Monday 12 March 2007

The Mystery of the Cheap Ticket

Why are singles cheaper than a return?

I have just booked a train to Hull for a meeting. When initially searching for a Return Ticket the price was about £130. I thought this was pretty expensive to be honest, even though Hull is absolutely miles away. Then I noticed a little link saying ‘singles might be cheaper’, click on this, filled in my details and have managed to get a return journey (using singles) for less than half the price. Very strange! Long distance journeys often seem to have the situation where 2 singles is cheaper than one return, yet local services charge almost the same price for a single as for a return!

Well, it confuses me. I am just pleased that I had the sense to trail through all the forms to find the cheapest combination of tickets. Although, saying that, work were paying for the ticket, so it doesn’t really matter to me personally. But still, I like to feel like I have nabbed a bargain!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well seeing as you got a good deal on the single tickets that you are going to hull in say, a months time perhaps? Was I close?

Girl on A Train said...

I booked the train 1.5 weeks in advance (in fact I didn't get any discount for booking in advance though, surprisingly)
It's a mystery. Funnily enough, after I wrote that entry I read an article on the BBC about it, which attempts to explain the mystery.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6442947.stm