find I can get tickets for half the price then it would at the station. Also one journey that I couldn't go on they refunded me automatically without me having to ask (not sure how that happens but it did).

Trainline is very much cheaper than via my local station (thanks to it being GWR ☹️), on average I safe £28 via trainline.com so won't be doing it any other way!
Even more farcical is that it costs more to go from my nearest station than from one 18 miles further away from my destination; I really can't work that one out when it's exactly the same train!

Always found train line cheaper.

In fact DH has just saved £15 on a journey next week.

Trainline always seems to be cheaper. It does something stupid whereby longer journeys are often cheaper than shorter ones. So for e.g. I want to go from Exeter- Paddington on the 10am train it would cost £60. But if I get on at Newton Abbot instead which is the stop before Exeter it costs £40. But you are not under any circumstances allowed to them use the Newton Abbott ticket and get on at Exeter instead. I have had my ticket confiscated when I tried to do this and had to buy a new full price ticket. The station staff wouldn't give any explanation as to why this isn't allowed other than it just isn't. Still angry.

Book online only with the train company you are going to travel on.

The train line can't give tickets cheaper then the individual TOC's can so if is available on the train line it will be available on the operators website also

Trainline has always been cheaper for me. Also check out megatrains although the times are not always great

Do not trust Trainline! Neither the UK nor the EU branch is any good, and they go to considerable lengths to avoid enabling you to contact the EU branch in particular (it's email only, with a response "in 2 days"!). If anything goes wrong with your journey (a delayed train meaning you miss your connection, for instance), they will deny all responsibility for arranging replacement journeys, even though they're the ones who have taken your money. My specific case: travelling via 4 trains from Halle (Germany) to London, with the first train delayed by 25 minutes, meaning I missed all my connections, including the Eurostar. DeutscheBahn was very good (despite the delay, for which they're now notorious): they issued me with replacement tickets on different trains. Of course, I still missed the Eurostar connection, but was advised by Eurostar, DeutscheBahn and Trainline UK to contact the Trainline EU office (by email!). Their response? "It's not our fault you've missed the Eurostar: DeutscheBahn have to refund you because they caused the delay." No acknowledgement of the fact that Trainline were the ones who took the money. This was the first time I used their "service", and it will be the last.

the trainline is just a booking service, do you not think the money goes to the train operator ? When I've claimed for delays its always to the train operator as its their responsibility. Never had any problems with that.

I used trainline before. Bought a ticket for my daughter with trainline. She got to the station 20 minutes early and checked the platform at the station and on the trainline app and all was correct. Walked to the bottom of the platform where they did not have screens relying on the trainline information. As it happens, the platform was changed and trainline did not updated the information in the app, by the time she realised it was too late, with 2 minutes spare to get to the new platform she missed her train. I called trainline and they were very rude and unhelpful. The manager was too busy apparently doing paperwork to answer the phone and I was told to buy another ticket if I wanted my daughter home. Mavia, I believe it was the name given by the operator promised me a call back from the manager and refused to give me his name. Goes without saying that the call never happened. Don't waste your time booking with trainline, book directly with the train company, you are not saving nothig, if anything when comparing prices it is more expensive.

They make it very clear on the app that the platform numbers are estimated based on previous journeys and may not be accurate. Your daughter should have checked the station information boards.