thetrainline.com

I know loads of people have already reviewed thetrainline, but I think this is a good case of changing Consumer expectations - two years ago I would have rated this excellent but I don't think it has kept up with the best

This is illustrated by an experience I had yesterday. I don't want to bore you, but the bottom line is that it would have been far quicker visiting a station and queuing in-line for a ticket

thetrainline ...
...QJump)

The url is ww.thetrainline.com

The holding Company also owns QJump.com, the only rival. However QJump does not offer the full range of Virgin fares, eg first class upgrades, and does not always offer collection from a fastticket machine at a station, which I find rather convenient

You can also get much the same service via virgin.com/trains, you can use the same Account ID and password as thetrainline, ... more

I know loads of people have already reviewed thetrainline, but I think this is a good case of changing Consumer expectations - two years ago I would have rated this excellent but I don't think it has kept up with the best

This is illustrated by an experience I had yesterday. I don't want to bore you, but the bottom line is that it would have been far quicker visiting a station and queuing in-line for a ticket

thetrainline is a joint venture Virgin and National Express (who ran QJump)

The url is ww.thetrainline.com

The holding Company also owns QJump.com, the only rival. However QJump does not offer the full range of Virgin fares, eg first class upgrades, and does not always offer collection from a fastticket machine at a station, which I find rather convenient

You can also get much the same service via virgin.com/trains, you can use the same Account ID and password as thetrainline, however the presentation on the web pages is not as clear. However virgin.com/trains has some Promotions that do not appear on thetrainline, for instance they are currently offring free 1st Class upgrade if you buy a Standard Open ticket

trainline have 7.4 million registered users, although as I personally have two IDs the number of active users could be quite a lot less

14% of all 'inter-city' tickets are booked on thetrainline

Lets quickly run through the functionality

You can either use the site for a timetable query, or to buy tickets. To buy tickets you need to Register, which is easy

You then enter details of your journey, dates and preferred times, number of people travelling and railcards held if applicable

The dates and times are drop-down boxes or you can open a calendar

If you get the station name wrong, it will offer possible choices. Eg Milton Keynes is recognised either as Milton Keynes Central or Milton Keynes Bus (for the Virgin coach link service)

You can specify travelling via or avoiding a specific station. You might want to do this to check alternative fares. Some routes are cheaper, but you will only find this through trial and error or experience

You can store 'favourite journeys' which removes some of the hassle if you make a particular trip regularily

You will then, after a slight pause, get a matrix of train times (usually about 4 alternatives out and back) and fares. The site offers tickets for most train Companies and journeys. I have found a few exceptions

If there is more than one route, it may show you options. However I have noticed that where one route is a lot slower, it wil not offer this. Eg London Euston to Scotland at weekends when there is engineering work

In the case of Virgin trains, who offer cheap ('Value') single tickets, you get an option to expand the 'single tickets' box to look at what is on offer

You can hit a link to search for later or ealier trains. Of couse if the trains are on a frequent service, you may need to do thiis several times, and it can be better to go back to the initial search page and specify a new time

You can open a box to specify the rules applying to each ticket type, eg how far in advance it needs to be booked, whether breaks in the journey are permissable. It will often give scant information on cancellation penalties, basically bargain tickets are non-refundable or the penalties are so great it cancels out the ticket price

You can also open a box to show more details of the journey, ie start and finish times, change points if applicable and train operator. This does not show intermediate stations or where the train ultimately starts and finishes

Once you have decided on the ticket you want, you hit radio buttons corresponding to the journey and move on

thetrainline will then confirm the journey and by default add travel insurance (£1 per single journey) unless you uncheck the box. You also get the option to add 'travel essentials' such as first class upgrades if these are available

Again you confirm this and select method of ticket delivery. By default this will be by post, normally free but if you want next / same day delivery the charge is up to £10

For me the easiest option is to collect from a fastticket machine as I work next to a major station. All the main stations served by Virgin Trains have these machines. Several other Operators such as GNER and Silverlink have them. There seems to be some connectivity between them but this is not universal. If you opt for this you will get a Code, you need to input this AND the credit card you used to buy the ticket and the machine will print out the ticket. I have found there can be a time delay of at least two hours between making the transaction online and the machine recognising the Code

So, you have opted for a delivery method. At this point you get further confirmation of what is in your shopping basket and you can add more tickets

At every stage I recommend you check very carefully what you are selecting as it is not difficult for instance to chose the wrong date from the drop-down menu

Now of course they want your money!! You stay on the same site and complete the usual details, and after confirming wait a few seconds to get a final Confirmation. You can expand this into a printer-friendly version and they will also email you the details

There is a warning not to hit the Confirmation button twice or you could buy two identical tickets. Yes, I have done that. It is best to be patient and wait. If you get impatient and open another browser to start looking at the News or Ciao or whatever, you can disrupt the session and you don't know whether you bought the ticket or not

Finally, if you have doubts, you can check your Account which should list all your transactions. I have found some missing, even though I got the ticket and can't explain this

In many cases you will get a free seat reservation. This is helpful as some routes are overcrowded. You will not know the seat number until you get the tickets. You can specify smoking/non-smoking a direction of travel but this is not guaranteed

At one time you could get the details sent to you by SMS (which QJump offer) but I am not sure if this is still an option. I cant really see the point. They also had a piece of software called Infuser that placed the booking into MS Outlook but I gave up on it as I couldn't get it to work reliably. I just drag and drop the conformation email onto Calendar

Of course the intention is that you do everything online, so there are FAQs and email support to try and avoid you needing to talk to a person. Therefore there is no telephone number shown on the site

However , you will be given a telephone number on your booking confirmation. It is an 0870 number which is chargeable. Note that you should specifically use the number quoted. If you call Virgin trains own telesales they wil not be able to help (or that is what they told me). Some of the major Virgin stations can interrogate the system if you have the booking reference but their ability to intervene is limited. You are at the mercy of how helpful they want to be. If it is not a Virgin managed station, or with a Virgin trains staff presence, you are onto plums as they say

OK, I have been using this since it started and initially I thought it was quite good. However since then everyone else has caught up. I have bought tickets online for Belgian, French, Eurostar and Thalys trains and the experience is much the same. Except that Thalys and Eurostar send me electonic Bulletins which sometimes have special offers. The experience with French Railways was once dire and their ticket office in Lille could not sort it out, so SNCF and I exchanged many emails in franglais until it was resolved

However if you want to see how it should be done, go to German Railways www.bahn.de. The site offers information in German and English on everything you could want to know. It has full information on UK trains and shows their start and end points and intermediate stops, and what catering and other facilities are offered. As yet you cannot buy UK train tickets but you can get international travel from Germany. The thing I really like is that if you have a BahnCard (Railcard) you can print out your tickets at home. Now that is what I call impressive

Anyway, back to the start where I said I had a bad experience. Yesterday thetrainline insisted I update my Account (to opt in/out of mailings). Yet the server would not accept my choice. So I had to open a new Account. It would not bring up single ticket options which I knew were cheaper. After half an hour I managed to make the transaction. At the station, the lounge with the fastticket machine was locked (at 5pm) and two others out of service. another fastticket machine would not accept my booking code. the ticket collection desk was closed, who in the past have sorted problems out. so I was directed to a long queue at the normal ticket counters. the Virgin employee insisted it was my fault as I must have bought a GNER ticket or used QJump (both of which are untrue) and was quite dismissive of the problem

On the basis of this I rate the whole experience as dire. And that even before I've got on a train

In Summary......

What are the advantages?
------------------------------------
- you can in theory buy tickets from the comfort of your home / office and have them delivered to your door
- good if you live far from a station
- many stations only sell a limited range of tickets
- you can buy tickets for most train companies and routes in the UK and Eurostar
- there is no minimum ticket value
- you can search through all the fare options to get the best deal possible
- there is no surcharge for buying tickets online
- there are links to affiliates eg hotels

What are the disadvantages?
----------------------------------------

- if you have got narrowband, this can be very slow
- the site can be unpredictably slow presumably due to demand
- the search process is slow
- some specific Company Promos, Rovers etc are not available
- if you opt to collect tickets from a station, the fastticket machine might be faulty, in which case you have to queue in line, so no advantage buying online
- there is a hefty fee for next / same day postal delivery
- cunningly they add travel insurance unless you opt out, so you could end up paying £2 insurance on a £2 fare

On a good day its convenient, on bad day you might wish you had just gone to the station instead
 

...less